Farmer's Market

So nothing major has gone on the past couple of days. I think I have done so much city wandering, that I have seen all of the interesting sites and have left myself with nothing more to see! Unless I start taking the train to different places, which is the plan. I move into my official housing accommodation that I will be in until December. I will move in tomorrow around 4pm. Before I move though, I am going to go to a farmer's market that is just below the castle. I was reading up on it and there are quite a bit of vendors that sell fresh cheese, meat, fruit, drinks, etc. So am interested in seeing what there is going to be at the market. Have also been studying some basic Biology stuff and cell structure. FUN! Just when I thought I was finished with that stuff...Hope everyone is doing well and I will post some pictures of the market tomorrow.

North Berwick by Train

I was going to head to Stirling today, but then Josef (flatmate) recommended that I go to a small town called North Berwick. He said there was not much to do there, but the scenery is great. So, I walked to the train station and purchased a round trip ticket to North Berwick. Total time to get there was about 25 minutes. The train system is so nice here, very easy to figure out what train to get onto and the time tables are very accurate. It said that the train would depart at 12:37pm, when the train officially left it was 12:37:05pm. Wow, I was impressed, 5 seconds after it was scheduled to leave! They do need to fix that though, a late departure is unacceptable...

When I arrived in North Berwick, I was presented by a small town with a view of the Firth of Forth (body of water). I immediately began walking towards "The Law", a big mountain that is about a 45 minute walk from the train station. Something about the name "The Law" reminded me of that movie "Judge Dredd" with Sylvester Stallone in the early 90's.





The hike to the summit was very nice and not too difficult. The only difficulty was that the grass was wet in some areas, which made it slippery at times. Once I reached the summit, I was greeted by this large whale jawbone. Apparently the original one was ruined so they had to replace it with a fiberglass model. Was still pretty neat looking though. Off in the distance you could see Bass Rock, home to the largest colony of Gannets in Europe. It was absolutely amazing, it looked like a white rock on top, but when I zoomed in on the rock with my lens, I could faintly make out birds flying all around the top. There must have been hundreds of thousands of Gannets on that rock. While I was up there, these flying ants kept attacking me and landing on my camera, backpack, shirt, pants, shoes, etc. Needless to say, I was up there for only 10 minutes.

I then found this walkway that weaved through the forest alongside a stream. Was very nice and quiet to enjoy a nice walk. I then found the beach and there were some pretty cool shells that I found. There were thousands of them, all over. Oh, and the tide must come VERY close to the mainland because about 100 yards from where the water was, the sand was still wet and there were tide pools everywhere! Amazing to think that the tide comes in THAT much! I walked to the top of a ridge and took some nice photos of the beach. I had just a tiny bit of trouble finding the train station from where I was, but this guy confirmed that I was indeed heading in the right direction. I guess I have a natural GPS coordinator built inside my head. Who says you need a TomTom? Heading down to Hewat's tomorrow. It is a store that carries all of the veterinary school supplies for clothing. I will need to buy steel-toed boots, lab coat, waterproof clothing (it doesn't rain here, does it? Do I really need waterproof clothing?), etc. Well, best be going now. Hope everyone is doing well back home and not enjoying that HOT and HUMID weather with the monsoons. I do miss taking pictures of lightning though. It seems like there is never lightning here, just rain. I never hear thunder either. I guess because the air is not as dry, the electricity does not build up in the air as much as it does in the desert. Anyway, talk with you all later and enjoy all of the pictures I took!

North Berwick

Edinburgh Zoo

So I woke up this morning and my hip still hurt from walking so much yesterday. So I did it, I decided to take the city bus to the zoo. It was great weather today with light misting here and there. The zoo was pretty large and there were quite a bit of animals to see. It took me about 3.5 hours to get around and see everything. I enjoyed the wolves the best, now I want one for a pet. They truly are amazing animals. I will be taking the train to Stirling tomorrow, I think. I will decide in the morning if I want to or not. I was offered a placement at the Veterinary School's dairy farm and I start on Monday. The placement lasts 1 week (5 days) and I work a regular shift 7 or 8 hours a day. I then have to write up a report on the experience and fill this packet of information out and turn it in. Hey, it's my official first assignment for veterinary school. Hopefully it will be nice weather so that I am not working in mud all day, but I guess I need to get used to it sometime...

Edinburgh Zoo 2009

City Wanderlust...

