Toilet gripe

Scotland may be more socially advanced than America (arguably, anyway), but when it comes to public "toilets", America has the right idea (or maybe Scotland just has the wrong idea).

Things that are wrong with Scottish toilets:
1. Inevitably the stall door opens in such a way that you have to either a) step into the toilet itself, or b) be a gymnast, in order to get into the stall.
2. Weak flushing mechanism. As a general rule, the toilet will half-heartedly flush, disposing of about half of your waste. You then have the options of leaving it like that and having the next person think you're disgusting; or waiting approximately 2 minutes for the toilet to regain its ability to flush, and try again.

Gripes about my bathroom in particular:
1. My flat has a huge bathtub. You could swim in it. It is for this reason that I do not understand why they felt the need to put the shower curtain narrowly surrounding the shower head, so that you are pressed up against it while you shower.
2. All the sinks in my flat have separate cold and hot water faucets. You are not allowed to have warm water, apparently. Besides which, my hot water faucet only spits out cold water anyway.

Okay, enough griping. I just felt the need to get that out of my system (pardon the bathroom pun).

Some pictures

Arthur's Seat (Holyrood Park...right in my backyard!)


The view from halfway up Arthur's Seat:


Sunset over Edinburgh:


The castle:


To the South of the castle:


A bit of Scottish cheese...


A statue by the Water of Leith:


Dean Village:


More pictures to come...specifically ones from my field trip. But for now I have to get back to studying!

Matriculation

I'm a real student now! Hurray! My tuition is paid, and I have a student ID. I guess that makes it official. I met all of the 23 other students in my program yesterday. About half of them are from outwith the UK/Ireland, including 3 other Americans. There is only one Scot in my program. Everybody is very friendly, and I think we're all going to have a good time.

I also met the Program Director, who was also very friendly. He helped me pick out which classes to take: Introduction to Environmental Sustainability (required course), Ecological Economics, and Culture Ethics and the Environment. Classes start next Tuesday...and tomorrow we are going on a 3 day field trip around Scotland! I'll blog more about that later.

Cheers!

I've arrived...

...and I'm a bit overwhelmed. I think I managed to avoid jet lag, but it really is hard being alone in a new city. To start with, the airline lost half my luggage (and ripped the shoulder strap off my 63 lb enormous duffel bag of clothes...that made lugging it up 3 flights of stairs fun), but to be fair they found it and delivered it this morning. Its going to take a minimum of 3 weeks to get a bank account set up (as I was informed at the bank this morning), and I really couldn't understand what the guy was saying when I called the phone company to get a phone line activated. So who know what will happen there. I haven't even started to try to get internet hooked up.

But besides my bewildered ignorance when it comes to all the mundane details of living in the UK, things are going well. The flat, at least, is nice -- as is the landlord. The city is beautiful so far (though I haven't really gotten out and explored yet). And the tap water tastes better than most bottled waters!

Now I'm off to buy a stapler...so that I can attach a form to my bank account application...so that I can wait 3 weeks.

I'll try to do some exploring in the next couple of days, and then I'll be posting pictures! (well, probably once I have internet. So, maybe in 6-8 weeks).

Cheers!

Bar Harbor to Boston (or: Me and Bikey)

Well, its been an exciting past couple of weeks. To start it off, I spent a week in Bar Harbor, ME with my family. We went kayaking, bike riding, hiking, and rock climbing...all of which turned into adventures. The rock climbing was a guided climb, but we were sort of in over our heads. They took us on a 250 ft multi-pitch climb, which was lots of fun for the first 200 ft, but then my arms turned to spaghetti and I basically thought I'd be stranded on the side of a cliff forever. Ah well, I guess I need more practice (and more bicep curls). The kayaking trip on the other hand, started in beautiful, clear weather, but quickly turned to nasty stormy weather. You can kind of see the storm approaching in this picture of Aaron:



Anyhow, after the vacation in Bar Harbor, I rode my bike home to Newton, MA. That took 8 days (a total of just over 400 miles), and was relatively unexciting, but definitely challenging and good for me. I learned to trust myself a little more...like when, on the 3rd day of the trip, my chain snapped. This was a particularly rainy day, and it was a longer leg of my trip (70 miles)...so of course, 20 miles in, and in the middle of nowhere (there were some cows nearby, but that was about it) my chain went. Of course, my first instinct was to panic. But then I looked at my map and figured that I was only a mile or so outside of a tiny little town. So I walked my bike there to find that the town center consisted of a church, a post office, and a hardware store. Well, I went into the hardware store and lo and behold...they had a single bike chain, and a single bike chain tool. Almost creepy. So after a couple hours of my dad (on the phone) trying to help me figure out how to change my chain, and with the help of some friendly neighbors, we got the new chain on. Yay! And then I got a flat tire. And it never stopped raining. That was sort of the low point of the trip...but I got through it.

Otherwise the trip was pretty uneventful. I stayed in campsites every night. They ranged from "rustic" to really nice. (Rustic = pit toilets and no other amenities). I did get a little sick of showing up to a nice looking campsite, paying an outrageous $30 to stay on a tiny piece of land, and then having to pay for the crappy showers. Argh. If I owned a campsite...

I didn't take a ton of pictures (okay, I took 5 on the whole trip), but here are a couple of my favorites, both from the last day.




After the bike trip, I went into cleaning/moving mode. We moved out of our apartment, managing to keep a very minimal amount of stuff. I think I've whittled down the things I'm bringing with me to Scotland to the airline baggage allowance (yay!). We took a U-Haul of our stuff to Salvation Army...they seemed a bit overwhelmed. It feels so good to not have all that stuff now though! Now I'm crashing at the new house of my very generous friends, Josh and Lara. Just need to make sure I take care of a few little things before I leave...on Monday!

Next blog entry will be from Scotland! (Unless I get bored before then...)