Oh The Places We’ll Go

So I’ve been stealing a lot of stuff lately.  Everything’s very innocent, of course.  It’s not like I’m out there busting a cap on someone and stealing their car.  Just harmless stuff.  So far the tally is 2 drink menus, one from Curlers and one from Buddha, and an entire jug that was left outside of Curlers the other night.  It’s a pretty good sized jug and probably fits a good number of beers inside of it, but I have to clean it before I use it.  The girls are convinced it has been peed in and thus, is unacceptable to drink out of until it is thoroughly rinsed.  Agreed.

Classes are going fine.  Lectures are for the most part boring, but they aren’t really supposed to be exciting when you’re hearing someone drone on about the different types of satire that existed when Swift was writing Gulliver’s Travels over 300 years ago.  Tutorials are even worse since I hate being put on the spot and I feel like I don’t know nearly as much as everyone else does since they’ve been studying the same books for years and years, whereas I’ve never read half of the books that people here have read.  For being an English major I really haven’t read all that many books.  More than the average American, sure, but not to the extent that people out here do.  They read a lot more of the classic novels; we tend to stick to the traditional American novel.  Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, etc.  

There’s a concert out here this Saturday for Jenny Lewis, who is the lead singer for this band I really like back home, Rilo Kiley.  They’re an indie band that no one has ever heard of, but I still love them.  Molly, Erica and I are all going to see her so that’s the only really big plan for this weekend.  Drinking, surely but other than that nothing too exciting.  

I’ve got to get writing my 2 papers due on the 31st for my 2 classes this semester since I have a feeling they are going to take a lot of reading, research and effort to get going and get through before they’re at the level that I’m going to want them to be at.  I definitely can’t put them off until the last minute since they’re worth so much of my grade and I don’t think I could bear with the idea of turning in something I didn’t feel confident with.  I haven’t written an actual essay in a while either, so it’s going to be interesting getting back into the writing groove but it has to be done.

Phillies need 1 more win to get to the World Series and the Rays are up on the Sox in the AL.  Life is good in baseball.  49ers lost this weekend, but Sharks are starting off the season well.  Warriors are in China right now, will be watching them tomorrow afternoon live from Beijing!

I’ve been a very productive girl the last few days.  It’s quite the anomaly, actually, when I am being a productive person.  Most of the time I can’t really be bothered to do anything other than lift my arm, open a can of Coke, and click to watch the next Youtube video.  Productiveness comes in very small spurts, and when it happens… it happens all at once.

I’ve finally got my ticket to go to Greece for Christmas.  A lot of you may be wondering, “why the fuck are you going to Greece for Christmas?”, which my answer to is… why not?  What else am I going to do?  While everyone else is at home drinking and watching American Football (not that I won’t be missing that deep down inside), I’ll be drinking and eating in Athens at the Acropolis trying to pick up cute boys who I can’t understand.  I don’t know a lick of Greek so I’m thinking that may be a wee bit difficult but we’ll see how it goes.  Maybe they speak English there, yeah?  Or maybe I’m just fucked.

I’ve also got a ticket to go to a rugby match in Edinburgh next month, which should be a good time.  I don’t understand any of the rules or regulations regarding rugby so this “sporting event” will likely turn into beer after beer starting at 2 in the afternoon and ending when and where I pass out.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to be England vs. South Africa, so I’m assuming I’ll be cheering for England but I honestly couldn’t tell you a single person who plays for the team.  Is rugby really even that big out here anyway?  I think more people are into football, personally, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate good looking guys tackling each other for hours on end while I drunkenly watch.

In February I scored some tickets to see Russell Brand here in Glasgow.  He’s not really big out in the states yet, but he’s absolutely hilarious and legendary here in the UK.  I guess he’s pretty famous; he’s in all the tabloids and stuff like that.  Quite the womanizer, shagger of the year, etc.  It should be a good time.  I love stand up comedy and watch way too much of it, but haven’t ever seen a show in person so I’m excited about it.  Plus I’m going with the girls so that should be good too.

I haven’t been able to watch a lot of the American TV that I have been keeping up with since the late nights and 5am bedtimes are starting to take their toll.  I was able to watch the VP Debate on Youtube since MSNBC posts them on there after the debates are over.  I thought Obama did a great job, but the town hall setup?  Whoever came up with this one needs to be fired as soon as possible.  How awkward did that whole thing seem?  It was kind of like, normally I’d avoid the moderator’s questions… but now that you’re asking them I guess I’m just going to ignore you. 

