Raisin Weekend

This past weekend, I participated in an age old tradition at St. Andrews-- Rasin Weekend. It's tied to another tradition here, academic families. First year students are adopted by third year 'parents' at the start of the school year. It's similar to Bigs and Littles in Greek life. However, first years get both a mom and a dad, and parents can adopt as many children as they want. Parents are meant to help their children make the transition to university life, mostly by upping their alcohol intake. It turns out that JSA's (Junior Semester Abroad) can get parents, since we're new here, too. I got my parents a bit late, close to Halloween. They are Molly and Jon. I also have a number of siblings with the same parents (as opposed to many first years, who have mostly half siblings). The biggest parental/family occasion is Raisin Weekend. I'm not sure when the traditions started, but they've been around for a along time, and their completely unique to St Andrews. The festivities begin on Sunday afternoon, with your mom's tea party. I'm assuming that back in the day, these were actually tea parties. Today, the beverages are a bit more varied (and a bit stronger). My siblings and I hung out in Molly's room playing games. Jon joined us, then took over his main responsibility-- the Sunday night party. We made our way over to Jon's house, where he had quite the beverage selection. More games, more fun. After some time, a couple hours, I don't know, Jon took us over to another dad's party. On the walk there, we kids avoided all the police who are all over town. Jon, however, started to talking to them, and we lost him. Seeing as we didn't know were the party we were going to was, it seemes natural to stop for food. (It was probably around dinner time at this point.) So to Empire we went for a huge plate of fries (chips). Still no sign of Jon, so we went over to Tesco and bought pasta in the prepared food section. I guess we were hungry. Outside, we managed to get a hold of Jon and he collected us back up. At the second party there were tons of people. It was really fun, and I ran into lots of friends. It seemed like most of Uni Hall was there, and so were some of Rachel's friends from John Burnet. My (academic) sister Zoe and I stayed til about 12, then went back to get some sleep. Gotta rest up for Monday.

Raisin Monday is, in my opinion, the best day at St Andrews. All the classes are cancelled (unless your teacher is just mean, some are) and the Raisin fesitivites continue. In the morning, children go back to their mom's house. In appreciation for being wonderful parents, and having parties on Raisin Sunday, kids give their parents each a bottle of wine. Wine has replaced the traditional gift, a pound of raisins. In return, fathers give their children a reciept. But first, the moms are charge of dressing their children up in crazy costumes. (This will all make more sense shortly.) Moms get pretty creative. My siblings and I were dressed as Raisins. Basically, we were in trash bags all stuffed full of newspaper, with little boxes of raisins taped to us. It was pretty funny. I saw everything from superheroes, the whole Simpsons family, and babies, to caterpillars (all the kids connected), and all sorts of animals. Once dressed, children are ready for their receipts. Originally, receipts were written in Latin on parchment. Today, they are usually big, heavy, and/or gross objects, seeing at the kids have to carry them to Sally's Quad. All week I had been hearing that Jon's receipt was amazing, but I had no idea what it was. Molly led us outside to see. Jon had built himself one of those chair things that kings used to be carried on. It had a seat and back, all covered in fabric. He was dressed like Ceasar, complete with a glass of wine and grapes. He had also made a banner with the Latin message for the receipt painted on it. We had to carry him in his seat thing all the way to the Quad. Even with all 5 kids (3 boys!) we couldn't do it. He let us take frequent breaks, and he walked part of the way. We live really far from the Quad. The whole walk there, you see all the other kids decked out in their costumes carrying their receipts and their parents accompanying them. The townspeople all gather on the streets to watch. We were quite the spectacle.

Here we are carrying dear old dad, King of Men.

Even though the walk there was a struggle, it was lots of fun. People were pretty impressed with our reciept, and I must say, it was genious. We did manage to carry him all the way down North Street and into the Quad entrance. At that point, everyone dumps their reciepts into huge trash bins and the kids get in line. Wat are we all doing at the Quad you ask? Well, only the coolest thing ever-- having a foam fight!

That's right, a foam fight. All the kids in their costumes wait to be set loose into the Quad with cans of shaving foam. At 11, they opened the gates and we poured in. Within minutes, foam was EVERYWHERE! There were literally hundreds of us. We started out spraying everyone we knew, then moved onto everyone we didn't know. Every exposed surface was white-- our faces, hair, and clothes, the ground, everything. Our doting parents stood around the perimeter, behind the tape, and look lots of pictures. There was a huge crowd of people watching; they spread all down North Street. After about a half hour of foam fighting, we were completely covered, all out of foam, and very cold. Time to head back home.

