Mar 11: Prepping for Scotland and the Invasion of France

Soo I guess I should tell you about today before I tell you about tomorrow.

Hookay. Well...

Today I got up early and attempted to make my second favorite bfast (the eggs, garlic & herb cream cheese sandwich thing) but instead of using onion bagels I used seeded bread. Not tasty. It has become a bagel bfast sandwich only.

After that I went to class and turned in my essay, and we watched a bit of a movie called Trainspotting. It looked pretty good, it's this early 90s movie or something with a super young Ewan McGregor and people portraying life as heroin addicts in the Scottish highlands. It looked good if fairly disturbing. The most interesting part though was the accent. It was so thick! Most of us could barely understand it. I could understand most of it, but some of the words were lost on me. I think it's because in Hawaii people speak pidgin all the time, so I'm slightly more used to words having different vowel emphasis' and such.

Example: Dail is prounounced "Doyle" That might have been the Irish not the Scottish though, but you get the picture.

Then we talked a little bit about the brief history of Ireland, up until the IRA. When I understand it, remind me and I'll do my best to share the info.

After that I used my last 6 pounds from last weeks stipend to buy bagels, more cream cheese (I think I now have enough to last me the rest of the trip and then some- I couldn't refuse the sale!) and another 18 pack of eggs, and ginger snaps, chocolate chip cookies, and these things called digestive biscuits (no, I have no idea why it has the word 'digestive' in it, it does not help your digestion but does have a tasty chocolate coating and a ginger-y flavour when you dip it in tea.)

Soo then I made my lunch and the best fried eggs I've ever cooked, and went to my music class where we had a guest lecture from Will's mom who is here to visit but is also an ethnomusicologist (sp?) and is a doctor/professor in Virginia. She talked about the connections between Handel, Lampe, and Arne in more detail then the tour yesterday did.

Then we had our meeting, and I made an odd dinner of potatoes, broccoli, onions, and double Gloucester cheese. It was tasty. Then I went back to St. George's Church for our group concert, and I was hungry again!! It was like I hadn't eaten at all. Ridiculous. Kathy says it was because I didn't have any meat today, but I totally got protein from the eggs (everyone freaked out when I told them I ate four eggs today, something about being crazy and high cholesterol)

The concert was great, a lot of baroque music so I started falling asleep but the wooden flute was phenomenal and apparently (according to Will, anyway) the woman who sang the arias was knighted (damed, I guess?) assumably for her singing, because she was really good too. I don't know how to make that sentence cleaner. Anyway.

So I got home a little while ago, and I had tea and biscuits but it wasn't filling, so I also ate a pb&j which sort of did the trick but now I'm hungry again. That's alright though- I plan on trying haggis either tomorrow or the day after, and eating some form of steak tomorrow. Mm, tasty.


So. About this weekend. I'm going to Scotland!

I have decided not to bring my laptop. So there will probably be no updates from me until Sunday night at the earliest but more likely somewhere between mon-thursday.

Current plans are as follows:

6am wake up (booooo) and out of the flat by 7am
Catch the 8am train to Sunderland to check out the National Museum of Glass
At some point we go from Sunderland to Newcastle, and meet up with our theatre teacher by 2pm and go on a tour of more museums and art galleries or something
7:30 pm we go to see "Oh, What a lovely War" which is some important theatre thing
8-9am we catch another train, this time to Edinburgh (which should be super neat! There's a castle and everything!!)
arrive in Edinburgh between 11-1pm
something something something I have bad handwriting
Wuthering Heights Ballet at 7 or 7:30

From there I have written Edinburgh -> Carlisle, Carlisle -> Leeds, and Leeds -> London.

Then Monday I get up at 7am (I really don't like this trend) to catch a 9 or 10am train to Birmingham, to go to a training by 11, but probably lasting all day, then I come back home, and then I have class at 10am on tuesday.

Wew! Basically: Four days, seven cities, two countries. This trip continues to amaze me.

If there's an emergency, the Foundation for International Education in London can be contacted, or you can contact Dave. I would put give you my cellphone, but that requires my cell number to be on the internet, and I don't know the international dialing codes anyway.

So! Wish me luck, take care, try not to worry I will stay safe and stick with people I know and away from the terrifying sketchy places, and I'll make at least a tiny note when I'm back, even if its only "I'm home" or something like that.

Ciao!

OH! Pause. Back it up. So while I was in Justin's class today (Contemporary Britain) He told us this story about how when he was younger he and his friends would take a train down to the Salt Cliffs of Dover, hire a hovercraft, hovercraft over the sea to France, be all rambunctious and stuff in France, spend the day there, and then hovercraft on back. Why? So they could say they invaded France. Hilarious. I think Jon Will and Ethan might be thinking of going and following suit during Spring Break. I also think I might join them. I mean, think of how many things that adds to my list of cool things I've done in my life?

1) Saw the salt cliffs of Dover
2) Hired a freaking hovercraft
3) Rode on a freaking HOVERCRAFT
4) Went to France
5) Invaded France
6) Conqured France
7) Conqured France AND GOT AWAY WITH IT
8) Saw the salt cliffs of Dover, invaded France on a hovercraft, and returned home ALL IN THE SAME DAY.

You cannot tell me this sounds like an epic plan.