...so how many miles is that?

So St. Andrew's was amazing and it was really fun to spend the day with Cristina and Liz as usual. We were squished like sardines in the bus, I passed out on the way there and then we looked around at what was left of the St. Andrew's Castle. We also saw St. Andrew's Uni and St. Andrew's Cathedral. We also climbed St. Rule's tower which was interesting but well worth the climb and Cristina and Liz plunged in to an old mine. I was not in to going in to the actual mine but they enjoyed it! All in all lots of laughs and pictures as usual. This weekend we're going to Lindisfarne which should be interesting as well. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Sunday was pretty low key and all of us had errands to run so we spent most of the day doing that. We also went to the Museum in Edinburgh to see the Lewis Chessmen because Cristina really wanted to see them. They were pretty sweet. We did go to this place for lunch that gives 30% off to students and all ordered burgers that tasted like sausage. Not really what I was hoping for but the chips were stellar as usual.

Yesterday was the first day of classes and quite frankly I was really intimidated. It's quite different then the states mainly because they don't really assign you reading. You don't have to have a certain amount of reading completed by a certain date and they don't really provide you with a syllabus - they just give you dates when things are due. I was originally signed up for International Law, Medieval Scottish History and Celtic Civilisation but after sitting through Celtic Civilisation again today I decided I needed to switch out of it. There is no real direction in the class at all and they don't really give you any sort of idea what to read so I decided it was better to switch out then be miserable for the entire semester. Instead I'm taking American History 2. I know I know what a cop out, right? Not so much. I just really wanted to see how they teach American History over here and the Gender and Sexuality class I wanted to take wasn't offered this semester. Plus they actually tell you what to read for that class, as they do for my other classes, which I need. Otherwise I just think I wouldn't be able to actually enjoy my time here because I would be stressing so much.

I also joined the gym here and so far have actually used my membership! I took a spinning class yesterday morning from 7:30 a.m.-8:15 a.m. and took a Body Blitz class today around noon. I also ran and did the elliptical. Hopefully it'll pay off by the time I come home for Christmas - that's the goal. I am planning on getting up for a 7:30 class again tomorrow which kind of stinks because I have nothing else to do for the day but it's also good because it'll get me going for the day kind of early. I also joined the Wine Society and went to the first meeting last night with my flatmates Ana and Leah. It was really fun and we tried 7 different kinds of wine. We were also informed that there is a Wine Tasting Team at the University of Edinburgh and they compete against other universities in the area - how cool is that? After the "meeting" they had free sandwiches and pizza so we stuck around for a little bit before coming home for the evening.

Tonight is a BLOGS meeting - Cristina and I are going to see what they're all about. Then afterwards of course they're going to a club but I may skip out on that since I have to be up at 7:00 tomorrow morning. The more time I'm spending here the more I'm actually getting used to the idea of being here for the semester. I still am finding it hard to believe that I'm taking classes here and it's even stranger for me to think that I won't be going back to Northeastern again...