St. Patricks Day

Saint Patricks Day is of course the greatest holiday of all man kind and on this Saint Patties day the celebration was among great importance. Mostly because I was home sick and I'm from the Boston area where Saint patricks day is a big deal. To start off the celebrations the teachs union at the University of Edinburgh desided to go on strike, so no classes! Then myself being one of the only people in my group of pals in the city taking the holiday seriously, I was hosting the dinner. I spent all day cooking and baking with some help by the glory of guinness, making three pots of beef stew, apple cake, mash potatos and a large bread of a secret making (oo lau lau). But I did have to stop for about a hour so that I could go to my English Literature tutorial, which for the life of me I have no idea why I'm taking this class because I'm a business studies major.   Any who, later that night had the dinner with about 16 people packed into my flats small kitchen. Most of them with a lack of green clothing which of course made punching those people alright and necessary.  The dinner went well and one of my pals from my tutorial came dressed to the nines in green after coming to our tutorial with no green clothing, very impressive.
After the dinner and many other Guinesses not used for cooking purposes the large group of us went out on the night. Although the group did seem to split into Europe residence and USA residence which both went to different Irish bars.
The rest of the night was a great deal of fun and included more "hydration" of dehydrating liquids, and end very early in the morning.

Glasgow Rangers vs. Portugal sporting

A few weeks ago three American women and my self went to Glasgow to see the Rangers vs Sporting Futbol game. The reason I have not written about this earlyer is because mainly of school work, which included alot of typing and research. Things that I like when they are for my own bent, but not when I'm researching flipping Cambodian shipping costs for containers. Did youo know that they wont just give you a geuss quote for shipping they have to have the contain full then tell you how much it will cost, bullshit!  Anyways my rage tag team of Americans convinced me to go to the game over a long process and I finally went due to them being all women and me havng muscles. If you didnt get that, that was in fact a joke. I went because I'm a made fanatic when it comes to sports and I play soccer ball for about 12 years. Also I strive to scare those sitting around me with my loud cheering.
Before I left my flat in the morning I told one of my flat mates that I was going to the game. He told me in a very serious way that I should say I'm a Protestant and also be ready to fight a large group of people. To which I said I'm always ready, and left.  After my English literature class on Thursday I went to meet the American girls at a street corner. While walking there I passed a biker gang of seven to eight year olds, I very impressed that they didnt have training wheels. After getting to the bus station the one of the girl who will continue to remained unnamed, desided to go shopping in the station shop expecting the bus to wait for her.  It did not, me and one of the girls jumped on the first bus and the other two went on the second bus. After about two hours on the bus and about twenty minutes in the Glasgow bus station, our group started to walk towards the stadium on the other side of the city. Insead of walking all of the way there, which I geuss was a very far hike. We made the decision to take the greatest subway system in the world to the other side of the city. The greatness of this subway system was completely due to the structure of the subway tunnels around the city. In a normal subway system there are branchs of train routes and a central hub. Not in Glasgow, there system went in an oval. They had two trains going in either direction that were most likely made in the 1960's for very short people. Being the tailest of my group I of course was mooshed into the door enterence of the train, that had enough head clearence for someone that was about four and a half feet tail. I was also face to face with a middle aged women going home with her shopping and due to me being tail and she being short I was forced to lean over to make my head level be slightly below her neck level.
We finally get to the stadium, get some food and a scarf (naturaly) got some tickets and went in. We got to our seats and some dude was sitting in my seat. the girls sat in their seats on the other side of the guy and I was cool was sitting next to his girl friend and flirting with her through the game. But the girls said something to him and he moved and apologized to me, blaming everthing on his girl friend, which was humorous. The man on the other side of the girls asked them if they were Protestants to which they all replied "NO NO NO WE'RE AMERICANS."
The game started like a Bruins vs Rangers NHL game then became more tame over time. The Glasgow Rangers were playing really well. They were up by one for most of the game and with about five minutes left they decided not to play defence anymore. They didnt defend the zone, they didnt challenge the ball at all. So the flipping Sporting ending up scoring with like two minutes left and pissed everyone off.
After the game we hopped on a bus back to Edinburgh and called it a night.