Sea of Foam

(from left to right) Anna, me Tina, and Zoe, in all our foam covered glory

I can see why this is one experience that everyone talks about at St Andrews. I'm really glad I got to be a part of this tradition, partly because it was so much fun, but also because its such a unique experience and one I will never forget.

Thanksgiving- Uni Hall Style

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone had a fun and relaxing holiday. I'll be honest, this was the first time I've ever been homesick. Thanksgiving isn't quite the same across the pond, what with them not really caring about the pilgrims and turkey and football. I, however, was in full holiday mode. Therefore, I skipped class, didn;t go the gym, and cooked all afternoon, which is what you're meant to do on Thanksgiving. Fortunately, there are lots of Americans in my hall, and we weren't about to let Thanksgiving pass by without a feast. Our amazing International Students Rep, Brett oraganized a big Thanksgiving dinner. He got the kitchen to cook us some chickens. I know, not turkey, but close enough, at least if you're a vegetarian. Then, we all cooked the traditional (and some non-tradiational) side dishes.

Our awesome Rep Brett with Laura and her amazing stuffing!

A few friends and I took over one of the hall kitchens and got to cooking. Laura was making stuffing, Kristyna chocolate chip cookies, and I took on the sweet potatoe casserole, complete with the marshmallows on top. Our friend Anna (she's English) tagged along to learn about this whole Thanksgiving thing--she was very intrigued by a holiday centered around food.
Given our lack of dishes, utensils, counter space, and experience, I think we turned out some amazing food. I never realized how many things I take for granted in my well-stocked kitchen at home until I tried to cook in an empty one. I mean, it's one thing to have to buy all the ingredients for a dish, down to the milk and butter. But I had to buy a pan as well. Then, in the kitchen, we realized that there weren't any bowls, We only had two knives and one measuring cup between the three of us. We didn't have a clue how to turn the ovens. (I promise it was not at all straightforward.) We had to improvise some with ingredients and measurements, what with the whole conversion issue. This was not a simple task.

We all ran into our fair share of obstacles. Kristyna had a hard time with the measuring, since improvising is not so easy when baking. Laura's measuring cup was in cups, but she bought it here, and it seemed way off. Oh, and they don't have chocolate chips in Britain, so she had to chop up a bar of chocolate, which required precious knife usage. She also forgeot to buy baking powder, but was able to borrow someone else's in the end. She finally got all the rounded teaspoonfuls of dough on the cookie sheet, only to find out it didn't fit into our miniature ovens. At this point she disappeared to another floor to find a smaller pan or a bigger oven.

Laura's stuffing was a family recipe-but-not-an -actual-recipe type thing. Basically it involved some combinaiton of bread, butter, onions, celery, and poultry seasoning (which they also don't have here). The proportions were a little off (she had about three loaves of bread left over) but in the end it turned out great. We taste-tested regularly to make sure. After seeing how much butter went into that recipe, I think I know why it was so good.

I've neer actually made sweet potatoe casserole before, but I decided to give it a shot. Given our initial inability to turn on the oven, I started by microwaving the sweet potatoes. Who knew it took 15 minutes to cook 3 sweet potatoes? And I had to do 2 batches! Oh well, all the more time to help Laura tear up bread. Once my potatoes were cooked, I practically burned my fingers off trying to scrape the potatoe-y part out of the skin. As my mom knows, the potatoes don't mash themselves, so that was my next task. Remember how I said we didn't have any bowls? So into the pan they went to be mashed, with my one and only fork. The recipe I found called for milk and butter and salt, as well as nutmeg ans some other spices. Well, it turns out spices are kind of pricey and Laura already cinammon, so I replaced all the spices the recipe called for with cinammon. Oh, and I accidently bought pecans instead of walnut, but I like pecans better, so maybe I subconciously meant to. Of course, I put the marshmallows on top, even though all my Scottish friends thought it was weird. What's weird is that you can't buy bags of plain white marshmallows here. They come in a mix of pink and white, so I bought two bags because I refused to put pink marshmallows on my sweet potatoes. In the end, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Once everything had come out of the oven, we brought it down to the common room were everyone was gathering for dinner. By the time we got there, there were already the chickens, greeen beans, mashed potatoes, and an impressive array of desserts. Eventaully everything showed up--stuffing, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, roasted vegetables, 2 sweet potatoes casseroles, salad, rolls, and cranberry sauce (which showed up very late, tsk tsk). That was only one half of the buffet. The other half, of course, was desserts--2 pumpikin pies, chocolate cake, fudge doughnuts, chocolate chip cookies, chococlate chocolate chip muffins, some lemon-y cake, and pecan pie (also late). In addition to all the "normal" food, there were two small pizzas, pita bread, hummus, and nachos.