I was going to cut my hair today, but found out that my 115v input trimmers would probably fry if I plugged them into the power outlet here. I can just see it now, I would finish the right side of my head and just as I would go to start the left side, the trimmers would die. That would be a funky hairstyle! Seeing that I needed new hair trimmers, I knew that there was a Wal Mart nearby, or so I thought...

The Wal Mart here is called ASDA. I searched the location on google and took my handy city map with me to help navigate myself. I walked about 6 or 7 miles to the ASDA and along the way, found this cool graveyard. Almost all of the stones were knocked over though. I wonder if, over time, the stones become weak and just fall or do people kick the stones and try to knock them over? I see this a lot in the graveyards here. Anyway, I found the trimmers at ASDA and got stuck for an hour just wandering around the store seeing what they had for sale. It's still taking time getting used to seeing the weird groceries available here such as Haggis and black pudding. I walked back home and just as I was reaching the "10 minutes away from home" mark, I got this shooting pain in my left hip. I guess that's what 12 miles of walking non-stop will do to you! So I stopped into the nearest pub and bought a pint and relaxed for about 45 min. I met "Neil", really nice lad. Had some good conversation about what to do in the city. Once I was finished, I walked the rest of the way home, made some hot tea, and took two Advil. I am feeling MUCH better now! I added some more photos to the album, so check 'em out. Not too many though, I didn't have a camera trigger-happy finger today.

Scotland 2009-2013

Highland Games 2009

Well, just got back from the games and it was absolutely awesome! It was a huge event with thousands of people from all over the world attending. I found a great spot that was right on the field, so great for pictures. One of the competitors was from the US and was really good. I had no idea that Prince Charles was opening the Highland Games, so that was pretty neat. The Duke and Duchess of Rothesay (Prince Charles and his wife) came over to where I was standing and was talking with everyone, was pretty neat. There were a ton of piping groups that would walk through the field while the games were going on and would play the bag pipes for about 15 min. Tossing the Caber was by far the best competition. You basically pay £10 to watch a bunch of guys throw heavy objects into the air. It is definitely something you have to experience when you come here and visit. It really makes it feel like you are experiencing the medieval era. All that was missing was me wearing a kilt. Who knows, one of these days I may convince myself to purchase one and wear it. That's a little down the road though.

Highland Games 2009 Edinburgh

Absolutely Soaking Wet Today...

Well, I stayed at home today for most of the morning and wrote some emails regarding EMS work. I received an email from the Veterinary Centre's farm manager, he has an opening on the farm starting on the 3rd of August, so I will probably take that into consideration. After the email writing, I went into town and went to the local mall. As I was walking back home, I was caught in this torrential downpour of rain. I was not amused by this at all, as I was wearing my leather jacket and was carrying a newspaper. Needless to say, I ended up using the newspaper as an umbrella and within a matter of seconds I realized that the effort to utilize the newspaper as an umbrella, was sadly failing. I stopped in a random store to wait out the rain. It is actually pretty funny watching what everyone does when it rains. Everyone dives into the nearest store (never purchases anything in that particular store) and then leaves as soon as it is over. At one point, I walked past a portion of the street and this parked Mercedes was surrounded by 4 inch water. I bet that person had fun trying to get in their car without getting wet...Heading off to the Highland Games tomorrow, should be a blast. I will have lots of pictures.

Beautiful Weather Today

Well, woke up this morning thinking that it would be raining and was surprised to find that the sun was out. I walked down to Princes Street Park today and lounged out on the grass writing articles and reading a book. Was a nice relaxing day. The sun was out and the temperature was around 70 degrees. Around 4pm the clouds began to move in and it started to rain. Went in the National Museum of Scotland and saw some really interesting paintings. The nice thing about the museums over here is that they are free to see. The staircases at the museum were sort of creepy because there were all of these plaster heads lining the wall. I did manage to make it up Arthur's Seat yesterday with Josef. I didn't realize that he had been running and cycling his entire life before I agreed to go running with him. Surprisingly, I managed to keep up with him and actually was ahead of him on a lot of the uphill portions.

On another note, I was walking home from the store today and I walked past this old church that had purple doors. I stopped and read the sign in front of it and it was a light store! Imagine that, they put a light store inside of a REALLY old church! Weird if you ask me. Well, better be going now, hope everyone is doing well!

Running In The Rain

Well, nothing too exciting today. I woke up and saw that it was pouring rain outside. So I figured I would just stay in today and write articles. I have written a bunch of articles on pet health and have one that has sparked up a debate and I have had over 200 people view it in 2 days, which is a good thing because the more people that view it, the more $ I make. I will be going for a run in the rain around 7pm with Josef (the German guy). Hopefully I won't be too drenched afterwards. Hope everyone doing great! Cheers!

