Preparing for the Royal Wedding

Hello everyone! Today was another easy day for me.  I didn't have any classes.  I did however get back an essay today (I had to pick it up from the divisional office).  Picking up the essay was an experience in itself.  I went to the office and the door was closed.  In past experiences, if an office door is closed, it's probably not going to be a good situation inside.  But there was a sign on it that said to knock.  This also kind of freaked me out, because perpetually closed office doors aren't a good sign either.  So, after standing in the hallway of Pathfoot for about 5 minutes, I finally built up the courage to walk into what very well could have been one of the seven rings of Hell (this sounds overly dramatic, but just wait).

So, I knock politely and I hear something like a snarl from behind the door which I interpreted that in Hell-ese meant "please come in".  I walk inside and am met by Satan's Secretary herself.  I think this woman may have been the scariest woman ever.  You know how some people never smile? She was one of the those people. Here is how this went.

Me: "Hi! Is this where I can pick up my essay for EUC 9BB?"
SS: "COME IN AND CLOSE THE DOOR!"
Me: "Oh! Sorry about that."
SS: "What's your name?"
Me: "Jennifer Claybaugh"
SS: "What's your student ID number?"
Me: "Um, hold on let me get out my ID card..."
SS: "Don't you know it?"
Me: "Um....[struggling to get out ID]..."
SS: "1...9...."
(my thoughts: Listen lady, I've only been at this school for 3 months.  I don't have my social security number memorized and I've had that for 21 years.)

After I finally get out my ID and tell her my number, she kind of throws my essay at me after looking at my grade (of which she gave a shocked expression, thank you very much). And turned her back on me.  The only thing that made me feel a little better than scum walking out of that office, was to see that I got a 2A (which translates to an A- in American lingo).  I'm guessing she was shocked that I did so well.  Ha ha Satan's Secretary, ha ha.

Then, I had my interview to become an International Orientation guide later this afternoon.  It went good.  My only issue was that there were people playing soccer right outside my room (like literally right out side my window.  I looked outside and someone was standing right there.  If my window was open, I could have reached out and touched him).  And he was no David Beckham either.  He kept missing the ball, so every time it hit my wall, it sounded like a gun shot.  The lady who interviewed me probably thought that I was living in the hard core ghetto.  Hopefully she couldn't hear too much of it over Skype.

Tomorrow I leave to go to London for the Royal Wedding.  I'm sure it's going to be a good time! I won't get back until Sunday, so this will be my last blog post until then.  So, in honor of the Royal Wedding, I will leave you with my top picks of who I want to see this weekend!

(I managed to narrow it down to 3 key people.)

1.  The Queen of England.

2.  Prince William and Kate Middleton (I mean, it is their wedding). 

1. Sir Elton John (why is he number 1 above the Royal Couple you may ask?  Well, I mean it's Elton John.)

Dr. Jekyll Strikes Again

Hello everyone! Well, I think I have finally recovered from the excitement of my weekend.  Which is a good thing, considering I leave to go down to London in 2 days.  Today was another easy day for me.  I only had one class and it was kind of pointless for me to go.  Dr. Jekyll was in rare form today.  The first part of class, he couldn't figure out how to access his PowerPoint, so he decided to have a discussion.  Here is the problem with this.

1) It is obvious that this man is not rational.
2) He loves the NHS.
3) He hates any and all information/evidence that goes against the phrase "The NHS is the best thing ever and nobody has every had an issue with it because it just so great".
(Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this man had "NHS for Life" tattooed on his body somewhere.

So, today when he asked if we thought the NHS management was efficient, this girl in my class should really just have kept her mouth shut.  But no, she had to tell this man that her Mom was a nurse and how she worked something like 70 hours overtime a month and the management was doing nothing to help her (ok, yes it's probably true, but really this is a pointless battle with this man).  This sparked a 30 minute argument between this girl and Dr. Jekyll.

Girl: "My mom works a lot of overtime and management does nothing about it."

Dr. Jekyll: "Well, in my experience managers are never doing nothing.  They have to be doing something.  They are very busy people.  So what are they doing, if they aren't  helping the nurses?"

Girl: "They're doing nothing."

Dr. Jekyll: "Well they aren't getting paid 60,000 pounds a year to sit around and do nothing."

Girl: "Yeah, well they're probably out playing golf.  That's where they always seem to be."

Dr. Jekyll: "Do you have EVIDENCE of this!?"

Girl: "No, but my..."

Dr. Jekyll: "Then you have no argument!!! YOU MUST HAVE EVIDENCE!"

As this "discussion" went on, I had an epiphany.  I knew that this guy looked familiar and I finally figured it out! He is a dead ringer for Christopher Lloyd aka Dr. Emmit Brown in Back to the Future.

Honestly, this is such a great representation of him.

Well, after I made this connection I was amazed to see that the argument about management was still going on.  He finally stopped when he realized that he only had a half and hour left to actually teach us something.  Although that didn't stop him from going on to a different topic.  Then he started in on the lack of nurses in Scotland (which is kind of funny considering he was saying this wasn't a big deal 5 minutes before).  Here is how this went.

Dr. Jekyll: "I am going to give you a TRUE scenario and we are going to discuss a solution.  There is woman on a remote island (it had a name, but I don't remember what it was) who had to have the dressing on her leg changed daily.  So, a nurse from the hospital she attended had to drive 3 hours to her home everyday for a 3 minute procedure.  How could management make this more efficient? You there, what would you say."

Girl #1: "They could move the nurse to the island."

Dr. Jekyll: "That's a HORRIBLE idea. (points to different girl) What would you do?"

Girl #2: "Have the woman stay at the hospital or have her move to a closer one."

