Hike Up Arthur's Seat and Sunday Roast

The weather in Scotland has been unexpectedly nice for what I was prepped for while it's a bit colder and windier than home it has yet to rain since I have been here in Scotland. In fact yesterday was quite possibly a perfect day in Edinburgh...it was sunny and around 20°C (around 70°F) so two of my flatmates and I decided to take advantage of the day and climb Arthur's Seat, the main peak of the hills in Holyrood Park in Edinburgh. While the climb is attempted by many and said to be easy, my flatmates and I took the road a bit less traveled and found it more strenuous then we were expecting, however, it was totally worth it from the top you have a 360° panorama of the city. Supposedly the sunrise is incredible from Arthur's Seat which we are discussing attempting to see but I'm not sure if it will actually happen.
After the hike on Saturday our flat took it easy today and decided we should make a weekly Sunday roast. So after hitting up the grocery and then the fruit and veg market...we started are beef roast which turned out wonderfully (doesn't it look delicious?)...for some reason are kitchen is only successful in cooking meat when we tried to make pizza the other night the dough would not cook! Although Elina made some delicious muffin cookie things popular in Luxembourg (My flatmates from right to left in the picture are Elina, Zara, and Madeline). Now it's early to bed for me because I have 9am lectures tomorrow but hard to complain when you only have class two days a week!

Visit to Cramond

Today I took my first day trip with one of my flatmates and a friend...although calling it a trip might be a little extreme as it was really just to a suburb of Edinburgh called Cramond. The trip started off with walking almost in a complete circle looking for the bus stop that turned out to be on the same road as our flat oh well...now we know where that road leads! The bus took us straight through the heart of the city which was so nice little tour leading up to the seaside village. We ate at the oldest restaurant in Edinburgh, saw the sea, and ventured to some Roman Ruins overall a pretty successful little excursion. Two of my flatmates and I all have Wednesdays off classes so we're going to try to take small day trips almost every week! Another exciting bit of the trip was that the bus drove by a music store which I stopped by on the way back and got a new guitar...it's no Secret Lover but it will do for my time in Scotland! Classes officially began on Tuesday but I have Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday off of classes so my first day is tomorrow so I'm sure I'll have more to report then!

Settling In

Well I'm in Scotland...and have been for approximately two weeks! The first week was "Freshers Week" which is an orientation for first years and visiting students that is centered around going to pubs...got to love the way the Scottish work! Over the past two weeks I have also been working on becoming a semi-permanent UK resident including setting up a UK bank account (surprisingly easy!) and setting up a UK phone which has been a bit frustrating and I still do not have a permanent number but I will send that info out once I do. My flat in Edinburgh is very nice (I have my own roommate which feels like such a luxury) I have 3 flatmates, however, none of them are Scottish. Two of them are first years, one from Luxembourg/Finland and one from England, and my third flatmate is study abroad student from Boston who is only here for a semester. We a had a great time setting up our flat the picture is of our kitchen wall where we've been having almost nightly dinner and dart games, we really feel like the pictures of flowers class up the foam swords and dart board! I also tried my first bit of haggis with my full Scottish Breakfast (in the picture it is the meat tucked beneath all the other meat) if I hadn't started eating meat before I came to Scotland I definitely would be now...I'm pretty sure it's impossible to be a vegetarian in Scotland! So far I'm having an amazing time...and can't wait for people to come visit!