The Real Begining

Ok, so, I know this is long overdue, but I've been busy/tired/without internet access for the past few days. This is going to be a long entry, so, here goes.

To begin, my train journey from London to Edinburgh was quite nice. It was cool to see the countryside along the way. There was a bunch of girls in the same compartment as me who were traveling to Edinburgh together. They were quite loud, but all I remember from their conversations was this one girl saying "Oh my God, that is so cool" in a British accent over and over again.  It was most interesting.
Then there's the guy who was sitting next to me. He seemed really nice at first, but later on every time he would feel a sneeze coming on, he would pinch his nose shut, thereby not really allowing himself to sneeze. I'm pretty sue that stopping a sneeze like that can do some significant damage to your sinuses.
When I got out on to the station at Edinburgh, I figured I was too tired to drag both my bags to the hotel. So I kept one of them at the station at the place that allows you to store your bags there for a fee.  It was a good choice as the road to the hotel was a winding uphill road and one heavy suitcase and a backpack was more than enough.

Our orientation was lovely. There are six other UC students beside myself who are studying in St Andrews as well. The first evening we walked down to the EAP study center and then had dinner with the programme directors at really nice restaurant. The food choices were lovely and our director ordered wine for us too. I was able to have a really nice three course meal. In the evening the bunch of us went to a pub. But we were all so tired that we went back to the hotel quite early.
The next day we had our orientation information session at the study center in the morning. They told us all about what we should and should not do and gave us some information we needed. We were on our own for lunch and the seven of us went to a pub for lunch.
After lunch we went to see the Edinburgh Castle. There was a guided tour where the guide took us all around the castle and told us cool and interesting things about it. After that we walked all the way to the other end of town to begin our hike up to Arthur's seat. Which is the highest point of the hills formed by an extinct volcano. It was a relatively easy hike, but quite tiring when you haven't done much more than sit in front of a computer for the past month and a half. I have a video of me at the top.
 We had dinner again that evening at an Italian restaurant and I felt like I could get used to having a glass of wine at dinner everyday ;-). Some of us went to a pub again, I didn't have anything this time, frankly, I'm not really confident enough to order my own alcoholic beverage.They had free live music later on by this Scottish indie band. I stayed to listen, but not for too long, I went back by 11 pm.

My next entry will (hopefully) be about my journey to St Andrews and my first few days here. But right now I gotta go to lunch.

UPDATE: Pictures of Edinburgh are now up!