Dr. Jekyll: "I guess that would work ok.  It would save some money. (points to me) What about you?" (I was slightly horrified to realize he was talking to me.)

Me: "It sounds like a simple procedure.  Couldn't she just do it herself or couldn't the nurse train someone in her family to do it for her?"

Dr. Jekyll: "THAT NURSE DOES MORE THAN CHANGE BANDAGES! She has to observe the wound to see how it is improving or changing...[more of him talking. This went on for 5 minutes about why this wouldn't work]...But in the end, they trained someone in her family to do it for her and the nurse visited her every other week. (points to me) Good thinking."  

Can someone please explain to me why I needed to hear why this wasn't a logical option when the scenario played out exactly how I suggested? 

The rest of the lecture was just him pulling up his PowerPoint (finally) which was the exact same one that he used for the first NHS lecture.  It was a pointless lecture to attend.  I'm supposed to have another one on Thursday, but the Royal Wedding will be more educational than this man's lecture.  I will unfortunately have him for my seminar on Thursday.  I'm sure it will be interesting at the very least.  

Tomorrow I have a pretty easy day.  I don't have any classes, but I do have an interview via Skype to become an International Orientation Guide again next semester (at Butler in case you were wondering.  I was one last Fall too).  It should be a good time!

A Nice Calm Day

Hello everyone! After the excitement of my weekend and the length of the my last posts, my post tonight is going to be really short.  But I think 4 posts in one day is plenty...even if one is short.  Today was a great day for me.  I woke up late and just lazed around enjoying my morning.  I mainly blogged the day away.

After lunch, Katelin, Grace and I went into town and went shopping.  I needed to get some aloe for my sunburned skin.  Then, we went to Tesco and bought some food for dinner.  I made dinner and we enjoyed just having a nice meal.  Afterwards, we walked around the loch and sat outside for a while just enjoying the nice weather.  It was just a really nice, relaxed day.

Tomorrow I have one class.  It's actually supposed to be another strike day, but (wonder of all wonders) Dr. Jekyll is not part of the teacher's union, so we have class.  So, I'm sure that will be another fun time.

Easter Sunday: a Tri-Country Experience

Hello! Here is the last post from my Easter adventure. We got up early on Sunday and went down to breakfast.  We got the idea that breakfast had the potential for being interesting, but they had cereal and toast and that was all we really needed (was it a let down after the Royal Albion?  Kind of.  But we were just happy to have food).  Then, we wandered around Barry for a little while before getting our train back to Cardiff to start our journey back to Scotland.

This is the town hall and library of Barry.

Here's Barry.  I liked the little buildings.

Here's a building that we found that looked really cool.  I think that it only had offices in it which wasn't nearly as exciting as it could be, but we still enjoyed.

This statue was outside of that building. We decided it was the founder of Barry.

Here's Barry.  It really was a quaint town.

After we got back into Cardiff, we waited for our train to Birmingham.  The adventure to get to Birmingham had the potential to again be very interesting, but it all worked out for us.  Since it was a holiday, they were doing some engineering stuff at some of the stations, so we had to take a train out of Cardiff, take a bus to a different station, then a bus to another station, and finally a train to Birmingham.  It worked out really well though.  I slept most of the way.  I was excited though because we switch buses in Gloucester which is where they have their annual cheese rolling contest each year.  (We've talked about it a lot in my leisure studies class.)  Basically, there's this really big hill and people chase a wheel of cheese down it.  Evidently, people get really hurt doing this every year.  I didn't get to see where it takes place, but I was excited to be there.  (Here's a video of the contest incase you're interested http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOyQBSMeIhM).  

Then, we finally got our train to Birmingham. They funny this is, that we had a stop in Birmingham for an hour and the train we were taking out of Birmingham was the same train to Edinburgh that we were catching in an hour. (In the minds of ScotRail: "Why yes.  It would be much cheaper for these girls to get on a train to Edinburgh.  Get off for an hour and get on the next one."...stupid ScotRail.) We tried to just stay on that train, but the lady basically told us we couldn't do it.  So, we experienced Birmingham for an hour.  We discovered that if we bought something from this bookstore that we got McDonald's coupons, so I bought a sandwich for the train (the ride from Birmingham to Edinburgh was 6 hours) and got my 6 piece McNuggets and a medium fry for 1.99.  It was a good time.

The train ride back to Scotland was actually really nice.  I sat with Grace and we talked and slept for the majority of the time.  The 6 hours went by really fast.  We easily got our train back into Stirling and managed to find a bus back to campus (we were worried that they might not be running at 10:30 on Easter Sunday, but they were).  Overall, we had a great trip.  Now, we're looking forward to planning our Royal Wedding adventure!

From Sunburns in Brighton to Karaoke in Wales

Hello! First, let me say, I'm sorry this post is going to be so long.  There were lots of pictures that I wanted to include in this. Our Saturday began bright and early.  We were on the streets of Brighton walking back to the Royal Albion by 7:30.  (By the way, the lady at reception at the Jurys Inn, was horrified to discover that the Royal Albion turned us away at 1:30 in the morning.  The fact that she found that unacceptable was pretty satisfying.) When we got to the hotel, we were happy to see that the man from last night wasn't present.  The lady at reception was actually really nice.  She compensated us and apologized for what happened.  She also gave us the business card of the manager at the hotel and told us to call or e-mail him if we wanted to complain or if we would like to come back they would give us a room for a reduced rate.  She was really nice.  Also, she got the hint pretty quickly that we weren't leaving without our included full English breakfast.  (All I had to say was "The price of the room included breakfast." and she jumped in with "it's right through those doors.").  Breakfast was great! It had real food.  Which sounds really stupid but they had sausage, bacon, eggs, croissants, cereal and everything.  

