Bridge of Allan Day

Hello! Today Katelin, Grace, Kristy and I explored Bridge of Allan.  Our goal for our final week (I guess days now) is to throughly explore different areas around Stirling and eat our favorite Scotland foods one last time.  So today, we walked into Bridge of Allan and just enjoyed the town and the beautiful weather (and in true Scottish fashion, it rained before it became beautiful).  We found a deserted playground (which was real creepy, but I swung on the swing anyways) and eventually got hungry so we headed to our fish and chips place (which was delicious as always).  Then, we went and ate them in the park by Bridge of Allan waters.  

Since I document everything I eat, here's my Bridge of Allan fish and chips.

After that, we just sat and enjoyed the sunshine for a while before heading back to campus and picking up some ice cream on the way. It was a really nice day.  

I mean, I have taken a picture of my ice cream every other time, so why should I stop now.

Stirling as seen from our walk back to campus.  

Tomorrow, we're having our Stirling day.  So, we're planning on heading into town and exploring some of the areas around the castle and beyond.  It should be a lot of fun.

Continuing on with my Top 5 theme, tonight I'm going to write about my Top 5 Destinations of the Semester (I'm sure everyone will be pleased to see that Scotland (mainly Stirling and Edinburgh) were left out of this topic.  I figured I should give every place else a chance).  

5.) London

The city was beautiful and I had a great time even if it was a little too hectic for me.

4.) Brighton

There was a beach. Enough said.

3.) Lancaster

This is kind of random, I just really liked this town.  It was so quaint.

2.) York

I could have spent a lot more time in this city.

1.) Stockholm

This city was awesome.  I think I could explore it for months and still not see everything.  I really want to go back and see more.

The William Wallace Experience

Hello everyone! Today, I had a great day.  I have really been wanting to visit the William Wallace, so today I decided that I would.  What has kept me from going until now was that 1) I wanted the weather to be really nice and 2) it sits on top of a really large hill.  So, I made the journey there right after lunch today.  It was kind of nice because I could walk there from campus; no bus required.

Here's the William Wallace/

Once I got there, I bought my ticket and started the climb up to the top.  It actually didn't take that me that long to get to the top, but it was a pretty steep climb.  That part was not exactly enjoyable, but I made it and the view was worth it.

The view before heading up.

After catching my breath, I went inside only to realize that everything within the monument is located in chamber type rooms as you walk up the 246 steps to the crown (at the top) of the monument.  Actually, it was laid out pretty nicely.  Just about the time that you got tired, there was some place to go and rest before before heading up to the top.  The first chamber had the William Wallace sword and story, the second room had famous Scots and the third had the story of the construction of the monument.  I was really happy to just finally get to the top.  And the view was definitely worth it.  I choose a good day to go, because the view was beautiful and clear.  I stayed at the top for a really long time.

Here's the William Wallace sword.

The top of the William Wallace.

The Castle

This is campus.

It rained while I was up there.

Once I had caught my breath and enjoyed the view, I head back down and back to campus before going into town to look at duffel bags (to put all of my extra stuff in to bring home).  Then, I came back to campus and had pizza for dinner with Katelin and Grace. Overall, it was a really great day! Tomorrow, we're planning on spending the day exploring the Bridge of Allan area.

Cafe Style Church

Hello everyone! Today Grace, Katelin and I went to church.  A lady from the church picked us up again (which was nice since we were actually on time this Sunday.  No standing outside the church at 10:45 contemplating how awkward it would be to go inside).  They did something really cool in church today.  As was explained to us, every time there is a 5th Sunday in the month (like there was this May) they do something called a cafe style service.  (She told us "You never really know what's going to happen on 5th Sunday.  It's always something different".)

So, the main part of the church was set up with chairs around tables.  The tables had paper, pencils and pens and bubbles set up on them (I was personally really excited about this). We had the same pastor as the first time we went to church and the service was really cool.  We did all kinds of things.  The overall theme was the idea of rivers and then the pastor used different topics to branch off from there. He showed us a slideshow and then asked us to discuss what water and rivers meant to us, then he went around to each table and said a prayer about what everyone discussed (and we blew bubbles at this point.  I believe the concept was something like our prayers being like bubbles.  It made sense at the time.  Plus, I got to blow bubbles in church).  We also discussed different passages about the River Jordan in our separate groups and then all talked about.  In between each activity someone in the congregation would get up and say a passage or tell a story and we would sing a song.  (Like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpkQ-Bb78sU.  I hadn't heard this one before, but maybe I just missed something back home.  It was one of those that had the hand motions where you took words out and replaced them with gestures.  It was really fun because everybody in the church got really into it. Also, the kids stayed through the service, so they really enjoyed it.)  It was a lot of fun.