Baseball baseball baseball.  Dodgers vs. Phillies in the NLCS.  My life is over as I know it.  I’m going with the Phillies on this one since obviously I can’t cheer for the Dodgers.  I’m going with the RAYS over the Sox for the ALCS.  If the Rays make it to the World Series I’m going Rays all the way.  If it’s the Sox vs. the Phillies, I’m all about the Phillies.  And if it’s the Dodgers vs. the Sox (an obvious worst case scenario), the Sox had better get their 2-peat since I don’t think I could stand watching Joe Torre and those damn Dodgers lifting up the trophy.  I think a little piece of me would die inside if that happened.

I found out the other day that I don’t have to take exams in May, so I’m done here in Scotland after I turn in my essays for second semester on March 10th.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself here in Scotland.  I’m obviously not going to go home since, honestly, I’d rather stab my eyes out with a No. 2 pencil than spend April until September in Rocklin.  Thanks, but no thanks.  I think I’ll probably do what I was going to do (backpack around Europe in countries I haven’t seen yet), and then work here in Glasgow for as much as my visa will permit before heading back to the states in June to see Alicia graduate from Rocklin High.  I figure if I end up staying until June (since I have to pay rent until then anyway) and get a little job, I’m most definitely going to go on a trip to Cairo like I want to so that I can see a damn pyramid!  That would cap this whole experience off for me.  Italy, France, Spain, England, Scotland, Greece, Germany, Estonia, The Netherlands, and EGYPT?  I’d be satisfied with that kind of a travel resume, wouldn’t you?

I’m unprepared, yet again, for my tutorial on Reformation literature, but at least I somewhat read Book 4 of Gulliver’s Travels by Swift and read “A Modest Proposal”.  He’s all about the satire, bla bla bla, Go Ireland.  I’ve got it.

Now all I need is a can of that delicious beverage they like to call Coca Cola and I’ll be satisfied….

-Catherine

I’m done.  I have finally sifted through, and cropped, all of the photos from backpacking and they are organized and ready to be seen online!  I erased everything from my flickr account before and re-uploaded everything after I edited them in iPhoto so that it would be easier and they’d be ready to be sorted once they were online.  It just made it a lot easier that way.

Anyways, to look at them go to flickr.com/photos/cat1brad/collections

All of the photos are organized by place and country, so if you want to see the pictures from Old Trafford just click on the “Great Britain Backpacking” collection and the Old Trafford set will be in there.  Pretty self explanitory and well organized, or at least I think so.

I hope everyone gets to have a look at everything and see what I’ve been working on.

Oh, and read the blog below if you haven’t read it yet.  That’s what I’ve been up to recently, if you wanna know!

-Catherine

I’m finally ready to get back into the game.  The traveling game, I mean.  I took a good amount of recovery time, a few weeks to give my brain a break before getting back into all of the old stuff that I need to do post-summer backpacking extravaganza, and now uploading pictures is in full force.  I’ve got all of them rotated and ready to go with a fresh, new website to go.  Now all I’ve got to do is get them all online!  I’m actually in the middle of uploading a lot of them, but it’ll take a while since there’s, well, hundreds of them and they each take time to get online.  However, I’ll let everyone know when they’re online as soon as they are since I want everyone to see everything that happened while we were backpacking.

Getting my party on with the Giants jersey

Now, on to Glasgow.  This weekend was my Beer Pong 101 class for the UK natives.  Now, to give a little background info, beer pong is a big deal back home.  9 red cups on each side of a table, throw a ping pong ball in the opposing team’s cups and get rid of their cups first.  Victory.  Easy enough, yes?  Apparently, English people don’t have the cool red cups over here, so I was stuck using crappy flimsy cups in my instructing.  They didn’t work out very well, so beer pong was kind of a bust, but the night turned from crappy beer pong to excellent Kings Cup playing!  Yes, King’s Cup.

... disgusting

Get a stack of cards, circle them around a big cup and make up a rule for every card.  2 is a bathroom pass, a 3 is everyone has to raise their hands in the air, 4 is touch your chin with your thumb.  The penalty for doing whatever the task is wrong, or last: drink all of your drink.  It’s called King’s cup since anytime someone gets a King, they have to fill up 1/4 of the BIG King’s Cup in the middle of the table with whatever they’re drinking.  Thus, if everyone is drinking something else, the cup in the middle can be…. a monstrous concoction.  After nearly all the cards were gone, it was time for me to pick my card and, of course, who got the 4th and final King?  Me.