After breakfast, we walked down to look at the pier before it opened and decided we would head back there later. 

Here is Brighton Pier.  It was pretty early still, so nobody was there yet.

Then, we walked over to the Royal Pavilion in Brighton.  On the way we saw this fountain that was cool with all of the flowers blooming around it.

It was really pretty.

The Royal Pavilion consists of a big building with lots of gardens around it.  It used to be the home of King George IV.  It was eventually bought by Brighton when Queen Victoria decided she didn't like the lack of privacy.  It was really pretty.

Here is the entrance gate and some of the gardens.

Here is the Pavilion itself.  We read a plaque that said it was built by someone in India which is why the style is so different from everything else you see in Brighton.

After the Royal Pavilion, we headed back to the Pier.  We had a good time walking around and seeing all the rides and everything. There were also really nice views of Brighton.

Here's Brighton.

They also had some awesomely tacky things like this for the Royal Wedding.  We all agreed that this isn't Prince William's best picture and it's unfortunate that it was everywhere. 

We also went down to the beach.  The shore was kind of strange.  The upper part of the beach was rocky, but it was sandy down in the water.  This didn't seem strange to anyone other than us though.  People were walking on the rocks like it was no big deal.

I got to stand in the ocean, which was awesome.

After our feet were sufficiently cooled off (it was really warm in Brighton.  I think it was about 75 that day). We decided that the cotton candy (or candy floss as they call it here) was something we needed to try.

We're pretty sure that the lady gave us bigger sizes than we ordered.

We spent a while just walking on the pier and people watching.  As the day went on, more and more people kept appearing in Brighton.  We think this was where everybody in England goes for Easter.  By noon, there were tons of people everywhere.  There were also lots of police which I guess was to keep the crowd under control.  They had funny hats.

Here's CSI: Brighton.

I wasn't kidding when I said there were a lot of people.  This is just one part of the beach.

Eventually we started to head back to the train station for our 2:00 train to Cardiff.  By this point there were hoards of people streaming down the streets from the train station.  We were pretty happy to get away from the crowds even though we really liked Brighton.  We also found a Krispy Kreme where we bought donuts for our train ride.

Saturday was an easy travel day for us.  We only had to change trains once to get from Brighton to Cardiff and it was an easy connection to make.  My only problem with the 3 hour train ride to Cardiff, was that my seat was in direct sunlight, so I now have a lovely sunburn on half of my face and chest that's really uneven.  But, other than that, it was a nice train ride.  We got into Cardiff at about 6:30.  I'll be honest.  I had built Cardiff up in my mind as being a cute city.  It was a lot bigger than I imagined (and a lot drunker for it only being 6:30 when we got there).  But it definitely had some great sights.  Anyways, this is how Cardiff greeted us.  We got off the train and were walking down the street behind some big guys with neon yellow bands on their arms that said "security", when we see a group of men start punching each other.  Then, the security guys ran and pulled them apart.    

Have no fear, I captured part of the action.

It was pretty intense.  After seeing this, we just kind of walked around until we found a nice park to have our dinner in.  We saw lots of sights along the way.

We liked all of the flags lined up on the streets.  We thought it looked cute.

Here is Cardiff Castle.  

Here is a bell tower that was by Cardiff Castle. 

Eventually, we found a huge park where we could sit by the river and eat dinner.  Afterwards, we wandered around the park before heading back to the train station.  Here are some of the sights we saw on our walk.

This is the area where we ate dinner.  It was really pretty.

This is the castle from the park.

We also found the town hall.

And a really pretty church.

Once we got back to the train station, we hopped on our train to Barry where we had a hotel for the night.  We were kind of wondering if good old Barry would be a sketchy town, but it actually turned out to be nice.  We wandered for a while trying to figure out the map that Katelin printed out (Google printed all of the street names in Welsh) but eventually went into a little restaurant and got directions.  The lady was really helpful.  When we told her where we were looking for, she was like "ah the Tadross hotel".  We figured this was good sign.

We found the hotel easily after that.  It was a family business type of hotel.  The man at reception was a lot nicer than the Royal Albion guy and actually had a room for us.  The hotel had a pub connected to it the reception man owned too and within 5 minutes of entering the hotel we were told that it was in fact karaoke night and were handed a karaoke "menu".  So, we got to our room (which was really nice.  It was defined as being a "family room" for 3 adults and 1 child.  So, it was spacious and we each had our own bed). After getting settled in our room, we decided to check out karaoke.  It turned out to be a lot of fun.  We sang such classics as Enrique Iglesias's Hero and Celine Dion's My Heart Will go On.  We also enjoyed listen to everyone else sing.  The receptionist guy sang some Barry Manilow and the guy that was in charge of karaoke kept playing American songs during the breaks that we knew.  We had a great time.  

Evidently Karaoke is something that happens every Saturday at the Tadross Hotel.  We had a great time ringing in our Easter with some good old fashioned karaoke. We also figured that the girl at the restaurant where we got directions has probably been to karaoke here a few times before.

After we had our fill of karaoke, we went back to our room and went to bed early.  It was nice to have a comfy bed and earlier evening after the day before.  The only issue we had was that the toilet made really strange paper shredding noises (it said something on it about have a shredder inside).  It was kind of suspect, but other than that it was great night.

