We're So Scottish

So after a super long and boring trip over here, I have safely arrived and settled into my home for the next 5 weeks. We have a pretty awesome view from our window. It's nothing too special but it sure is pretty, and if you stick your head out you can see a church. And since we are in Scotland, the architecture is beautiful.

Anyways, we sat by a French man on the plane, got interrogated by the customs officer, laughed at a very badly parked car with angry notes on the windshield, went grocery shopping for the essentials, and realized just how jet lagged we were. For more information, check out Cat's super funny blog post about our trip over and our first few hours here.

The view from our window.

Sunday: Well, some background is required for this story first. Cat and I stayed up late watching You, Again because we weren't tired cause it is 5 hours ahead here. So we woke up at 11, with both of us needing to shower and be ready by 11:30 to walk over to church with the rest of our group. We were ready at 11:34 and ran down to the lobby. Nobody was there. Awkward. So Cat pulled up the address of the church on her phone (yay technology) and we asked a funny old guy for directions. Funny little fact: the guy we asked for directions was actually the guy that read the notes from the blueberry car the night before. OKAY, BACK TO THE STORY. So we asked this guy and his wife for directions. He said it was really far and told us we were crazy for wearing "such daft shoes" and not taking the bus. It couldn't be that far, right? Wrong. It took an hour. But we saw lots of Glasgow, witnessed a street race, asked some nice people for directions, and eventually made it to church. They had a YSA Sunday School and us BYU students definitely tripled or quadrupled it's size. The teacher is named Patsy; she's super funny and an excellent baker. So lots of us girls got nasty blisters because we had no idea how dang far it was.

Cat, Carolyn, Emilia, and Rachel on the way home from church.

Sunday night consisted of walking around to see important places, writing lots of missionaries and Cat trying to see the Bavarian Tuba Players. Or something like that. We met a nice man from Singapore and talked to him for a while. Then we stayed up late watching When in Rome. Josh Duhamel. Yum.

Monday: What a day! We had our first class. It was a battle to stay awake. Like 3 of the students talked the whole time, which was totally fine with me. The best part of class was when he gave us 50 pounds each and subway passes. Love that. After class we got some lunch including chips/french fries with salt and vinegar. We're so Scottish. Then we went and explored the Botanic Gardens for a long time. I would not mind going back there at all! So many different different plants from all over the world! Here are a few of my favorite plants and people:

After thoroughly exploring the humid greenhouses we enjoyed the sun and cold wind for a while and then explored the park some more because we didn't want to walk all the way back to our dorms just to walk back over to our professor's flat for FHE. So we wondered on over to the super cute kid's garden. From what we gathered, kids volunteer to help maintain the garden. How cool is that?! After that we took a nap in the park. We probably looked homeless. 

Eventually we moved on from the park. We walked down a street to a used bookshop that seriously had thousands of books. Like floor to ceiling books with bookshelves in the middle and piles of books on top and on the floor and just everywhere. To make it even more impressive there was a basement, and possible an upper level, full of books too! We checked out a thrift store where almost everything is 10 pounds. No sweet finds there. We discovered a back way a back way to our professor's flat and were excited that we didn't have to go up a big hill from this direction. BUT we still had two or three hours until FHE. So we wandered in and out of shops (Papyrus was my favorite) for a while and ended up in the library. We settled down with some fun books and... I fell asleep. Two naps in public in one day! I'm not sure whether I should be proud of that or not. I kinda am. Anyways, after our naps, we decided to get a light dinner before heading over to FHE. We tried to go to Gregg's because our professor raved about their sausage pastry but it was closed so we went across the street to check out Iceland-- a cheap co-op store. We ended up getting sweets for the most part. I saw the wagon wheels and knew I had to get them because my family and I had just watched Wild Child and their deliciousness is mentioned in the movie. Emilia found some chocolate cookies that looked good but were called Digestives. Sketch name. She didn't get them. Cat found Happy Hippos, which are DELISH and I will most definitely be taking a bunch home with me if I don't eat them all before I get home... Aero and Flake bars too.

My excellent purchases.

After Iceland, we headed up to FHE. We ended up not taking our alternate route and did have to do up the hill after all. We got there 15 minutes early and decided to sit outside and wait for more of our peers to arrive. I felt like a hobo for at least the 3rd time that day. We were questioning if FHE was cancelled when the rest of our group showed up fashionably late. We climbed to the top and had fun re-introducing ourselves and chatting. I got to know some of the girls better and found out one of them has lived in the same apartment complex as me for a full year! On the way home we tried to take a short cut. Tried being the main word. The gate was locked. But as a result I got to see a fox and take this picture. So worth it.

 

Glasgow is great and I am never going home! Or I will just have to suddenly become a billionaire and bring my family back over here AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I love it!