I had the pleasure of drinking 1/2 a cup of beer mixed with rum and juice, and vodka and coke.  Yum?  I held my nose and took it all in.  King’s Cup and Beer Pong moved into the living room, which turned from King’s Cup round 2 to dance party, spin the bottle, and god knows what else.  I got to play DJ, which basically meant everyone got to make fun of my “weird American music” which is apparently “bollocks” since I don’t listen to strange electronic British indie music.  Think any kind of music you could possibly imagine with some kind of backbeat put on to it.  Terrible.  Everything sounds like it belongs in a disco and guess what folks.  I don’t disco.  After DJ’ing and trying (unsuccessfully) to get people to stop doing things they’d regret later (and did), I headed to bed.  The festivities ended at 5 in the morning, and everyone passed out in their beds.

I’ve finally gotten a hold of some of the photos from the debachery that I wrote about with the Pub Crawl with the University of Glasgow Tennis Club, since my roommate Laura was tagged in one of the photos on Facebook randomly.  There’s only three photos of the whole night that I’ve found, since none of us girls brought our cameras with us, but I think anyone who has read my story will see how the night got progressively drunker and drunker with every Underground stop.

I’ve booked my first traveling plane ticket since traveling to Europe in the beginning of August.  Guess who’s going back to Barcelona?  Yes, that would be me.  I’m going with all of the California girls since none of them have ever been before, and it’s the kind of city that you need to experience with a bunch of females rather than your brother.  Don’t get me wrong, it was still fun with Thomas.  Hopefully it will be even more fun with the girls with me to oogle at Spanish boys!  I can’t wait.  We’re going to be there at the end of November, so I’m really excited about it.  The Ramblas had better be ready for me, because I’m coming back!  Erica is coming with me and I can’t be more excited.  I know Erica from back home at UCSB and her and I are really good friends, so I’m stoked we’re going to be partying in Barcelona together since she just turned 21 and was sick on her birthday, which is always no good.  Other people coming are Shaun, who is also from UCSB, Megan from UCLA and Jodie is from UCSD.  Molly is Molly, from Rocklin High School just like me, but she’s a genius and goes to Dartmouth and she’s never been to Barcelona either, so it’ll be a good time.  Here’s some pictures of the UC girls (plus Molly) from the first few weeks.

at the QMU with Jodie and Erica

at QMU Cheesy Pop night

erica and i with nicola's bunny ears in the background

Other than going places, I opened up my UK bank account today, so I’m feeling pretty accomplished.  I’m excited I can finally set up paying for my apartment and not have to worry about it anymore.  One more thing off the check list, that’s for sure.  I got my care package today from the states, with tons of goodies including BUTTERED popcorn (which they don’t do here in movie theatres!), hot chocolate stuff, RED CUPS for BEER PONG!, macaroni and cheese, and some boots that I didn’t have before.  I even have my trusty old alarm clock from the states here with me now, so that’s good too!  There’s nothing like waking up to the same old annoying sound from back home, eh?  Nicola, the Irish one, didn’t know what mac and cheese is, so I told her I’d make it for her soon.  I told her it’s an American college food staple.  Just like hot dogs, but no one gets that here either.  Whatever, I don’t care.  I still love them.

I also made guacamole the other day, so I have done a lot in the last few days.  I found avocados and practically died, so I made guac.  Pretty good, I must say for not having the same ingredients that I usually have.  The salsa here is a lot more ketchup-y so that was a bit of a downer.  That and the tortilla chips suck.  Mexicans need to move en masse to Scotland so they can teach these people about delicious food already!  Taco Night is tomorrow night, so I’m making dinner for all the people.  I’ve got ground beef ready, with taco shells and all the toppings.  Now all I need is some tequila to go along with all of my damn limes!  I’ve got like, 10 limes in the fridge and no clue what to do with them.