Good Friday Adventures: to Brighton We Go

Hello everyone! I am back from England and Wales and I have many stories to tell you! So, these next 3 blogs are my catch-up blogs from this weekend.  First, let's begin with Friday.  My friends Katelin, Grace and I went to the train station around 11 on Friday to collect all of our tickets (we had a massive amount) before our train at 12:30.  Here is how this went.  There were a whole lot of people in line and there were only 2 windows open.  I think between the 3 of us, we held up the line for at least 30 minutes.  The man that I went was pretty nice about it, but I could tell he wasn't too happy about having to print off all of my 300 tickets (we choose to pick up all of our tickets for out entire trip in Stirling so that we wouldn't have to mess with ticket counters or anything.  I don't think the Stirling Station works really appreciated this.  We each had about 15 tickets each and they had to type in our credit card numbers to release every single ticket to be printed off.  It was a good time).

 Once we had our tickets we got on train number 1 to Edinburgh. Once we got into Edinburgh we found some lunch and ate until it was time to catch our train to London.  This was our first long train. It took us 4 and half hours to check to London (which really isn't bad because our train on Thursday to London is 6 hours long).  I was super happy on this train because the seat next to me wasn't reserved.  So, I got to spread out and just watch the scenery.  Here are some of the things/places that I saw.

Here is the Dementor fog at Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is a cute little town that sits right on the boarder between Scotland and England.

Here is Newcastle (which is in England in case you were wondering).

Her's another Newcastle picture.

On our train we saw lots and lots of fields of this yellow flower.  We found out on our train ride back to Scotland, that it's rapeseed, which is made into biodiesel fuel.  We were pretty convinced that it was probably a weed and only us Americans would be fascinated with it.  It was really beautiful to see it growing everywhere.

When we finally got into London, we discovered that it was hot.  It's still pretty cool in Scotland, so when we stepped off the train in the steamy London, we were pretty confused.  We didn't have very long in London before our train to Canterbury, so we promptly found a McDonald's (we find these really easily...it's a talent).  This was where I got disdainful look #1 for my Scottish pounds (the Royal Bank of Scotland (known as RBS) prints their own pounds with Scottish landmarks and famous Scots.  These are different from the English pounds that pretty much only have pictures of the Queen. They both can be used anywhere in the UK, but the English really don't like it).  Here is how this process went, because it's repeated throughout this trip.  

1) I hand the cashier my Scottish pounds.

2) Cashier takes it, scrunches up they're face, (some add in a disdainful lip curl here), turn money over and over in their hands as if it's not real.

3) I begin to anticipate the sure-to-come look of disdain

4) Cashier gives me strange look and acts really offended that I would dare use Scottish pounds.

5) After finally deciding that the money is real, they give me change in a very curt fashion.

After dinner, we walked to the train station (we came in at King's Cross and had to switch to St. Pancras (which we called St. Pancreas throughout this trip because their only a letter apart) which is right across the street from King's Cross).  St. Pancreas was a really nice station.  They had lots of shops in things.  I could have spent real time there.  We then got our train to Canterbury.  

I would love to go back to Canterbury.  We only had about and hour and a half there and it was dark, but from what we could see it was the epitome of a quaint English town.  In case you didn't know, Canterbury is famous for it's church which inspired the epics poem, the Canterbury Tales (I'm sure you had to read these in school at some point) written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 1300s.  It's about this group of people that are making a pilgrimage to Canterbury to go to Canterbury Cathedral.  Each member of the group of travelers told stories to pass the time.  (If you want to read any of them here is a website http://www.canterburytales.org/canterbury_tales.html.  The one that this website will open to is the Knight's tale which is one of the more famous ones.)

Here is Canterbury church. 

Here is the outer wall of the city.  We thought it was pretty cool.

Canterbury was really nice.  I wish that we would have had more time there, but we had to catch a train to Brighton where we stayed our first night.  The trip from Canterbury to Brighton had the potential to be interesting.  We had to change trains twice, but each time we found our new train pretty easily.  The first stop, Grace spotted our next train as we came into the station and at our next change the lady who came and checked our tickets on the train told us exactly where to go.  We really lucked out on how easy the train experience was for us.  

We got in to Brighton at about 12:30 and walked down to our hotel.  Brighton was quit the hopping town at 12:30.  There were lots of people out, which was kind of nice actually. We didn't feel like we were the only ones wandering the streets. We also got to see the Brighton Pier lit up.

I know this picture is kind of fuzzy, but the pier just looked really cool.

This next part is when we hit a little bit of speed bump in our plans.  We found our hotel (The Royal Albion in case you were wondering) easily enough and walked in to reception.  Let me just say, I took one look at the receptionist and knew he would be trouble. I gave him our reservation confirmation paper and my credit card which the reservation was under.  He just kind of stared at the paper and said (he had a hybrid of an Indian and British accent) "yes, um, well we don't have room for you, but I will find one at another hotel."  We were kind of shocked by this because we had called this hotel yesterday and asked if it was ok that we wouldn't be getting in until after midnight.  The girl on the phone said it was fine and that she would mark that on our reservation.  Well, I guess that didn't happen.  So, this guy calls all of the cheap hotels in Brighton first (I would know because I did a lot of research on hotels in Brighton.  I can probably tell you a price for almost every hotel in Brighton.  I could have told that man that those hotels were full, because I had already checked them out).  Eventually he calls a hotel (which I knew was pretty pricey) and finds us a room.  He told us to just come back the next morning and they would pay us the difference in price.  Our new hotel was 150 pounds a night and we only had to pay 95.  We were pretty satisfied. I asked him what had happened to our room and basically told us that they double booked the room and they gave ours away.  This guy kind of had some sass in him.  Then, I asked for directions to our new hotel.  This is how our exchange ended. I don't think he was too happy with us.  

Man:  "Will that be biking or driving?"  

We just stared at him. I mean really.  Biking?