Tour of the Easter Bush Veterinary Center

So I had an official tour of the Easter Bush Veterinary center today. The place is quite large and there is A LOT of construction going on right now. Lucky for me, I came just in time that I will be enjoying brand new buildings for 3 years. Woohoo! Unfortunately, they don't have digital radiography. What am I ever going to do! I have been spoiled with digital! Does this mean I have to develop film again? Ugghhh! Anyway, the facilities are very nice at the center. Here are some pictures from the visit. Not much more went on today, I have been inside ever since 2pm. It was raining quite a bit today. I was going to walk to Rosslyn Chapel today (3 mile walk from the veterinary center) but opted against doing so because it was raining so much. I'm thinking that decision was a smart choice. Otherwise, I would have been soaking wet in the rain. Well, off to write articles. Talk with you all soon! Don't forget to try and get Skype so I can talk with you eventually.

Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies

Climbing Arthur's Seat

So, I managed to climb up Arthur's Seat today. Basically, it is an extinct volcano in the middle of Edinburgh. I didn't realize how steep the hike was going to be until I got onto the trail. I must have walked about 20 miles today. I walked all over the city looking for a phone adapter so I could plug a phone into my computer to call back home (found it by the way). Then I went to Sony to see if they could fix it and they said it was the laptop itself. In the end, I ended up with an evaluation version of Windows 7. Pretty cool! It is only good for a year, but I can officially say that I am using the new operating system. Not that it is really exciting. I made it to the top of Arthur's Seat around 5pm. The bad thing about getting to the top that late was that I was starting to get a little hungry and had no food with me at the time. I knew I had a long walk ahead of me to get home, so I only stayed at the top for about 35 min. Below are the photos I took while on the top. It was absolutely amazing from the top. The wind picked up and it felt so good blowing in my face. The sun was out ALL day today and there was one moment where it rained for about 5 minutes. It is so weird how all of a sudden, when it has been sunny out all day, it starts raining. If you can believe it, I actually got a sunburn today on the back of my neck! Yeah, the girl Sylvia at the house I am at pointed that out. I was shocked!

Before I end this post, I wanted to share with you a couple of things that I have seen in the city that are funny and puzzling. First, there is this door in Edinburgh that I always walk past on the way to the city center. Every time I go past the door, there is a person standing in front of it knocking on the door with cash in their hand. I don't know what they are giving out there, interesting...The second thing I wanted to share (which is pretty funny) is that when I was walking up The Royal Mile today, I saw this car driving up the street and it was squirting three big streaks of water in the air. A lady walking on the curb was soaked by them! I was amused by this. The car was an Audi A5, I didn't know the car came equipped with super soakers for windshield washers!

Well, enjoy the latest pictures. I will be visiting the veterinary school tomorrow that is about 30 min from the city. I will definitely post pictures of the school tomorrow. Hope everyone is having a fantabulous day!

Arthur's Seat

Free Food! This City Gets Better and Better!

So I went into the city centre today and walked around quite a bit. I had forgotten that it was Sunday and most of the shops were closed. I walked down towards St. Cuthbert's church today and walked through a really old graveyard. I went to the Starbucks again and wrote articles for about 3 hours. When I was finished I walked past the National Museum and saw that there was an enormous gathering of people and one really long line! So I went to go check it out to see what the heck was going on. Apparently there is a new Spain exhibit at the museum and there was a festival going on called "A Taste of Spain". There was this enormous cooking bowl and this man had a HUGE spoon that he was using to stir the chicken and rice. I swear, this bowl could have easily served a thousand people or more! They were handing out free bowls of the rice and let me tell you, it was awesome! On top of tasting good it was free, you can't beat that! I can't wait 'til the big festivals begin, there's no telling what will happen at those. I came very close to climbing Arthur's Seat today since it was so nice out. It was sunny and about 65 degrees all day long. There were spurts of rain here and there, but not much. I will most likely go hiking tomorrow (depends on the weather). I updated the slideshow with new photos. Not all of the photos are there because it takes so darn long to upload them into Picassa. Enjoy the new pictures everyone!

Blisters and Homeless for 30 minutes...

