Cameron & Carissa

Cameron & Carissa came to visit me!!!! They were only here for a few days before going to Ireland, but it was still really good to see them!!!

We did all the touristy stuff in Edinburgh. I introduced them to Strongbow and Steak & Ale Pie. Mmmm. So Good! We did a ghost tour the first night they were here, and it was absolutely terrifying. No Bueno. Thank goodness you got a free shot of whisky and shortbread at the end of the tour! Mom & Stan want to go on it when they come to visit, but I told them I wouldn't go on it again.

The next day, we got up and did the touristy stuff in Edinburgh! We went down to Holyrood Palace and worked our way up to the Castle. :) We did the Whisky Tour which was really cool and we had tastings and such.

The last day they were here, we took the train back to Dunblane and got the car and went to see Hamish and have a pint at the Tappit! Hamish and Heather had there baby, but it wasn't out in the pasture yet :( We fed Hamish! His tongue was so leathery.

They had to leave the next morning at 5:30 am. Way early :( But I know they had a good time in Scotland and Ireland! so yay!

AHHH

So it's been awhile since I've posted, so I thought I'd update everyone.

My life has been ultra hectic recently. Class work has piled up..oops, and now I have two massive film projects going on that need to be filmed and edited within the next month. STRESSFUL.

But on a happy note, Carissa & Cameron will be here in 3 days!!!! The Three Amigos will invade Scotland! :) Amigos=Friends, right Cameron? ;)

Also! In May, I'm running a 5K called Race for Life. It raises money for cancer research. If you are interested in helping out and sponsoring me, I'd really appreciate it!

Here's the link to my Race for life fundraising site :)

Oban and such

I apologize in advance for the multitude of pictures. :)

So life seems to be the same as usual in Scotland. Classes are going okay. The project that I was working on at the Musselburgh racetrack is finally finished! (Yay!) Now, I get to focus my attention more on two other class projects, both which seem like they'll be a lot of fun.

Joe & I have both been sick. No fun. I'm finally better, and Joe is on the mend. Since I felt better, I decided that I'd go for a run today. Don't know where that motivation came from. It's freezing outside. But hey, I ran around the park and it was really pretty. It's at the bottom of the castle along Princes Street. Here's a picture, not mine, but it looked like this today! No snow! :)

I hadn't been down in that area since Joe, Kate, Amy, Jane, and I were all there to go ice skating. It looks quite different without all of the fair stuff. I usually stick along the actual street when I go around, but I might start walking along the garden instead. It makes you feel like you aren't really in the city anymore, in a way. I guess that's sort of the point, like Central Park? hmm.

Yesterday, I went on a day trip through Napier to Oban, the sister city of Laurinburg, NC. Emma, Shauna, Andrea, and Amanda all went along too. When we got on the bus, the tour guide told us we were stopping on the way to see a highland coo, I literally screamed out "HAMISH!!!!" A bit embarrassed. What can I say? I'm in love with Hamish. Don't worry, Joe knows, and he is completely fine with my weird obsession. Hamish is just adorable. He and his girlfriend, Heather, are expecting a baby at the end of this month or March. :) I've already told Joe that we are going to see the baby Hamish. I went a little photo crazy again while we visited him.

Hamish being such a model.

Side profiling it.

Hamish and Heather's butts.
Heather and I! :) I can't wait to meet the Baby Highland Coo! Hopefully it will be born before Cameron and Carissa get here so they can meet all of them! :)

After we stopped to see Hamish and Heather, we got back on the bus and headed towards Oban. Our tour guide was really good. She pointed things out on the way out of Edinburgh and on the entire trip. It felt weird to be a "proper" tourist in Scotland. I've never really felt like a tourist here, but yesterday I definitely did. Weird. The weather was not looking too promising. It had been raining/snowing/sleeting the entire way to Oban.

When we got there, the town itself was gorgeous. The weather, not so much. It was drizzly and cold, but the sun eventually came out towards the end of our stay. We only stayed for about 2-3 hours. But that seemed to be plenty of time.

The bay at Oban where all the ferries come in:

We walked towards the castle and stopped at a chocolate shop that had some really good bark. It was white chocolate with fudge brownie chunks, toffee, and hazelnut. Absolutely delicious.