To finish, my Giants season may be over, but the best part of the year is here: playoffs!  For the next week or so (5 games if they go all 5), I am going to be a HUGE Cubs fan.  You know why?  The DAMN Dodgers are back in the playoffs and my adopted Cubbies had better kick their asses out!  I’m confident in the Cubs, so they’d better bring home the W’s and send Manny and company packing so I don’t have to worry about the Dodgers making it past the first round.  I like the Cubs and the Brewers this year in the NL, especially since I love Prince Fielder and JJ Hardy and I want them to come to my team!  For the AL, I love love the Rays and I hope they make it far in the playoffs.  I can’t in good conscience cheer for the Angels (i’m still bitter), and there’s no way I could stand watching the Red Sox win 3 titles in the last 6 years.  Not necessarily because I hate the team, but moreso because I hate their fans.

I hope everyone enjoys the pictures and gets a good laugh out of them.  I’ll be sure to take more this weekend and get some of my apartment and housemates for everyone to see.

I’m staying up tomorrow to watch the VP Debates with a few people so I can’t wait for that.  I’m going to get no sleep.  Crap.  Oh well, at least Biden vs. Palin should be an entertaining matchup!

Until later…

-Catherine

It’s Debra’s 50th Birthday!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Sorry for the delay on this post (Debra, that’s for you… haha).  This week has been exhausting, confusing, and interesting all rolled into one.

We started school on the 22nd, but as far as time is concerned my life is pretty easy.  I have lecture at 10, but not necessarily every day since the lecture theatre is allocated between 3 classes (two of which I am in).  In other words, anytime on my schedule it says it’s being used for GC 11 (Shakespeare), I don’t have to go since I’m not in that class.  Beautiful!  This week I didn’t have class on Wednesday or on Friday so I got to stay in and sleep, drink crack (otherwise known as Coke) and hang out with my friends in my apartment.

My two classes are both honors (or honours as they spell it here) English Literature classes, one on Reformation period writing and one on Renaissance period writing.  It’s a little differently done here since 75% of your overall grade is from your exam at the end of the year (even though lectures for the class only run through first semester, the exam is still in May).  Your reading is very selective, you can turn in one or two essays, and your selections of material to read are completely up to you.  I’m used to walking in, getting a list, and being told “read act 1 before Friday”.  Yeah, they don’t do that here.  It’s almost nice because you get to learn the material as you want to learn it.  If you hate Milton, you can focus less on him and go more for Dryden.  On the other hand, it almost sucks more because you aren’t being forced to read on pace, so you can get caught behind pretty easily.  Hopefully I don’t fall into that category, but then again I’m pretty good about staying focused and besides that I have Molly here to kick my ass along the way!

The biggest event of the week so far was going on a pub crawl with the Glasgow University Tennis Club (which mind you, I don’t play tennis at all, I was there for moral support for Molly).  We all got split into teams and Elizabeth (my flatmate from England), Molly and I were all split into the same team with a few Scots and a German.  We got an unlimited pass on the Underground, and basically the idea is to go to as many metro stops as you can, and get a drink at every one at the closest bar.  The rule is, however, that one person in your group gets to choose the drink for everyone in the group.  Oh, and you can’t sit on the metro.  You have to stand and not lean against anything- think “surfing” the subway.  At first it was all good- vodka and coke, tequila, whiskey, rum and coke.  And then, of course, Elizabeth being the English girl that she is… chooses for us to drink red wine at one pub.  Red wine.  We had to chug all of our drinks, so chugging the red wine definitely was the one that did me in.  Molly, being smaller than me, was a goner already.  More pints of beer, Guinness.  Then somehow getting to a dance club downtown with everyone else.  Getting a taxi back, falling out of it (literally), spilling chips everywhere (french fries), falling over again.  It was a pretty hilarious night, but such a bad bad bad morning.  I’m never drinking again (or at least not for a couple days.  Haha)

Other than that, most of the last few days have just been ‘bonding time’.  I’ve got a good crew of people here with me, so Glasgow has been amazingly awesome so far.  I’m having a good time making fun of how the English (and Scottish, Irish) say things, trying to let them know we Americans pronounce things correctly.  Haha.  I got a chance to stay up and watch the debates last night, so that was fun.  I won’t bore anyone with who I support (*cough* Obama *cough*), but it was fun watching it with everyone, non-Americans and all.  Makes me feel all patriotic inside.  

I think most likely I’m going to stay up on Sunday and watch the last Giants game of the season.  Let’s hope Tim Lincecum pitches well at gets the W so he’ll be 18-5 and get the Cy Young Award.  Woot!  I wore my Giants jersey around the other day, and no one had any idea what it meant but I just keep telling everyone “If anyone asks, this is the greatest team that ever was.  Period.”  Haha.  They’ll all soon be converts, I swear.