Me:  "Walking."

Disdainful look (no Scottish Pounds used in this disdainful look experience)

Man: "I will call you a cab".  

Me: "And you will compensate us for that."

Disdainful smile and rapid nodding.

We finally got to our new hotel, which was literally next door to the train station go figure (we walked down a hill to get to hotel number 1).  This hotel, the Jurys Inn, was actually a lot nicer.  We felt kind of bad for the guy behind the counter because he had to sort out our mess.  He was really friendly and really helpful which we found pretty noteworthy because it was 1:30 by hat point.  He worked everything out for us and even seemed pretty annoyed with the Royal Albion (at one point he had to call and yell at them because evidently they were supposed to gives us money for the room.) Our room turned out to be really nice.  Overall we had a really good day.  

That was our Day 1 adventures.  Stay tuned for Day 2...

ScotRail is Not Your Friend

Hello! Well, today was an interesting day for me.  I woke up this morning and had a thought that I should check train tickets for our Easter plans.  This is how I started my morning.  I found out that our 44 pound train had turned into a 86 pound train.  This is when ScotRail began messing with my life.  Grace managed to solve problem number 1 before my seminar this morning, so I went to class in a bright and cheery mood.  Then, I had to work in a group with Sassy Kid.  Here is what I discovered.  Sassy Kid is the future president of the student union on campus (which is the student government type thing).  He proceeded to brag about this fact for about half of class.  I have never been so happy to think that I won't be here next year when Sassy Kid takes over the world.  Working with Sassy Kid was about as annoying as what I thought it would be.  It was not a fun time.

Then, I had my lecture with the Dr. Jekyll.  Today we talked mainly about insane asylums (does anyone else see the humor in this?).  He seemed to know a lot about them.  This really made me suspicious of his past. He kept saying "these reforms of the NHS took place over 1 lifetime! In fact, my grandmother lived to see them all!"  Ok, if that was true, this would mean that his grandmother lived to be 199 years old because the reforms began in 1808 and ended in 2007. Then, in the middle of the lecture, he pulls up this list of people and says "see that name at the bottom there! That is my aunt.  She was committed to an asylum! She was proclaimed as being an imbussel!" Needless to say, I think it runs in the family.

After class, my friends and I went into town to go shopping for our trip and get McDonald's for dinner.  Things were really looking up by this point.  When we got back and got to booking is when the real trouble began.  Our trip has changed completely.  ScotRail bumped every single ticket price up (except from Cardiff to Barry was still at an all time low of 1.95 pounds).  So, after 4 hours of exhaustive booking (and with ScotRail literally bumping up prices every 10 minutes...for real this happened to me) we formulated a plan.  We will be leaving Stirling tomorrow at 11 to catch a train that gets into Canterbury around 8:30.  Then, we will be going to Brighton.  From Brighton we will be going to Cardiff the next day, and Barry to spend the night.  Easter we will be leaving Cardiff to go to Birmingham where we will get a train back to Edinburgh and into Stirling by 10:30ish.  This is what we could do for the best price.  Here is what I learned today; ScotRail is not your friend, it only exists to screw you over.  When you see a good deal, book it.  Now, I will get off my soapbox as my 7th grade literature teacher would say, and am going to bed.  I won't be blogging again until Easter, but hopefully I will only have cool pictures to share and no tragic stories to tell.

Online Portfolio

Hello! Today was a very relaxed day for me.  I basically did 2 things.  I finally got my online portfolio put together and I researched the places that I'm visiting over Easter weekend.  It was a nice a day.  My portfolio is now complete (and you should go check it out at http://www.coroflot.com/jenniferclaybaugh.  Once you're on the website, to see all of my designs, click on the portfolio button on the left hand side of the screen and then click on the different folders).  I've been meaning to get this together for a while and the spirit moved me today.  It feels good to have it all up and running.  This is really what I spent the bulk of my day doing.  Then, I checked out some books from the library about the NHS (considering I'm probably not going to be getting much help from Dr. Jekyll).

I got exciting news today...I'm officially going to the Royal Wedding! Grace's friend, who is studying abroad in London, offered to let us (us being me, Grace and Katelin) sleep in her flat.  I'm extremely excited about this! I promise to buy lots of tacky gifts and take lots of pictures.  The plan is to go to London next Thursday afternoon, spend all day Friday Royal Wedding-it, tour around London on Saturday, and leave to come back to Stirling on Sunday.  It's going to be a great time.

Tomorrow I have 2 classes (both PMA. Hopefully not both with Dr. Jekyll.  It's going to be hard to maintain my in-the-closet-American status with him leading my seminar) and then I'm heading into town to do some last minute pre-Easter trip shopping...ok and we're getting Micky Ds for dinner (would you really expect anything different from us? I think not).

Strange New People

Hello! Today was a good day.  I had 2 classes. My seminar this morning was very interesting.  First of all, there were 6 people there today.  I think that's some kind of  a record for that seminar.  I was really impressed by this.  Second, Snape wasn't there.  We had a Phd student from Tennessee.  He was awesome.  He made lots of American references that nobody understood.  Needless to say, be bonded over our American-ness.  This was another instance where nobody in the class enjoyed him nearly as much as I did.  He had a really prominent Southern accent, so they were kind of cruel about that.  But this guy was great. He was the kind of American that made some really racist remarks that probably give Americans a bad name, but I found his humor funny. I've never had such a good seminar.  Here are some of my favorite quotes.  This really just sums it all up. (We were discussing different types of fans.  That might help to explain some of this.)

(Note: You have to imagine this with a really strong Southern accent.  It really just makes it all that much better.)

