Oh The Places We’ll Go

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

This is going to be a super quick post since I want to let everyone know about the photos and I’ve been uploading just a few for the last HALF HOUR.  Turns out… takes a long time to upload photos onto the internet.  I could only add a few from Vatican City and ONE from Rome but they’re up for people to look at:  flickr.com/photos/cat1brad

I’m most likely not going to be able to add any more until later (likely until I get my computer back) but if I can I’ll try when we get another computer available to us. 

Old Trafford today was awesome- will write more about it later!

Again, flickr.com/photos/cat1brad.

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