Me with the Castle in Oban:

The bay area:

Here's the coliseum type structure in Oban. We thought about going up to the top, but we didn't really want to get lost, so we just took pictures from down by the beach :)

We wanted to go to the distillery, but it was closed since it was a Saturday. Bit of a disappointment. But we went to the pub that our tour guide recommended and had some good chips before getting back on the bus. The clouds and rain had cleared up on the ride home, so there was a better opportunity to take pictures!

Our last stop on the way home was at Loch Lomond, which is famous from a Scottish song.

You can listen to it HERE if you want. I changed the link for Joe's benefit since he likes that one better. haha

Or another version HERE thanks to Kate :)

Loch Lomond:

Slush

Today it started snowing/raining. It's nasty slush outside. Converse are not the best type of shoes to walk around in in this weather. Maybe I should have checked the weather for today. Oops.

Joe & I finally have heat in our flat! It's a miracle. Ironically enough, as soon as the guy from Scottish power came out to fix our heat, we received a letter in the mail saying that we have to schedule another appointment with them to replace our meter. Umm, scottish power, why didn't you do that when you were here before? Idiots.

Joe's band, Emilio Largo, have been busy playing gigs and practicing. :) They have a pretty big gig this Saturday in Bathgate that I'm going to. Well, I've actually been to all of their gigs that they've had since I've been here.

My friend Emily who I met while in Ireland this summer is back in Ireland again! So I'm hopefully going to make a trip to go visit her sometime this semester. I'd love to go back to Limerick to see her, Jim, Dave, and of course the wonderful Henry Caddy if we go onto the UL campus. :) I miss the Minge brigade. (Yes, for all you UK people, I do know the connotations of that word. You just had to be there when the name was given to understand.)

Also, the lovely Fred is in Paris now for the semester, so I'm going to try to go visit him also. I'm in the process of trying to convince Joe to go to Paris with me. I'm not sure if he's too keen since he was trapped in Paris for over 30 some hours while trying to return to Scotland after visiting me for Thanksgiving. We shall see though. I probably won't be able to make it to France until after my course anyway. Especially if I'm trying to travel back to Ireland and possibly go to Amsterdam still!

Yesterday, my group for one of my classes went out to the Musselburgh Race track to record sounds for our sound project. For our project, we basically have to build a soundscape of a scene or a trailer type sequence that includes music, dialogue, and all newly recorded or created sound effects. Here are some pictures from the track! Photo compliments to Alkisti!

Waiting to start the sound recording:

Dogs! This one is for you Krahne!:

Being a toolbag:

Freezing:

The actual horse races:

It's a lot like the sound project that I did for Shannon in Experimental last semester, but this time I don't get to record awkward animal noises with Laura, Barret, and Laura Murphy. Sadness. But it's still proving to be quite fun. Minus yesterday when it was freezing and raining and we were trying to record the races. It was fun to watch the races though, it made me think of Stoneybrook, just minus all the crazy hats and all the intoxicated people who you run into who don't remember running into you.

I hate 9 am classes.

Okay, 9 am classes suck. No doubt about it. Especially when it takes anywhere between 30-50 minutes to commute to class. Stupid buses. That and morning traffic. I wouldn't mind it so much, but the class is only an hour long. It takes me longer to commute to and from class than I'm actually sitting in class. Boo.

But, I have classes at the Craighouse campus on Wednesdays and Thursdays which is pretty cool. It used to be an old insane asylum, and it's on top of this hill that overlooks all of Edinburgh. Not sure if the location is worth the commute though.

The main building that was the insane asylum...

The Entrance to Craighouse:

The views from the campus:

Everything is going fine here! Joe and I still don't have heat in our flat. An electrician came out and looked at our heater, but the thing that's wrong with it he can't touch, it has to be Scottish power? But they were supposed to come out 2 days ago sometime between 12-5 and they never showed up, because even though they said they were coming 2 days ago, 2 days ago clearly means February 1st? Don't get the logic there, but hey.

I might be going to Amsterdam and Belgium in a few weeks which would be super exciting :) especially since I haven't been before!

