Shake-Bar and the Night Walk

Hello everyone! Today was a fun day not counting my last night.  I was in the middle of the best sleep ever when the fire alarm goes off (I honestly probably would have been dead asleep until my alarm went off if it weren't for the stupid fire alarm).  I thought that it would probably stop right away, so I put on my coat and shoes really slowly.  Just my luck, it went off for a 1/2 an hour. It was ridiculous.  In my snails pace it took me to vacate the building, I forgot to put on jeans.  So, I stood outside in my pajama shorts.  It was not fun.  Then, going to sleep afterwards was not the easiest thing to do either.  It was really annoying

This morning I finished my pictures of Flat Joshua in order to send him back to the US. So, I compiled all of my Flat Joshua pictures into a Word Doc and went to the library to print it off.  Well, I expected this to be an easy task...it wasn't.  First, let me just say that printing here is kind of ridiculous.  This I already knew from past experience, but color printing is insane.  When you print something off, you have to first find a computer at the library (which is not an easy task, but usually if you wait around long enough you'll find one), then you go through the whole selecting your printer options. After you send your document to the printer you have to go to the printer, login to the computer by the printer and "release" your items to be printed.  If that wasn't complicated enough, I learned today that there is exactly 1 color printer on campus and it is a scavenger hunt to figure out which one it is.  After trying 4 printers, I finally asked a librarian for help.  She had no idea which printer was the color printer either (which kind of made me feel better, but I mean come on, it's your job librarian), but she helped me find it.  Once I finally figures out how to log on to that printer (you had to actually login to the printer itself) I finally printed off my pages.  I now know how to print in color at the library.

Just on a side note, I put Flat Joshua in a kilt.  I'm pretty proud of my craftsmanship.  I made it out of Pound Store napkins.

After my printer adventure, I worked on my essay for a while and ate lunch.  Then, I met my friends to go into town. First, I went to the post office and mailed Flat Joshua.  That was another interesting experience. It only cost me 1 pound and 80 pence to send him back (and that was for a small package).  I thought that was really cheap, so fingers crossed he makes it back to West Terrace.  Also, I had to fill out a customs form to stick on the package.  I think the man at the post office who helped me thought I was crazy.  I asked him if paper counted as something that was inside the package, he gave me a "duh" look and said "aye" (Scottish for "yes"...I think he thought I was really dumb).  So, paper person was definitely on my customs form.  I'm sure customs will have fun with that one.

Once I had successfully mailed Flat Joshua, my friends and I went to Shakebar.  Shakebar is a place in Stirling that sells milkshakes and smoothies.  We have tried to go there many times, but it's always been closed (stores here usually close at about 5:00 except on Thursdays which is "late night shopping" which means they close of 8:00...some late night shopping).  They have hundreds of flavors of shakes.  The lady behind the counter said that Nutella is their best-selling flavor so I got a Nutella milkshake. It was wonderful. 

Here I am enjoying my milkshake. (I have no idea what I'm looking at in this picture, but whatever.  I also now have a loyalty card for Shakebar.)

Here is Shakebar.  It's kind of hole-in-the-wall place, but it was really good!

We sat on some benches outside of Shakebar to enjoy our milkshakes.  This is when we noticed that there were people dancing and singing in the middle of the street up ahead.  It was kind of strange, but we eventually figured out that they were doing some sort of Christian performance.  Then, they went around and started talking to people.  We were sitting there talking about how awkward they were, when we were approached by two of them.  (We kind of had it coming.  I mean we were sitting pretty close to where they had their performance thing.)  It was kind of funny, because they completely flipped out (in a good way) when they found out we were American.  Evidently, they are part of a Christian travelling performance organization of 18 to 28 year-olds out of Boston. They are travelling around the UK doing their performance and telling people about Jesus. They said that they were just really happy to hear American accents.  We sat and talked to them for a while.  They were really nice.

Then, we headed to Tesco and back to campus where I made pork chops for dinner.  (They were really good.)  After dinner, we decided to take a break from the essays for a while and go for a walk around the loch.  It was really pretty.

Here's a picture from a bench that we found by the loch.  You can see the castle on campus in the background.

Along the way, we discovered that there were lots of frogs on the path.  We had to be really careful not to step on any, but Dana took it upon herself to rescue those in danger.  After, our walk I went back to work on my essays.  Spring Break is getting close and these need to be done! 

Tomorrow should be a long, but interesting day.  We're planning on going for another walk to take a break from our essays because none of us have class tomorrow due to a teacher strike (evidently it isn't a big deal.  It's only a one day thing.  Now, I get an extra day to work on my essays).  Then, Katelin and I are staying up to watch the Butler game at 2 am (they better win, or I'm not going to be happy that I stayed up for it, but I have faith in Bulldogs).