(I know there are spelling errors, but they are there so that you can find them and feel good about your self.)

St. Andrews

Straight off the bat I want to say that I am writing about St. Andrews the town and not the saint, although I heard he was a nice guy. The weekend before last, a small group of Americans and my self went to the town of St. Andrews on a bus for a day trip. So to start off the day I fell asleep at 4am sunday morning and then woke up at 7:15am so that I would be able to get across town to the bus station in time to meet my group. Funny how that worked out, so I was running late so I was basicly running down the streets of Edinburgh dancing between sleepy church goers and speeding cars to get to "the meeting place" on the corner of a square near by the bus station. So I get there a minute early and found a rain covered bench to lean on. So thinking that they would be there at any time I was looking over my things in my bag, undoughtivly scaring some of the older people walking past. About ten minutes after I had arived my phone started to ring. Completely surprised people still called other people I let my phone ring a while. When I got tired of the ringing in my ears I answered to hear the other guy of our group on the other end. He started saying "where was I" and other things that I don't remember and finally told me he and the two girls would be about 15 minutes. So 23 minutes later, after I had had a nice little chit chat with a old person walking past and a very sad looking police officer, they finally came around the bend. We went to the bus stop and relized the next bus was going to be in a hours time, so being Americans we went to Starbucks that was around the corner, naturaly. While there they told me of there exploits the night before and of all of their tom fouleries. But we finally caught a bus and got to St. Andrews at about 11am. We started off going to the ruins of the very very old church their which was beautiful in its own right. One side of the walls of the church was facing the ocean and the surf was what the Californians would call "up." So we walked down a man made sea wall/ dock at the mouth of a small tributary that they seemed to use as a birth place for boats (bay). Walked around there for a while then headed over to the castle down the came stretch of coast. The castle was also in ruin and is run by the Scotland historical society, which I am a part of so I got in free. Best 32 pounds I have ever spent. The castle was very cool, there was a large court yard that became witness to the girls and my own attemps at swing dancing, that ended in tragity. The castle had some very interesting different things about it aswell other then swing dancing Americans. There was a tunnel dug though the bed rock under the castle made by an attemped siege about 500 years before. The castle was also facing a small beach which had its own tide filled swiming pool man made into the rocks that went directly into the ocean. We had lunch at 4pm at some French food place that was not bad I geuss, but we rushed alittle so that we could go to the golf corse while it was still sunnyish out. The golf corse looked exactly little it does on tv except less people and at ground level looks like someone made a mistake and forgot to put buildings there. On one side of the course is the ocean and the other side are three story tall buildings. So we took so pictures there and then continued to the beach while the sun was setting. A couple hours later we went back to the bus station and all slept on the ride home.

The town of St. Andrews is much smaller then Edinburgh But has its pluses. Food was much cheaper there then in the city and there was less people, which made for less dancing on the sidewalks.

That Mountain Outside my Flat

So there is like a volcanic vent mountian type deal thing to the north west outside my flat called Authors seat.  I dont know the elevation but its tail, you can see it from every where in the city and is how I navigate back to my flat after a long night of drinking "ginger ale" out at local "soda bars." Its kind of a tourist thing to do but people climb up gto the top of it. There is a bunch of paths that lead to the top and sites are amazing. Plus I'm a tourist in the best kind of way, so of course I found time to climb it with a couple of other of American students who are also very touristy. So I met up with the two girls that I was climbing with and we set off to easly the most distant part of the mountian and started our climb. They wanted to do the easy way and walk where I wanted to have fun and climb stuff. So we compramised and they walked while I had fun around them. We got to the top and it was a great veiw not only of the city but for miles and miles around. there was a bunch of other people at the top of the mountain including a girl that grabbed my attention. the girl was standing alone with a very expensive camera in her hand and she was taking pictures of a Beany Baby (small stuffed animal) on a rock. At first my group and my self thought well this could just be a project. So thinking this we started our desent. But while leaving the sumit I looked back just in time to witness this girl crawl up to the beany baby and kiss it. At this time I desided anyways that this was most likly not a school project and that this girl was very into the beany baby scene. Oh and she was also wearing a golfers hat with fake red hair hanging from the sides of it. Im sure she is a nice person, but twas slitly a strange thing to see at the top of a mountain. After that my group found a flat ground still pretty high up on the mountian where we desided would be a good place to take dozens of photos.