So, even though my feet were hurting today, I had to check on my data recovery at the PC shop again and walk all that distance. When I woke up this morning, I took my sock off on my right foot and saw that I had 5 blisters, and one of them was a blood blister. I couldn't even bend my toes without the blisters causing pain. It is slightly better now, but man did they hurt last night. That goes to show you how many miles I have walked. I have walked about 9-12 miles per day for the last 5 days, that is a lot! I think I will start taking the buses more frequently now or buy a bicycle. Either way, my feet have had enough walking. So, the latest news brings me to yet ANOTHER speed bump I encountered. Ever since the laptop repair issue costing me nearly $400, I have had numerous problems it seems.

So, here goes: First, I spoke with the lady regarding the payment for the bed and breakfast and the amount of time I would be staying with her. Well, I do not have the money from the university until the first week of August. So I asked her if it would be OK if I were to pay her half now and half at the end. She didn't seem too worried about it, but then yesterday I walked through the door and she was in the hallway (ahhh!). She started rambling on about how she was nervous about the whole situation and that she wanted me out of the B&B by Tuesday. I had this warm sensation that spread throughout my entire body and my heart dropped to the floor! I couldn't believe this was happening to me. Seriously, what else could possibly go wrong? Ever since I applied for the visa, it seems like I have had one problem after the other. So the lady kept rambling on and was making a HUGE ordeal about the whole situation. I couldn't even get a word in, and when I did, she acted confused and didn't know what I was trying to say. In the end, I told her that I had the full payment for the entire stay and that I would pay her right then and there. She simply said NO and that she did not want to deal with it anymore.

So, I immediately get on the internet searching for a hostel to stay in or a B&B. All of the B&B's were completely booked and so were the hostels. I was getting nervous and very worried. I was picturing myself sleeping in one of the nearby parks (sad for you all, I would not be able to write any more posts for a while). So I went to go see Daphne (lady I am staying with beginning on August 1st) and told her of the situation. She has 3 flats that she rents out right now, so she phoned Joseph, a student at one of the flats. She asked if a room is still available and if I would be able to stay there until August 1st. He had no problems with that and I am still paying the same rate. Daphne and I walked to the flat and arrived after 30 minutes. The flat is TONS better than that stupid B&B closet room. I now have a bigger room, house, my own kitchen, backyard, washing machine, stove, oven, microwave, THE WORKS! So in the end, it worked in my favor. I am actually glad that the crazy scottish lady at the B&B kicked me out. I was so confined in that tiny room. I had about a 6x4 foot space to move around in, NOT fun. Hope everyone is doing great back home and I will keep you all updated on the latest! (hopefully there will be no more speed bumps encountered along the way! Of course, I am sure you guys are amused reading about them!)

Rain, rain, rain, rain...

Well, it was nice for a while until today. I woke up this morning and headed down to the PC shop to check the progress of the data recovery. The guy came out and said that it didn't look very good and that the data may not be recoverable (there was a big sigh from me). So, the guy told me to try back later on. So I headed down the main road and ended up walking for quite a while. I found the HUGE Starbucks that I went to a couple years back. It is upstairs and overlooks the castle (sorry, no pictures, will take some for everyone eventually). I worked on my laptop at the table for about an hour and wrote down ideas for article writing. I went back outside and started the trek back home and ended up getting a nice big blister on my right foot from walking 9 miles a day for 4 days straight now.

I also had quite the experience with the city buses today. It has been raining all day and the rain collects in small pockets on the road fairly close to the curbing. I was walking down the sidewalk and a bus drove my splashing water all over my pants! Those buses are dangerous I tell ya! I was not a happy camper...

I popped back into the PC shop and when I went to the back, I was welcomed with good news. All of my data had been successfully recovered, and all that I have to do now is bring my external hard drive in to transfer the data over tomorrow. Woohoo! Finally, something went right! I found the Summerhall Veterinary School this afternoon and took some pictures of it. This is the old building and I will be in this facility for a year. The last 3 years will be at their brand new teaching hospital and buildings at the Easter Bush campus.

On another note, I received my bank card for Lloyds TSB today and am official. I can now buy my phone once the funds from the loan have transferred over, which will be a couple of weeks from now. Well, this post is rather long, so I should be going. I hope everyone is doing well and miss you all.