Oh, and through my GENIUS I got to watch the 49ers game via Skype, so I basically got to watch the 49ers beat the Lions on my brother’s TV.  Basically Thomas turned on my mom’s webcam on her laptop and faced it towards his TV so I could watch the 49ers game.  We won, I was excited… and none of my flatmates understand American football, but I don’t care.  I still love it.  

I’m going to try and get tickets to a Celtic game soon, so hopefully I can see a real, live football game in person!  Yay!  I can wear my green and white scarf and learn words to songs that I don’t know.  Sounds fun, right?  I have to learn them before the middle of October so I can cheer for Celtic against Manchester United (don’t judge me, Thomas) and sing the songs and everything.

I think we’re still trying to plan our trip to Barcelona that we’re taking with all the California girls, so I have to get on that.  Other than that, I’m making a turkey for Thanksgiving (YESSSS) and I’m going to try and make it out to Amsterdam sometime this semester.  I will find a way.  Oh, and I have to figure out what I’m going to do for Christmas.  That should be interesting.

I’ll be better about posting, I promise.  And I’ll get ALL the pictures organized one of these days! 

-Catherine

P.S. Oh, and if anyone has a microphone on their computer or a webcam and you want to call me for super super cheap, call me on Skype.  My skype name is beach3bum.  Costs you NOTHING.  And if you call internationally, I can give you my cell number so anyone can call me out here.

P.P.S. My birthday is October 30th.  Just putting it out there.

Baseball… addict?

It’s 4 in the morning, and I’m no, not drunk.  I’m watching baseball.  Giants vs. Dodgers.  Maddux vs. Zito.  I’m half delirious, half insanely excited because I’m watching real, actual baseball live from California.  Yay!

Off to watch the game.  Go Giants.  Oh, and if anyone wants to send some caffeine my way, it’d be much appreciated.

-Catherine

I’ve been all alone in Scotland for a few days now and things are going fine so far.  All of the summer people have moved out of the apartment and all of the year-long people are finally here in my apartment.  There’s plenty of locals; people from all parts of Scotland, some English people, an Irish girl, and then the random internationals from Poland, Sweden and my roommate, the Estonian.

I went on my first grocery store adventure here since moving into my apartment.  It’s a lot harder to find things here since everything is so much smaller, the stores and everything, but food itself is pretty cheap.  I’m having a hard time finding hot dogs, but I won’t give up on my search since I know they must be around here SOMEWHERE.  I need to get more hangers, too, but I have no idea where to find those either.  I’m sure eventually I’ll figure everything out, but for now it’s all pretty confusing.  Getting back from the store is going to be such a drag by the end of this year.  I have to walk up a big hill from the grocery store to my apartment, so with bags and everything I’m sure I’m going to hate it after a while.  For now it’s not so bad, but I know it’s going to wear on me soon.

School doesn’t actually start until the 22nd, so I’m working on figuring out classes and planning on going to talk to people to get pre-registered for everything.  I need to get faculty approval for courses I want to take, so that’s going to be a pain in the ass going to talk to everyone to figure everything out.  Why can’t they just do everything online like Americans do?  Why do I have to go and like, TALK to people and stuff?  Haha.  I want to be in my sweats reading course descriptions and click buttons to join classes.  None of this doing actual, real work stuff.  I can’t be bothered, of course.

I’m going to get to watch some American Football before going out tonight, which I’m pretty excited about.  I miss my San Francisco 49ers and people who understand what 2nd and 10 means.  Here, it’s either football (as in soccer) or Gaelic foobtall, which I have no idea what that is but I’m pretty sure only Irish people do it.  Football (American Football) is going to be a lot easier to catch here since the games are on in the afternoons so I don’t have to stay up super late to watch them.  Baseball and Basketball are going to be a lot harder unless the Giants or the Warriors are on an East Coast road trip.  

I’ve had my first British dish since being here- beans and toast.  I guess it’s a big deal out here- just toast with butter on it and then baked beans, but everyone eats it.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I mean, it’s nothing too exciting, tastes fine, so I don’t get what the big deal is but then again they don’t understand peanut butter and jelly at all.  Peanut butter here is like this foreign weird tasting thing that no one normal would ever eat, but MARMITE, on the other hand, is perfectly normal.  Make sense?  I don’t think so.  

