captain underpants

FACT: In Scotland, the word "pants" refers to "underpants," NOT "trousers."

FACT: My friend Autumn had been wearing the same pair of jeans for a few days and hollered to her flatmate in the middle of busy clothing store, "I haven't changed my pants in like a week!" To which the entire store fell very quiet. Awkward...

ghosts & gouls

Tonight Jillian and I accompanied our friend Jon on a "Ghost Tour" through Old Town Edinburgh, something we had been wanting to do for awhile. Though it wasn't in the least bit scary, it was quite entertaining. An old Scotsman coincidentally named Scott took us down closes (narrow alleys) of in an area known as Old Town, off the famous Royal Mile. He told us tall tales of "real people who lived and died in Edinburgh." His stories were somewhat gruesome and dripping with irony and Scottish humor. His acting out of the stories definitely added to the suspense. We ended the night in an old graveyard where we stood around in an empty tomb as he elaborated on grave robbers, murderers, adulterers, witches, and the mentally insane. Unfortunately, our bodies were using every last ounce of energy to keep from slipping into hypothermia for us to be fazed by his grand tales. It seemed like an eternity making it back to our flat, my fingers and toes have truly never been that cold in my life! It took a good 10 minutes of standing in front of my heater to get the feeling back. So here I am drinking hot coffee to finish thawing out the rest of my body.

blow out the candles

Happy Birthday Anna!!
Love you Big Papa :)

that's all today.
sorry to everyone except Anna.

a new do

i miss you lists...

1. Met Autumn at her flat to go to this volunteer thing Eikon did with another church in Edinburgh. We were supposed to meet at the other church to catch a ride with the leader of the entire shindig, Roger, but got lost and ended up at the wrong church. Problem was resolved, he picked us up at the wrong church and we went on our merry way to the town of Dalkeith to fix up a lady's flat who was suffering from depression after her second child was born.

2. Upon arriving, the house was rubbish (that's the Scot coming out in me). It was the former home of drug addicts, and not much was done before the new owner, Sarah, and her two small children moved in. Apparently Roger's last visit to the flat proved to be quite different than the one today. The living room was previously piled to the ceiling with trash and we were to help Sarah sort through the junk and tidy up the room so we could begin painting, etc. in the weeks to come. Oddly enough, Sarah stayed up all night last night doing some tidying of her own -- she moved all the trash from the living room into her bedroom and would not allow any of us into the new "rubbish room." It was sad because she was clearly embarrassed, but frustrating because our leader was slightly frazzled with this new arrangement.

3. So Autumn and I, as well as a girl from the other church, Natalie, did Sarah's dishes and cleaned her kitchen all morning. Her kitchen was an absolute mess as well. She had bottles from the children left with spoiled milk all over the counter, pans with rotting food left on the stove, and other dishes piled high on every inch of the tiny counter. We held back out gagging and washed, dried, and put away every last dish in that room.

4. It's strange doing volunteer work in another country. You expect people to struggle with different things on the other side of the world, but they really don't. We're not all that different from each other. I've been in homes in Springfield that looked identical to Sarah's flat today. It was cool to be able to forget about my obstacles of fitting in in a foreign land to help a local do her dishes. Not easy, but definitely worth it.

5. Then I ate some Chinese, watched Project Runway, and took a nap.

the tellie

Tonight I went to one of Eikon's small groups at these two girls' flat down the road. When I got there, they had their television on. Their tellie. I could have sat on that big suede couch all day long. I haven't watched REAL television on a REAL tellie in a month! It was playing some 7th-Heaven-grade-acting British soap opera, but I didn't care - it was TV! I knew it was bad when I got excited about the commercials. Up next was the very American My Name Is Earl. The Europeans didn't find it as funny as the Americans in the room. They complained about not being able to understand Earl's accent. "Welcome to our world!"

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!"