After church, we went to Filling Station for lunch (well, I should say breakfast because we all ended up getting breakfast food.  It's just really good at Filling Station).  Then, we came back and I relaxed the rest of the day and just worked on some graphic stuff.  It was a really nice day.

So, continuing on with my Top 5 things, (I would have done one last night, but I was really tired) tonight I'm going to tackle my Top 5 Scottish Cities (overall cities will come at a later point. I just felt like Scotland is so epic it needed it's own category).

5.)  Linlithgow

Yes, the snow was kind of annoying, but it was really cool to see the snow covered city.  

4.)  Inverness

This town is just adorable and it's close to Loch Ness.

3.) Oban

What can I say, I love me a sea town.  I wish that I would have had more time here.  

2.) Edinburgh

I have to say this is a close second.  It's my most visited city.

1.) Stirling

Yep, this is biased.  (But, I promise this is the last category where Stirling is in the running.)

This is completely random, but I just saw the news that Dan Wheldon won the Indy 500 (for anyone who may have been watching this).  I'm just saying, that it came down to a battle between the Scottish and English and well...

Dario Franchitti should have won. 

24 Games of Rugby, 8 Rainbows, 1 Awesome Day

Hello everyone! I had an awesome day today.  This morning, Grace, Katelin, Kristy and I got up early to go into Edinburgh to go to the Edinburgh Sevens Festival, which is a full day of rugby.  So, we went to the train station around 7:00 only to find out that the next train wasn't until 8:00.  It was a good time sitting in the train station forever.  But the doors to Murrayfield (Edinburgh's rugby stadium) didn't open until 9:30, so we weren't too concerned.

After finally getting a train into Edinburgh, we set off on foot to Murrayfield.  Along the way, I finally got a picture of...

this high school.  It is the one that inspired Hogwarts.  That is your fun fact for the day that isn't related to rugby.

We also saw a billboard for the very event that we were attending.

So anyways, we got to the stadium, bought our tickets and were ready to go, when we got distracted by a street vendor selling scarves with team names on them.  Since it was chilly, we all bought one.  And let me tell you, I am glad that I had that scarf today.  It was down right cold at some points during the day.  That scarf saved me.

Here's Murrayfield.

Once we got inside, we discovered that not many people were going to be coming for a while.  (Which is kind of surprising because 16 different countries played today.)  It also turned out that the first game wasn't for about an hour.

I say this because here is the inside of the stadium at this point and it's pretty much empty.

We pretty much were just killing time until the first match.  But, you can check out our awesome scarves.

They had some fun tube things.

Finally, the games began.  Here are some fact about rugby (after having watched 24 games, I now feel like I have a pretty decent understanding of what is going on...it wasn't pretty at the beginning of the day).  So, the goal is to get the ball over the line at the end of the field (think football) except the ball has to actually touch the ground.  Then, the person who made the goal has to then kick the ball through the goal posts to get 2 extra points.  So, from scoring you get 5 points and then 2 more if you get the kick.  There are 2 halves of the game.  They are both 7 minutes long and have no time outs.  There is just a 2 or 3 minute break between the 2 halves.  It's a very fast paced game. (Which is probably why I liked it.)  Each game only lasted about 20 minutes.  Also, they do some pretty fun stuff that I did in fact get action shots for (I'm really proud of my action shots, so there are quite a few in this post).  I tried to capture as many of these moments as possible.  

This is called scrum.  When the ball is put back into play, the teams lock their arms together and push against each other while trying to kick the ball out from between them.  I'll be honest, it looks both really intense and kind of stupid.  

They also lift each other up to catch the ball.  (I can only imagine how awkward this is to practice.  I mean can you imagine these guys being like "So, can we practice lifting me now?")

People also dressed up for this occasion.  Some people did cute things to match their country.  For example, there were people dressed as crocodiles for Australia and English hunters (who proceeded to chase their friend who was dressed like a fox around the stadium) for England.  Then, there were the costumes that made no sense.

Like, pirates.

And Oompa Loompas.  (I'm just saying, I don't care what anybody says, these people freaked me out.  I don't know what it is, but Oompa Loompas are jus freaky.)

There were also various mascots for Scotland.  One was a reindeer (or elk...we couldn't really tell) and the other was a coo.

The coo was way cooler.

So, over the day we watched a lot of games. (For this tournament that we went to, there were 16 teams and they each played 3 games.) I have to say that New Zealand and Fiji were probably the best.  Scotland and the US both were pretty bad (the US was definitely the worse of the 2).