I’m still working on picture uploads, but it’s going to take a few good, solid days just to get everything organized, let alone flipped and cropped.  I’ve got something like 600 to 700 photos to go through, so I think you’ll all forgive me.  I’m going to wait on sending out the address where you can see them all on photobucket since I want them all to be good before I send it out, so hopefully within the next couple of days I’ll have it all sorted out.

I’m off to catch my 49ers game and go out tonight with the Scots, so wish me luck!  

Go ‘9ers

-Catherine

Group's First World Cup Qualifier

Oh, and a photo from the football game.  There you go!

I guess I should start off by saying sorry for the delay on this post.  The last few days have been absolutely insane.  Lots of walking, shopping, getting things sorted out, sitting in absolute boredom.  All that fun stuff.

Thomas and I split up from the Glasgow Youth Hostel on Monday after I got my keys to my apartment.  We made the journey two days straight out to the airport, first to pick up Erica, my friend from UCSB, and then Molly, my friend from high school in Rocklin.  We all made it to our apartments easily enough, and picking up our keys was just a matter of signing on a dotted line.  Turns out I’m in the same building as Molly, who is on the floor above me, which is pretty cool.  After we got in on Monday, I didn’t have much time to unpack so most of my stuff was just left in a huge pile on my bed.  I’m not used to having a variety of shirts to choose from, so I was pretty excited about having more than one sweatshirt to wear.  Yay!  Mom and Grandma made it safe to Scotland too.  They brought along my comforter among other things.  Shoes, clothes, scarves.  They’re staying in a hotel on the West End, so they aren’t too far from where my apartment is.

My roommate Laura, as it turns out, is from Estonia.  She’s pretty petite, which I could automatically tell even before I met her since her flip flops were so teeny.  She’s completely fluent in English, which I’m sure she credits her schooling last year for since she spent a year of college in England before she moved up to Scotland.  She’s really nice, but pretty shy which will be nice since I talk a lot and living with someone who talks as much as I do would probably be really annoying after a while.

Orientation has been really boring.  A lot of lecturing, a lot of confusion.  The signing up for classes process here is really complex, no pressing buttons after looking at course descriptions.  They’re pretty behind on the whole integrating schooling into their technological resources.  You have to consult all kinds of people on classes, there is no set schedule on what time classes are, so it’s really hard to figure out what you can and can’t take.  Arg.  All of us are pretty frustrated and confused by it, so hopefully it all works out soon.  I can’t stand not being able to look up things online and know what I’m doing, so Glasgow needs to get on the technological ball ASAP.

Thomas left this morning, but I’m not sure of all of the details of how or when he’s getting home.  There was all kinds of chaos going on in the last 2 days as far as getting a hold of people, trying to reach people and being unable to, etc.  Not having a cellphone hasn’t really been a problem up until the last few days since all of us (me, grandma, mom, thomas) are all in different places.  We made plans to go out the night before Thomas left and everything got all messed up since Thomas showed up an hour after we told him to meet up, and we never saw him since we had left 15 minutes beforehand.  Thomas left his Ipod here, so he’s having fun I’m sure suffering on a cross country flight with nothing but his PSP.  Thomas’s flight passes got all messed up too, so I’m not exactly sure what happened but all I know is that he had a really hard time getting on a plane back to the states down at Heathrow in London.

In other words, things got all messed up, and I have no idea what’s going on.

Since there was nothing going on today for orientation, a group of us went out to the Sports Cafe to watch Scotland vs. Iceland, a World Cup Qualification game.  Scotland scored early in the first half, great goal, and then scored again in the second half early before Sean McManus was ejected for using a hand inside the box.  Penalty kick, Iceland scored.  Scotland held them off for the last 10 minutes to win 2-1, so they survived the scare.  Lots of singing “I would walk 500 miles” (even though they don’t use miles in the UK?) and “We’ll be coming down the road”.  Drunk people singing, priceless.

Another thing- people here in Scotland really love their Braveheart.  I’ve heard the Mel Gibson “they’ll never take our freedom” speech at least 4 times in pubs since I’ve been here.  Pretty funny.  