Actually cold

Fake Cold Damatic Effect

There was a pond that was full of swains at the base of the mountian. Which reminded me of Swain Lake except less Russian and also a pond and there was no music.

Actually Doing Work

It turns out im pretty good at wrting about things that I have no background or knowledge in what so ever. I am a Business management major, who for some strange reason is taking an English literature class. But its not any normal English lit class I have ever seen or heird of. All we have done so far is medieval literature all written in early english which is in its self a sucky form of english. Also all my teachers can talk in a medieval accenct, which is kinda cool specialy how they base it off of nothing because the last person with an original medieval accent died over 600 years ago. But alot of the stories are pretty good even though they are wicked old. I was required just yesterday to write a 2000 word essay explaining in what ways medieval literature can be considered political. Let me tell ya, thats a doosy. But I read Sir Gawain and the Green night, which was quite funny. Mostly because it was all about Sir Gawain hunting down the chapel that stood against the church. Alone that doesn't sound funny, but I wrote my whole paper about the church making poems from the time political by telling thy faithful to kill those outside the religion. But any ways it took me two days and a far amount of fustration and confusion. In the very end when I finished the essay at 4:30 last morning I was 128 words over and feeling very happy about it. That was untill I handed it in and the kid in fornt of me said it was ten words over or under 2000. At which time I desided to completely block out his uppity negitive words and beleive my own version of the truth.

My flat

short tour of my flat

Breaking Bones

Being an American Athlete in Scotland I thought it would be cool for me to play the most American game other then baseball. It you didnt guess yet I was planning to play American football. I had already told several other of the Americans that where in my study abroad group and they accompanied me in the first team practice of the spring season. The practice was pretty rag tag and ended with me knocking a kid in his helmet (to make a point) and with the rest of my American pals unsure of investing their time. So lucky lucky me, by the end of that night my middle finger on my left hand turned into a German bratwurst. For the next three days my finger remained the same size. So naturally being a silly American I went to the doctors office thinking that I would being seeing a doctor. No, I registered and then they told me that the doctors have no one to see right now so they were going to make an appointment for you for two weeks from now. Socialist health care, if your dieing come back in a couple of weeks and save the taxpayers some money. Of course I wasn't dieing but it flipping hurt. So this past weekend with my appointment coming up on tuesday my flat mate smoked for a few days straight (things that were not tobacco). Being the lucky individual that I am, I am allergic to the smoking materials that my flat mate was smoking. I know what you are thinking "he's allergic? No thats impossible!" I ensure you its very possible and sucks not because being a drain on society and a deplorable human being is officely off my lifetime experence list, but in that many many many people are deplorable human beings and make it difficult for me to breath (athmatic reaction). I know I just gave away my kryptonite, but seeing how I do not as of yet have any evil doers after me I think I will be ok. But any ways back on topic. I went to the doctors on tuesday and said to the women doctor who did not have a very good sence of humor, my finger hurts (while giving her the bird) and I would like an inhaler no steroids please. All she did was take my finger try to snap it in half and then asked if I had taken an asthma test before. I said yes. She said right then how many you want? I said I was thinking one. She said right we are going to give you two both with steriods, pick them up down stairs. Any ways my finger is still broken, but I do have two new shiny inhalers and a perplexing thought of why they just gave me them. They dont know me I could have been just some dude that wants to breath better then everyone else (which I am).