1.) (quote context: We were going around the room saying where we were from.)
Kid in my class:  "I'm from Glasgow."
Tennessee: "Wow really?  You've been here 15 minutes and you haven't tried to stab me yet.  I think that's some kind of a record for Glasgow.  And you don't have any scars on your face.  You must win the fights."

2.) (quote context: talking about crazy fans)
"You know how there's cat people. Well, dysfunctional fans are like cat people.  They make cats less fun for the rest of us.  God, I just hate cat people."

3.) (quote context: I have no idea where this came from)
"I hate how there's all of these Asians here that think they're so poor. I mean they tell you that they swam across the [censored] pond to get here for a better education.  And then, you see them pull up in their M3s like it's no big deal.  Just go home."

Well, I think he probably offended most of my class, but hey I found him entertaining.  This was my last LEI seminar, so I was happy to leave it on a high note.  Also, I had a great experience about my quiz.  Here is how this went.

Glasgow Kid: "I got a 5F (F) on my quiz"
Girl 1: "Yeah I got a 3D (C-). I barely passed it."
Girl 2: "Wow, well at least you passed it.  I got a 4D (D). I think that means I only got 5 answers right."
Girl 3: "Yeah, I got 4C (D) on mine."
Girl 4: "Me too."
Everyone looks at me.
Me: "I got a 2F (B-)."
Silence
Girl 1: "Wow, that's the highest score that I've heard and I've talked to about 15 people."

I mentally patted myself on the back for that one.  Then, I had my PMA lecture.  This was yet another interesting experience.  Neither Frazzled nor British Unibrow were there today.  No, we had the craziest man on Earth.  I'm pretty sure he was tripping on acid and is the type that tries out electro-shock therapy on the weekends.  He was a weird one.  He came into the room and immediately started in with this...

Dr. Jekyll: "The NHS is going to have to cut 30 million pounds this year.  HOW ARE THEY GOING TO DO THAT?"
(Looks at girl)
Girl: "I don't know"
Dr. Jekyll: "I WILL tell you how!!!!! They are cutting jobs.  The jobs of 1,000 people who make 30,000 pounds.  All of them gone.  WHO DO THEY CUT. Tell me, WHO DO THEY CUT?"
Girl: "Um...1,000 people who make 30,000 pounds?"
Dr. Jekyll: "YES! YES!"

This is how the entire lecture went.  He had a lot of passion in his soul for the NHS.  I came into the lecture knowing these facts about the NHS.

1) The NHS stands for National Health Services
2) It's free at the time of delivery
...yep, that's about all I knew.

Here's what knowledge I left with...

1) The NHS stands for National Health Services
2) It's free at the time of delivery
3) Don't do drugs.

He was seriously crazy. He explained point number 2 like this. "This weekend I walked into a tree branch (yeah, maybe this is a sign that you should take it easy on the narcotics). I went to the hospital and received "free" (complete with finger gestures) services for my injuries.  BUT!!!! It is not free!!!!! You who are sitting in this room paid for it...in...your...TAXES!"

And he spent most of the lecture focusing on his hatred of the American health care system.  Everyone in my class just kept looking at me because he kept saying things about America that was really biased.  This is one man who I do not want to discover my nationality.  He's the kind that would ask questions.  Lots of questions.
So, I am now an in-the-closet-American.  I hope I don't have him for my PMA seminar, because I don't want to get attacked.

Tomorrow I don't have any classes.  So, I guess I'll spend the bulk of my day bonding with the NHS since I really can't count on the next 4 lectures by Dr. Jekyll to be any better.  Let's just hope I get through those 4 lectures without requiring the NHS's services.

Back to the Usual in Stirling

Hello everyone! It was really nice to be back in Stirling and to be back to normal. I had a relatively calm day, which was nice.  It felt really weird to go a whole day without being traumatized by the EKs.  It was lovely.  I had my last EUC seminar this morning.  It was slightly painful to attend.  Here's why.  Reason number 1, remember how last weeks seminar pretty much consisted of a dialogue between me and the Phd student?  Well, this week she decided she would learn names and actually call on people.  Guess who's name was the only one she knew?  That's right, me. (I find this somewhat of an accomplishment.  She just needs to remember that whenever she's handing out grades.) I felt kind of sorry for her.

Also, we had to have 5 presentations today because all of the slackers that realized the presentation was not skip-able because it's 30% of our grade.  So, the people who were supposed to do them last week showed up this week like this was no big deal to do a presentation a week late. And all them were pretty terrible.  One girl opened her presentation with this "This question makes no sense at all. I made up everything because it makes no sense.  I love French film and this one just doesn't capture Paris for me...and Paris is a very personal thing for me.  I don't know who came up with this question (Jennifer's commentary: That would be the lady who you're sassing off to right now.  Not smart.  Not smart at all) but there is literally no significance at all."  Let me just say, that my presentation asked me to find the significance in a soundtrack that consisted of hammering and a chirping bird.  And lone and behold I managed to do it.  She needed to grow up.  My favorite presentation of the day was by Piercings Girl.  Not because it was good, (Disclaimer: Yes I realize how creepy this next statement sounds.) but because I've really wanted to stare at her all semester (for the seminars she's actually shown up to anyway) and count her piercings and I finally got the opportunity (she had 11!). This girl has piercings on her face in places I have never seen before (Like the piece of skin between her 2 front teeth).  All I could think about was how big of a pain it would be to go through security at the airport.  It was a great time.

Then, I had my LEI lecture.  We talked about sports tourism.  I didn't really learn anything exciting.  Except I did learn that Scotland claims to be the adventure sport capital of Europe, which actually explains a lot.  Like why IFSA thought that Camp Hellhole was a good idea.  I like to look at nature.  Not interact with it.