New Kid on the Napier Block

Back in Edinburgh, and still no heat. Boo. But hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Today was my first day of classes. Woop. I was gone for FOREVER. Okay, not really, but sort of. Class started at 9:30 am and I got done at 5:15ish. I had a break in the middle so it wasn't too bad. I have to admit, I was TERRIFIED about being the new kid. I've never really had that experience. Switching schools from EDS to O'Neal in 4th grade, I had half of my EDS friends with me and I knew some of the kids at O'Neal. No big deal. Yes, when I went to college, I was a new kid, but so was everyone else really. But this time around, I was the ONLY new kid. I knew as a film student in a film class, I'd be interacting with people so it would be okay. But I was pleasantly surprised when while the class was filing in, a girl named Sophie went out of her way to come talk to me because I was new. :) Lame, but it was nice to have someone come over and speak to me since I was terrified, and it made it a really easy transition to talking to other people in the class and getting to know other people.

I had Fiction Films today. The way classes work are over here is that you follow a course and the people on that course, such as our major, take certain classes in certain years, and you're generally in the same class with the same people. So everyone seemed to know each other relatively well. I mean, that happens in FST at UNCW, the Silvas make sure of it, but this seemed a bit different. Our project is a translation project. We have to take the idea of Macbeth and translate the character relations and similar issues to a new story. We got into groups and brain stormed for a bit, compared ideas with other groups, and that was that.

Next, I had a sound class. Well, it's part of another class, not sure which one yet, but we're in groups and depending on which group you're in depends on what day you meet. I'm in a group with two guys named Andy and Karel. Both which are ultra friendly, and they remind me of people from home. We got a list and did some sound recording around the Film Academy. Flicker kids, be jealous, they have some awesome sound equipment.

And I found out some good news! Tomorrow I'm in class from 10-1, not 10-5 because I had my sound class today! YAY! I'm meeting with my group though tomorrow after class to figure things out for our plan for our sound scape.

I really like the people in my courses. They all seem really nice, and it's a relief to have the first day over with!

Shenanigans

I'm currently sitting back in Dunblane with a wonderful cup of tea in a heated house. Ahh. So lovely. Although, the weather has just turned BANANAS. It was realtively sunny out and warm, and now it's like hurricane winds and torrential downpour? Oh Scotland, your weather still confuses me.

Edinburgh is amazing, but it would be better if there was some heating in the flat. At least we have wireless internet working. Now we just need the heating and we need to figure out when the trash goes out...

I was told that I was supposed to start classes next week. Well. Napier failed me on that one. Somehow, my classes actually started THIS week, while I was in the orientation sessions. Well, that was stupid. Luckily, all of my teachers seem really nice about it, and have e-mailed me the handouts that they gave out in class. It just really sucks, since the two classes I've missed are the classes that are literally all day.

Here's my schedule for the semester:

Monday:

9:30-12:30 : Fictions Film

Lunch Break

2:00-5:00 : Fictions Film

Tuesday:

10:00- 5:00 : Deconstructing Narrative

Wednesday:

11:00-1:00 : Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

Thursday:

9:00-10:00: Contemporary Hollywood Cinema

This class could also be at 10, it just depends on the section that I get placed in. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for 10 am. Having to brave rush hour traffic and making my bus for a 9 am doesn't seem to pleasant.

4:00-6:00: Contemporary Hollywood Cinema Screening

AKA Mondays and Tuesdays are going to be hell days. But the classes seem like they will be fun. Lots of production aspects which I'm excited about, and it seems that we have all this time so that we can actually film IN class. Different from Wilmington where we have to arrange times to meet with our groups outside of class and try to figure out times where we can all meet. Most of the time it ends up working out, but it can also be quite disastrous.

I'm looking into spending the money and just getting a bus pass. That way I can actually go places in between classes, and it will end up saving me like 15-20 quid a month (AKA about 30 bucks a month). And that's just if I use the bus to go to and from class. I could actually be saving more than that if I wanted to go to the gym and stuff, instead of paying £1.20 for every bus that I take, or £3.00 for a day pass.

I hope everyone in NC is surviving the snow and ice! :) Yay for Wilmington actually getting snow!