Here's part of the New Zealand team.  They pretty much were awesome.  Especially number 4 (who is the bald bearded man with the funky tape on his knee).  He could probably single-handedly have led the team to victory, no other team members needed.

We ended up having pretty good seats.  We were under the overhang so when it rained, it didn't rain on us.  And the wind wasn't as bad as it could have been.  Our only issue (other than the cold) was that we seemed to attract annoying preteens. 

Like these kids that went through peoples trash to find paper to make paper planes to throw at people.  They also had a horn.  It was a bad situation.

After game 16 or 17, it started to get a little less exciting.  We really just wanted it to get to the Scotland vs. US game which was the last game of the day of course.  But we still had a really good time.

I really just needed to add in this action shot. Again with the awkward lifting.

I would just like to give the Fiji fans credit.  They sang the entire time that their team was on the field.  It was really cute.

During our wait for the Scotland vs. US game, we saw a really awesome sight, 3 rainbows at once.  

Unfortunately, I couldn't get all 3, but I did get the big one. (As a side note, we also saw a rainbow on the bus on the way to the train station today...that makes the rainbow count at 4).

Then, it finally got to the Scotland vs. US game.  We went into the game with an open mind of who to cheer for, but the US played so badly (Scotland scored within the first 30 seconds of the game), that we cheered for Scotland.  The US just doesn't know rugby.  Sorry, but it's true.  They throw the ball like a football and that's not how it's done. 

There was also a Scottie mascot.  There were quit a few mascots for Scotland.

After the games were finished, we headed back to the train station to get our train back to Stirling. On the way we saw 2 more rainbows.

Again, I got the big one, but the other one didn't show up.

Then, on our train back to Stirling, we saw 2 more rainbows.  It was an 8 rainbow day.  It was pretty cool.  It was a really fun day! It was so cool to get to see one of Scotland's biggest sports! Tomorrow we're going to go to church and go to Filling Station for lunch.  It should be a good time!

First Day of Summer

Hello! Today was a wonderfully relaxed day for me.  I got up and just kind of lazed around until the afternoon when Grace and I went into town.  I bought the last of my souvenirs (at least the ones on my list of people to buy for.  If anything else strikes my fancy, I still may end up with it) and went to Tesco.  Then, tonight I made dinner. It was a really nice day.  I think it's exactly what I needed after the stress of finals.  Tomorrow, Grace, Katelin, Kristy and I are heading into Edinburgh for a big rugby tournament.  I'm really excited!

So, as my study abroad adventure winds down, I wanted to do something fun in my final blog posts.  I'm going to count down some of my favorite things.  Tonight, the topic is my Top 5 Favorite Castles (this means that ones that I saw in the past 100 some odd days.  Everything is from my study abroad).  I deeply thought about this topic, and came up with my picks...

5.)  Buckingham Palace

Ok, so it's a palace.  Is it technically a castle?  Yes it is.  There is real live breathing royalty that lives in this thing...and it's my blog and I say it's a castle.

4.) Eileen Donan Castle

I saw this over the IFSA Isle of Skye trip.  I wish that we would have had more time at the Eileen Donan because it was so beautiful!

3.) Edinburgh Castle

This was the first sight I saw my first day in Edinburgh and it still amazes me every time I see it.

2.) Urquhart Castle

It sits on Loch Ness, has some cool Scottish history behind it and is gorgeous.  What more could you want?

 1.) Stirling Castle

Is this biased?  Yes, it probably is.  But when I first got to Stirling I kept thinking that eventually I would get used to the idea of seeing a castle every day.  That never really happened.  I still stare at it every time I go into town.

No More Study, Just Abroad

Hello everyone! Today I had my last final.  And it was a douzy.  I had it at 9:00 this morning in a room that made me feel a lot more comfortable than my previous final.  For this exam, I had to answer 4 short answers and then write 2 essays.  The essays and 3 of the 4 short answers were ok (by ok, I mean that I think I passed it).  But, I guess only my final grade will tell.  I answered all of the opinionated essays, so I figured it's hard to argue against my opinion.

After my final, I came back to my room and relaxed.  It was wonderful.  I took a nap for a while until Vectren started calling me every 1/2 an hour.  That was kind of interesting.  But other than that I didn't have a very eventful day.  Katelin, Grace and I met for dinner and we planned out our last few days in Scotland.  It's going to be a good time.  We plan to do some hiking in the hills, tour around Stirling and Bridge of Allan, go to a rugby tournament (one of the games is US vs. Scotland...it should be interesting) in Edinburgh, go to church and to Filling Station on Sunday, and just enjoy exploring Scotland for our last few days here.  It should be a good time.  Tomorrow I am going to sleep in and then walk a trail that goes behind and down the hill that Stirling Castle sits on.  It should be a good day.