After class, I came back and planned out my Easter weekend (we have Good Friday through Easter Monday off) with my roommate, Grace.  Katelin, Grace and I are going to go down to England and Wales and tour around some of the smaller towns. We're planning on going to Canterbury, Brighton, Bath, Cardiff (in Wales), Chester, and Stratford Upon Avon before heading up to Manchester in order to get back to Stirling. (We're going to those places in that order too.)  I'm really excited.  I've been wanting to get down in that area to see those stereotypical (as in cute and historic) English towns.  And I've never been to Wales before, so this should be a lot of fun.

Tomorrow I have 2 classes.  It's my last LEI seminar of the semester.  I guarantee that I'll be one of the only people there.  I predict a grand total of 4 people at the max.

I also have a funny story to leave you with tonight (or today as it may be for you).  This happened yesterday, but I got so caught up in blogging about Skye that I forgot, so I'll just tell it you now.  So, yesterday I found out that my grade for the LEI hell quiz I took last week was up online.  I remembered this as I was cooking dinner, so I rushed into my room to look up my grade.  I got a 2F.  I was almost hysterical.  Here is what I was thinking "if it isn't bad to fail once, I got a 2F! That's twice as bad.  That's double failure! 15% of my grade is now gone in double failure".  I was in full on panic mode.  I was calculating my grade and how to fix it, when I heard the microwave go off.  I went back into the kitchen  and was starting to discuss this disaster with Grace, when I realized...stupid me a 2F is actually a pretty good grade.  It's actually a B-.  Which considering my lackluster performance on that quiz, I am pretty darn happy with.  I felt really stupid though.  Why can't we just all use the same grading system?

Departing Skye

Hello! Now I am finally caught up on blog posts to today. This morning, we got up and went to breakfast.  I was kind of irritated because there were waffles, but some EKs cut in line to get them before we could reach them.  It was kind of sad.  Then, came the mother of all bad news.  Us Stirling kids were all sitting together at breakfast, when one of the IFSA reps came up to us and said "make sure you put your bags on bus Edinburgh 1 because you're going to ride back with them".  We all just stared at her.  We were not happy.  We got to ride our usual bus until we were about an hour away from Stirling, but I'll get to the fun part of that journey later.

We began our journey back by stopping at the Eilean Donan Castle.  I have been wanting to see this castle since arriving in Scotland and was super excited.  This is really what I came on this trip to see. The Eilean Donan Castle is the most photographed castle in the UK and one of the best well-known and it did not disappoint me.

Here is the castle.  I really loved it.

Here are the wonderful members of my IFSA Butler group.  I would just like to give a shout out to them for not being like the EKs.  I have a whole new appreciation for how amazing they are.

After the castle, we got back on the road and headed to Fort Augustus and Loch Ness.  I must say that I'm glad that my parents and I did the Loch Ness thing ourselves, because we saw a better part of it.  The part of Loch Ness that we saw wasn't very exciting.  There were no Nessie statues.  Fort Augustus was a cute town, but we had the same food issue for lunch that happened in Portree yesterday (as in I had peanuts, a popsicle, and a chocolate muffin for lunch today).  

Here is Fort Augustus.

Then, we got back on the road towards Stirling.  Andy's taste in music improved on this part of the trip. She played some good 80s songs and some Savage Garden that us Stirling-ers jammed out to.  We were really trying to enjoy our time on this bus before we were forced to switch.  We stopped briefly at Glencoe.  

This is where one of the clans on the island used to lice.  It was a really nice area.

Then we relaxed until we got to Tyndrum where we were forced to join the EKs.  

Here's a pretty picture before the story turns tragic. 

So, we get on the the EK's bus and manage to find seats together that weren't taken.  Let me just say, their bus smelled bad.  We didn't want to be on it, but we knew we would get back to Stirling faster if we did.  We sucked it up and got on the bus. Then, the EKs showed up.  Here is what happened.

(Note: this girl was standing 2 rows ahead of all of us Stirling Kids.)

EK girl: "Did everybody hear that we have to drop off the Stirling kids on our way pack.  This is so unfair.  It's so far out of our way. We are going to get back so much later than everybody else and I have things to do.  I just don't get why we have to do it.  I mean Glasgow is only 50 miles away from Stirling.  They could just wait to get back.  Maybe I should just get on the other Edinburgh bus."

(Agreement noises from the surrounding EKs)

(All of us Stirling Kids just staring at her with our mouths hanging open.)

EK girl: "This is so stupid.  Why do we have to do it. And now the other Edinburgh bus has left and I'm stuck here."

(There were people behind us that were saying similar things too, but this girl was really just the epitome of how the EKs act.)

Ok, now do you see why we don't like them? And just to clarify this, there is a highway that runs directly from Stirling to Edinburgh that they had to take anyways.  The other Edinburgh bus was in front of us the entire time. Then, to make matters worse, when we got to Stirling, every single EK turned and stared at us as we got off the bus.  I just really don't like them.  I think that all of the EKs think that we didn't get in to Edinburgh so we just ended up at Stirling and that's pretty much how they treat us.  

Overall, Skye was beautiful.  I would love to go back (maybe with Lauren whenever she comes) but this time I just want the EKs to stay in Edinburgh.

A Day on Skye

Hello! As a continuation of my Skye journey I first need to explain something.  Now, I realize this is going to put a negative light on this post, so first let me say this.  The Isle of Skye is beautiful.  It is someplace that I would love to go back to and am very happy that I had the opportunity to see. But (you knew there was going to be a but didn't you?) the IFSA Edinburgh kids ruined parts of this trip for me.  I will go into why specifically throughout this post and the next one by telling you all kinds of fun stories about them, but it comes down to this; Edinburgh + Stirling = a bad situation.  The Edinburgh kids are really immature and just plain rude.  I really needed to explain that before going into my Saturday.  Trust me, it'll make sense.

