Another email from Shontae in Scotland

Hello all!

Thanks for all the e-mails, I'll get back to them as soon as I possibly can, however, I don't have time at the moment (I have a bus to catch in a little bit). So, I'll make a quick update.
(Last) Wednesday was our last day in Edinburgh. We went to Hollyrood Palace (home of Mary Queen of Scots, and also where the queen currently does some of her entertaining), which was awesome. It was really pretty and huge. There was a portrait room that had every wall covered in hand painted portraits of all the kings of Scotland. It was really impressive. After that, we had some lunch, did some sight-seeing (where I saw another man in a kilt), and then we left for homestay.

Homestay was awesome. It was for about 2 1/2 - 3 days. They put two girls into every house (so we had a total of four families). I stayed with a couple named Mary and John, and their two dogs. I have to admit that I got a bit spoiled with homecooked breakfast and dinner, and packed lunch before moving onto campus to having cereal, yogurt and a sandwich every day (only because I'm too lazy to actually cook). During homestay, we did some sight-seeing. The families dropped us off and left us to fend on our own, and told us when to get back to their houses. That sounds a bit frightening, but I think that I liked it better that way.

The first day, we went to Stirling Castle and Argyl's Lodging. Stirling Castle was amazing; Argyl's Lodging on the otherhand was..not. Argyl's Lodging was just this old giant house that pretty much displayed how the wealthy aristocrats would have lived in that time. The house was absolutely gorgeous, but it wasn't that exciting.

They were also in the process of doing some restoration work to one of the buildings at Stirling Castle, so we also got to see people working on re-creating the upholstered wall decoration things. That was awesome. The one woman said that they do something like four inches per week or so, and it takes a number of months to finish the whole thing.

On the second day of homestay, we went to the Wallace Monument. We actually climbed it (it's like this huge deal that there are 246 stairs to climb to the top or something, I think the conditions of the stairs is a bigger deal than the fact that there are 246 of them). The walk up the path to get to the actual monument was nothing in comparison to actually climbing the monument. It also had William Wallace's sword inside, and the sword was MASSIVE. It was bigger than I am (he was apparently somewhere around 6'6" - 6'8"). The stairs inside the monument were terrifying. The staircase was stone, circular, and tiny (i.e. if everyone was walking in one direction, single-file...no problem!). And there were cut-outs in the walls for windows, so it was incredibly windy as well (because it was so high up). Going up wasn't too bad, but coming down was not fun. My legs trembled from the time I started walking down the stairs until I got to the bottom of the path from the monument. But the view from the top was amazing, I think that we could see all of Stirling (we also figured out that ethey took all the aerial photos of the University campus from the monument).

An interesting thing that we've been seeing in all of the gift shops we've been to has been canned haggis. I've seen actual haggis (it's small, round and black), and that barely looks edible, so haggis in a can has to be even more disgusting. And when you turn the can, it feels like a stomach digesting something. It's really gross. Oh, they also have haggis flavored potato chips, which is kind of scary. So, in case you were wondering - no, I have not tried the haggis.

After we left the monument, we came to the campus (because it's really close...like right down the hill from the monument, less than a 10 minute walk), and decided to give ourselves a mini-tour. This campus isn't that big, but it's big enough to get pretty lost in. But, it's quite pretty. There are ducks, swans, geese, seagulls, and some weird black and white bird EVERYWHERE. Swans are definitely a lot bigger than I thought. I much rather prefer to look at them from a distance, they're kind of scary. And the ducks here aren't afraid of people - in fact, they very regularly walk up to people, quack, and then walk away. Oh, and I saw duck sex which was a bit traumatizing.

We moved into campus on Saturday. I have four flatmates named Rebecca, Pauline, Paula and Paula. The two Paulas are from Scotland and are hardly ever in the flat. Rebecca and Pauline are both English, Pauline is from Manchester, and Rebecca is from some place I've never heard of...Black something or another. They're all really nice, and Rebecca, Pauline and I enjoy watching really bad tv shows and making fun of them.

Classes started yesterday. They're not too bad, and it looks like I might actually not have to buy any books (thank god) as they're all avaible for long-term loan in the library, and Pauline actually took the English class that I'm taking, so I get to borrow her books from that class (yay!).

Also, I don't know if you guys have heard yet, but HUGE in the news over here is the Prince Charles/Camilla Parker Bowles wedding (to happen in April), it's a bit obnoxious. It was literally on the news all day yesterday. Also, we watched The Brits last night (like The Grammy's, but 10 times better). That was fun.

This is a lot longer than I expected it would be (oops), but there you go...everything that's happened here in the past week. Hope everyone's doing well!

Shontae