Tomorrow more orientation stuff, trying not to fall asleep when I should be paying attention, etc.  As far as I know, I’ve only got stuff in the morning on Friday so Friday should be a good night.  And this weekend, exploring Glasgow in the West End should be good.  Did I mention my apartment is like, a 3 minute walk from the Uni main gate?  Pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

Also, for my phone, I’ve got a Skypephone so if anyone has Skype they should add me to their buddies.  If my phone is logged into Skype, if you call me it transfers the call to my phone so you can call my cellphone for REALLY cheap instead of trying to call from a landline.  Pretty sweet deal.  My Skype name is beach3bum, but you can search for me online.  I’m pretty sure at least you can.  As for pictures, I’ve got a lot to go through and have had NO time to do it so patience, please.  Haha.  I’ve got all of mine and Thomas’s to do so it may take a couple of days but when it’s done they will be all nice, pretty and organized.

I’ll be sure to post more often now that I have my COMPUTER!  

-Catherine

We left Manchester on the 1st of September and headed to Glasgow to check out where I’m going to be going to school for the next year!  Very exciting.  Our bus journey was much more pleasant than our last one.  A double decker bus and a lot fewer people, likely because it was a Tuesday (?) afternoon and less people were out and traveling than on a Sunday before school starts from London!  Gee, imagine that.

Scotland is absolutely beautiful.  Just seeing the countryside from the bus window heading up here, there is so much green, so many animals and farms, just rolling hill to rolling hill of green as far as the eye can see.  It’s pretty amazing, nothing like in California.  The weather here is a little bizarre too.  Sunshine, and then rain, and then pouring rain, and then sunshine.  All in one day.  Very bizzare, nothing like it is in California and it’s like that here all the time.  The accents are pretty fantastic too.  So far we haven’t had any problems understanding people since most of them are pretty easy to understand, Scottish accents aren’t THAT insanely different from anything else we’ve heard, but I’m guessing sometime along the next year I’m going to run into someone that I don’t understand at all.

My friends, Erica and Molly, get here on the 7th and the 8th so by that time I’ll be officially done backpacking and more in the mode of getting prepared for school.  I get to pick up my key on the 8th, which is very exciting since I’ll finally have a bed and my own ROOM to put all of my crap in (yay!), and then on the 9th I get my computer!  Thank GOD!  After that, Thomas’s travels back to the States are pretty wide open as far as when he goes and everything since he’s just leaving straight from Glasgow to Vegas. 

I’m definitely going to keep the blog up and running, especially since I know I’ll be going around Scotland a lot exploring everything around here, and there will definitely be a lot more pictures posted on a regular basis with my computer coming and all.  I definitely want to make it up to the highland parts of Scotland to explore and look around, and of course I’ll make it over to Edinburgh at least once while I’m here.  I think the plans as far as out of Scotland goes includes a journey back to Barcelona with my friends from California, and then Christmas is wide open.  Right now the idea is maybe Greece?  Who knows.

We haven’t been doing much here in Glasgow since we’re just relaxing and waiting until football (World Cup Qualifiers) start in the next few days.  There’s a lot to do I guess if you want museums and exhibits and things, but Thomas and I are all touristed-out so we’re just hanging out and relaxing.  We definitely want to see Celtic Park where Celtic FC plays, but other than that I’m guessing we’re going to hermit until the 6th when Scotland plays Macedonia, I believe, and the 7th when Erica gets in from California.  We’ll see what happens.

The hostel we’re staying at was IMPOSSIBLE to find after we got into Glasgow, by the way.  The only directions on our reservation confirmation were to follow the signs after a certain bus stop.  There was 1 sign.  1.  In an entire neighborhood.  Didn’t really help all that much, let me tell you.  We ended up asking a local, and then 30 minutes later finally found the damn hostel.  Jesus, you’d think they’d give better directions to people who have never been in their country before, don’t you think?

Also, people in my room (separate womens and mens dorms, urg) are REALLY LOUD.  These two German girls woke me up at the ass crack of dawn this morning after squeezing every imaginable kind of plastic bag into their suitcases.  So annoying.  Very rude, really.  The other girls in my room are pretty easy going and nice.  2 of them are from Canada, so that’s cool.  They’re from Alberta, so they say ‘eh’ which I think is pretty funny, and definitely have the Canada accent going on.  Love it.

I’ll post more when I have more to say… it’s been pretty laid back for the last few days and will likely stay that way until my friends get here and my Mom and Grandma do too! 

I’ll try and get Thomas on here again, also.  He can tell everyone all about Old Trafford (which was awesome, btw).  I promise. 

-Catherine