Volcanic Ash

Hello everyone! Today Lauren left Scotland to head back the US.  We got up this morning and headed to the train station where we got some breakfast before getting a train to Edinburgh.  We purposely left early and it was a good thing we did, because our train got in late.  There has been some interesting weather here the past few days so a lot of the trains have been having issues.  But, we eventually made it to Edinburgh and to the airport.

The airport was crazy.  This was probably due to the fact that a lot of flights were cancelled yesterday because of the volcanic ash.  But, everything went off pretty good.  Lauren's flights worked out and everything.  After saying goodbye to Lauren, I headed back to Stirling.  Luckily, I managed to end up on the right train (I saw luckily because they changed my platform 3 times.  There was some damage on one of the train routes and they kept re-routing things.)  Once I got back to Stirling, I headed to Iceland to get some food for dinner and then back to my room to study.  And that is how I have spent most of my day.  I do have some sad news though.  The volcanic ash is supposed to strike the UK again on Friday and is supposed to move over Latvia and just kind of hang out there.  So, Katelin and I had to cancel our trip (We decided that Latvia would be fun for 2 days, not for a month.  Getting back to the US on June 5th would really be a good thing).  We're going to try to find something else to occupy our weekend though. It should be a good time none-the-less.

Tomorrow I have my last final (YAY!). Which means that at 11:00 tomorrow morning (that would be 5am central time in case you want to be excited for me back in the US) I will be officially done with my semester and I can just enjoy the rest of my time in Scotland before starting my summer back at home.  I'm super excited to just get that final over and done with.  I've been studying all day, so hopefully it won't have anything crazy on it!

Nessie Hunting

Hello! Today Lauren and I made the journey to Inverness and Loch Ness.  When we got up this morning, we saw all of the damage that happened yesterday during the high winds (fun fact: We discovered last night that there was a travel alert out saying that we shouldn't travel to the Fife area (St. Andrews)...well it was a little late for that.  Oops).

This is what campus looks like right now.

Then, after picking up some Boots Meal Deal for lunch, we got on our train to Inverness.  The ride was really pretty.

Some of the scenery during the time that it wasn't raining.

Once we arrived in Inverness, we made our way to the bus station where our tour began.  (We decided to take a tour because there's no other way to get to Loch Ness unless you have a car.  So, instead of renting a car, we decided that a tour would probably be the best option.)  We took a tour called Temptation (they have other fun names such as Sensation, Inspiration, Enchantment, Freedom, Passion...you get the idea) by Jacobite tours.  We managed to find the bus easily enough where we met our tour guide, Kenny. 

Here's the bus and Kenny.  Kenny was a fun tour guide. He seemed to know a lot, but didn't feel the need to talk the entire time.

The first stop on our tour was to go to the harbor where we caught our boat that took us out on Loch Ness.  (See, I was so determined to find the Loch Ness Monster that I rented a boat...actually the boat came with the tour, but for 30 minutes that boat was 1/15th mine.)

This didn't fool me! I know it's not the real Nessie!

Here's our boat.

The boat ride was a lot of fun.  It took me a little bit of time to get used to how rocky the water was, but after that it was all good.  Unfortunately, we didn't see Nessie.  I think that Jacobite should really look into making Nessie sightings happen on their tour.

Here's Loch Ness from the boat.

We got a great view of Urquhart Castle from the water.  So, I took a video of it.

On our tour, we got visit to Urquhart Castle.

Here's the inside of the boat.

Luckily for us, the weather cleared up about the time that we got to the castle. 

Just incase you wanted to see the boat again...

We looked around the castle for about an hour.  It was a great time!  The sun came out and everything.  The views of Loch Ness were awesome! Sorry, but I'm posting lots of pictures at the castle because of how nice the weather was.

 After the castle, we took the Jacobite bus back into Inverness.  Luckily, the weather held out for us there too.

Inverness

The castle of Inverness (it was also a prison and court house evidently).

After getting back into Inverness, we walked around for a while before getting our train to Perth. The train was really nice.  We saw lots of deer randomly enough.  Lots of deer.  Like at least 50 deer.  It was really cool.

Here are the deer...I promise that they're deer.  I know it's hard to tell by this picture.

Then, we got our train from Perth (which was really cold for some reason) to Stirling.  Tomorrow Lauren leaves, which is sad.  But it was nice to have her here and I think (she told me I can say know) that she really enjoyed seeing Scotland. Hopefully the ash cloud (which by the way, I don't understand how there is this mysterious ash cloud above us and I can't see it, but it's still causing havoc.) doesn't cause any problems.