Officially Hate Microsoft and PCs

So, I had a very rough day today. As if the visa process wasn't difficult enough. I woke up this morning and powered on my laptop. It took quite a while for it to load and all of a sudden I received a blue screen error. I worked on it for a couple of hours acting like I knew what I was doing. I finally gave up and took the laptop down to the PC repair shop. After several hours of diagnosing the problem and £245 (about $423). My hard drive failed and needed to be replaced. So 3 hours of labor and a new hard drive later, I finally have a computer again. Ever since I have owned PCs I have always had hardware/software problems. I am extremely tired of dealing with these problems along with viruses, worms and trojans. Once the university loan money comes through in a couple of weeks, I am purchasing a Mac laptop. If you think about it, Windows is already releasing a new operating system. It seems like they do this every year. When will they perfect their operating systems and stop failing? Windows XP is one of their best by far and has little problems, they should just stick with one OS and fix the bugs and security loop holes. Why continue to start from scratch and build upon existing operating system versions? Mac has consistently had success with their Leopard OS, and I think more and more people should steer towards a Mac. Well, I will stop ranting and raving here. Hopefully nothing else happens to me, I am sick of these little problems, they are really adding up cost wise.

Americanization All Over The World

Was out exploring the city yesterday and just wanted to point out some things that I saw on my walk. Just when I thought that I was so far from home, that all changed. I was walking down North Bridge road and on the way down it, I came across a Blockbuster, Subway, Quiznos, Pizza Hut, Dominoes Pizza, Papa Johns Pizza and an Apple store. Even at the grocery store there are Pringles, Lays (Walkers over here), Axe deodorant (Lynk deodorant over here, same thing), Coke, Sprite, etc. It is absolutely ridiculous how much Americanization has occurred throughout the rest of the world. I can say though, that there is a huge variety of food to choose from over here and of course, they drive on the opposite side of the road as us.

Enjoying the Lovely Scottish Weather

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you all know I made it here safely yesterday at around 10am Scotland time about 2am AZ time. The flight over was actually pretty quick and I ended up having an empty seat next to me on the flight, so I was able to sprawl out and sleep a little. You gotta love sleep, we had about 7 hours until the plane landed in London and when I woke up, there was about an hour remaining. I walked about 9 miles yesterday and was absolutely exhausted near the end. The weather is great here, was about 59 degrees when the plane landed and by the time I arrived at the bed and breakfast, is was nice and sunny outside. However, just when I thought it was going to be nice and sunny all day, it began to rain. Then, 10 min later, the sun came out again, and then 10 min after that it began to rain again. You get the idea. I am in my closet right now (really, the room I am in is so tiny, there is a bed and a sink and about a 6ft x 4ft space to walk around in. Whatever though, it gets the job done. In the end, all I care about is if I have a bed to sleep in, not the size of the room. I had dinner with the family I will be staying with in August. The lady's name is Daphne and she had her two sons and two women from California for dinner. We had a homemade Haggis dinner and is was so good. I walked past the University of Edinburgh building yesterday, not sure if it is the one I will need to go to, I don't think it is because there were a bunch of signs for the school of law. The building is pretty neat though, so old and medieval looking. I stopped at the phone store yesterday and I have to have a bank account here in order to get a cell phone. So I am heading to the bank today to set up an account for here and then hopefully I will have a cell phone in a few weeks. I took a few photos with my camera phone yesterday, I didn't feel like carrying around the Nikon, so here they are. Hope everyone is doing good and I will talk to you all later!

Last Minute Student Visa

So I was having problems with getting my student visa through the British Consulate in Los Angeles. I was in Washington and found out my visa application had been rejected. Unfortunately, because I forgot to include the loan information with the application, it was rejected. The worst part about having your visa application rejected is that they make you start all over again. So, you need to fill a brand new application out, have fingerprints scanned a second time, pay the $244 application fee again. I was so stressed out that I did a search on Google and came across this expediting visa service that would get it to me within 24 hours if needed. So I called this place and was told I needed an original letter from my lender for the amount of money I was granted.

This letter had to be an original and stamped or signed by someone at Sallie Mae. I contacted Sallie Mae and they said they would have the letter to me within 3-5 days. However, after 8 days had passed, I began to stress just a tad bit. So I called the visa place back and the lady told me that the documents that I received in the mail the first time from Sallie Mae would work (I scanned them and sent them in to the visa place for this lady to look at). She told me to ship it for 8am delivery so that it would get to her the next day so that it would be processed on that day. Well, $136 to ship the package and $186 to expedite the package back to me within 24 hours was ridiculous!

Well, at 10:12am this morning, I received a package from FedEx. I opened it up and low and behold, my passport book contained a giant sticker in the middle of the book that said "UK Entry Visa". Woohoo! Now if that wasn't a task trying to get this visa! So hopefully everyone now knows that EVERYTHING MUST be included with the application, if one little thing is missing, it will be rejected in a blink of an eye.