mighty duck

Waiting for the bus to pull out on my way home from class this morning.

I've been quite productive this week in the travel department. Here are the trips I've booked so far:

Nov. 7-9 to Oslo, Norway with some flatmates
Dec. 4-6 to Shannon, Ireland with Dad when he comes to visit
Jan. 2-5 to Paris with Taylor when he comes for New Year's

Hoping to book soon...

sometime in January to Stockholm, Sweden with Mom when she comes across the pond, and to the LARGEST Ikea store on planet earth! Literally!

Greece fell through unfortunately...prices were rising, we were taking too long to make decisions, and were having trouble finding a couchsurfing host. Considering Madrid instead, but who knows.

This afternoon, Jennifer and I decided we were going to check out Portobello Beach, which is apparently a REAL LIVE beach just outside Edinburgh. We headed out to the bus stop to catch the 15 or 15A Bus. We realized neither would stop by for about 20 more minutes, so we ran in to ScotMid and bought some Jaffa cakes and Diet Coke, then back to the bus stop. A couple minutes later, Bus 15A comes around the corner, so we step out towards the street. The bus driver looks us straight in the eye and keeps driving! We were so mad! So we decided to wait for Bus 15, which was supposed to be there in a couple minutes too. 30 minutes later we're still standing there and it's starting to rain. Although Bus 16 passed by about 4 times, Bus 15 never appeared. We went home Portobello-less.

Then tonight was my dinner night (my flatmates and I are on an unofficial rotation), and I made some asian-style chicken with rice and huge loaf of bread, which we devoured. Yum.

Then we went to a real Scottish hockey game with some other international students. I was unaware that hockey was a popular sport 'round these parts, but apparently. It was quite entertaining. I told my flatmates that I had never been to a hockey game, to which they looked astonished. I think they took that as, "I had never heard of hockey before." They proceeded to tell me that the players skate around on ice skates and try and get the puck in the other team's net, and sometimes there's fighting, and that's a Zamboni, that cleans the ice. "Thanks guys, I've seen hockey on TV, and I've even seen some hockey movies." I'm not one of the Germans!"