So, I got up in the morning and had breakfast at the hotel.  This was relatively tame (there's a story regarding this tomorrow) besides the general pushiness of the Edinburgh Kids.  And we got on our buses to head to Armadale Castle. This castle used to be the castle of a clan chief of Skye.  Now, it's in ruins.  It was really pretty.

Here is the castle.

Now, the castle and the grounds are beautiful and probably very peaceful on most days.  EK (sorry, but I really don't want to write out Edinburgh Kids every time I refer to them) story number 1:  They are loud.  So, Katelin and I were walking around, enjoying the scenery and trying to avoid the EKs in general, when Katelin makes a comment about how destructive they can be.  As she makes this statement we hear a gang of them, followed by the noise of something breaking.  When we round the corner, there stands a clan of EKs surrounding an EK who is picking up a log and hitting it (baseball bat style) against a wooden pole until it breaks while his friends all laugh hysterically.  These are the kinds of shenanigans I dealt with all weekend.  But, we left them to do their destroying and continued walking around the gardens.  That's when I discovered the macro setting on my camera. (Which means I can get really close to things)

Like this.

I won't bore you with the rest of my macro pictures, but I was really excited about this.

After the castle, we got back on the bus and headed to Portree for a short stop to pick up lunch.  Here is bad planning on IFSA's part.  Four buses of kids pull up to a tiny grocery store.  Everyone runs to the tiny display of sandwiches.  Within 2 minutes of being there, there was an announcement made for "all cashiers to return to their registers".  That poor store was so overwhelmed and the sandwiches were gone within seconds of us arriving.  So, I ended up having a bad of salt and vinegar sticks and a bag a peanuts of lunch.  

Then, we had the options of taking a hike or a bus tour.  I choose the bus tour.  We switched tour guides (Andy led the hike) and this one was a little bit better.  He had better taste in music and he was really good at telling stories (except some of his stories ran really long).  But I liked him because he pretty much told us that he didn't expect us to get off the bus if we didn't want to.  I was happy that I wasn't expected to follow him everywhere.  But, this really where the trip took a turn for the worse for me.  First, the bus was full.  This wouldn't have really bothered me, except I was surrounded by EKs.  The Isle of Skye is known for having lots of myths about fairies and giants and stuff that make interesting stores.  Unfortunately for me, this is what I heard for pretty much the entire trip. 

EK 1: "Oh my god.  I despised Rome.  Milan was soooooo much better.  I just looooved Milan.  Rome was just so-so.  I mean, there was nothing special about it."  

EK 2: "Oh my god, you are sooooo right.  Rome sucked. I met this guy in Rome, and not to be vain of anything but she fell sooooo in love with me.  And I like totally broke his heart.  It was soooo tragic."

Ok, you get the idea.  It wasn't good.  But the things that we saw on the tour were. First, we went to Lealt Falls. 

It was situated up on a cliff, so the coast was really pretty.

Here are the falls.  It was an option to hike down to them...I didn't opt to do that.  I just admired them from above.

Then, we headed to Kilt Rock.  It's supposed to look like the back of a man's kilt.  

Kilt rock is the one in the back.

I really just like how pretty the coast was around Skye.

After Kilt Rock, we went to Duntulm Castle.  This was kind of an adventure because it was really windy.  This castle had a fun story.  The story goes that there were 2 clans on the Isle of Skye; the McClouds and the MacDonalds. Two of the kids fell in love and convinced their fathers that (who were clan chiefs of the rival clans) that getting married would bring peace to the island.  They agreed to this, but right before the wedding, the girl got into an accident where she got her eye stabbed out.  She went home to her soon-to-be husband and he rejected her.  Then there was a war between the clans called the War of the One Eyed Woman. 

I promise this is the last coastal picture.

Here's the castle. This is where the couple lived.

This was the last stop our tour.  After this, we head back to Portree to wonder around for a while. I was kind of irritated because we got to Portree late. So, we only had 15 minutes there and it was a really nice town.  

Here is harbor of Portree.

Then, we headed back to the hotel.  On the way we stopped at the Fairy River in Sligachan.  Legend has it that the fairies put their magic in this river and that anybody who puts their face in the water for 7 seconds exactly, will stay young forever as long as they stay on the Isle of Skye.

Here is the rive.

Here it is again.  It was really pretty.

So, it was cold out and I wasn't going to put my face in cold water.  But, lots of other people in the group did.  I personally think this story is just something the locals came up with to watch stupid tourist do this...

Katelin and I found it pretty amusing to watch all of the EKs laying face down in the water.  It was the only time they shut up the entire trip.

Then, we headed back to Kyleakin and the peace and quiet of our hotel.  We did have a great discovery on the bus tour.  Katelin and I (and all of the other Stirling kids) had private bathrooms.  Well, evidently most of the EKs didn't.  They had a shower, hostel style, down the hall.  We found this extremely amusing. I especially enjoyed this while relaxing in my bathtub.  

After dinner, the us Stirling Kids went for a walk.  Kyleakin had a cute little castle in it.

I really liked the castle.  It was just adorable.

Then, we continued our walk along the beach.

Here is Kyleakin.  It was a really a nice town.

At the end of the beach, we found some rocks where we could sit and watch the sunset.  We stayed for a long time, but ended up leaving when the could came in.

I just really liked this picture.  This is what I deemed "rays of heaven".