Our Thanksgiving spread, sideways (I have to figure out how to rotate these!)

Laura and Kirsty enjoying the feast.

Kathryn, fellow American and maker of the pumpkin pies, eating a very non-traditional but delicious fudge doughnut.
It was sooooo good. It was a good thing we had so much food, because a lot of people showed up. Pretty much all the Americans in hall were there, along with some non-Americans who just wanted to eat good food. Then we had some visitors from outside of hall stop by. Everyone consumed massive quantities of food. I had three full plates. That includes my dessert plate of pumpkin pie and chocolate cake. I was disappointed at the lack of pecan pie, but I was so stuffed by this point it didn;t matter. Then, just as I'm debating unbuttoning my pants, the pecan pie shows up. It was like I instantly grew a second stomach. So, just one last plate, and it was totally worth it- that was good pecan pie.

This Thanksgiving might not have been the same as at home, but I had a great time. I have lots be thankful for, starting with all my friends here at St Andrews who have become like family. Enjoying the holiday with them was the next best thing to being at home with my biological family.

When in Rome

And so, after our train mishap (see previous post) Rachel and I arrived in Rome. Having negotiated our way around Florence, we felt much more confident in our ability to navigate through Rome. With only one U-turn (and a bit of confusion regarding it's location on the first floor, which means second floor in Europe), we found the hostel. This one was definitely not as nice as the one in Florence, but its was not as expensive either. We definitely got what we paid for. We were staying in an 8-bed room with a shared bathroom. I didn't mind sharing the room so much, except getting ready in the dark. More annoying was the fact that our stuff was out in the open. That meant always carrying our passports and important stuff on us, since we couldn't lock them up. Also, we had to deal with some seriously loud late-night partyers. I typically sleep like a rock, but even I had a hard time. The upside was getting to meet some friends. Our roommates were all American's and Australians, some backpacking and others just on vacation like us. They were all really nice, and it was fun hanging out with people who spoke our language. We also helped each other figure out the city--what to see, when to go, where to eat.
That first night we didn't get to do much. It was already late when we arrived, so we began our search for food. It didn't take us long to find a little restaurant that wasn't too expensive. Of course, I had pasta, And we rounded out our meal with yet another bottle of wine. Then, it was early to bed since we knew we had a full day ahead.

In the morning, we mapped out our route and set off to do Rome in a day. It seemed that the best thing to do would be to take the metro across the city and work our way back on foot. So we hopped on the train and set off. First stop: The Vatican. We arrived at around 9:30 or so and already the line looked impossibly long. But you can't miss the Vatican, so to the back of the line we went. Amazingly, we wound around some four blocks in less than 40 minutes and got inside. There's much more to do there than I had thought. There's a museum that quite large, which is where we started out. We got to see all the old stamps, displays on past Popes, and even all the old Pope-mobiles (they used to have some pretty amazing carriages). There a very nice courtyard that we walked through on our way to the Sistine Chapel. I thought that we would just follow the signs, go in and stare at the ceiling, and then leave. Little did I know that to get to the actual chapel, you walk through much of a rather large building. I kid you not when I say that the entire route was breathtaking. Literally every wall and every ceiling was covered with the most ornate painting and sculpture I have ever seen. It was all so amazingly detailed and it just never seemed to end. I had no idea that there was that much to see.

Vatican bulding from the courtyard

We eventually made it into the actualy chapel. At this point, you are not allowed to take any pictures. Everywhere else, it's no flash, but here it's none at all. Of course, we totally took pictures, but they're not all that good since I had to hold the camera down by my hip and point it the ceiling. I did, however, manage to get the famous part in, with the hands reaching towards each other. I'll be honest, I thought that was the only thing on the ceiling. I had no idea there were so many other scenes, and that the walls were all painted as well. The magnitude of it is just unreal.

That's my best ceiling shot, a little crooked, but you can see

the hands in the second section from the left.

After leaving the chapel, we walked back into the Vatican from another entrance, near St Peter's Basilica. Again, the line looked unbelievably long. While we were willing to wait for the Sistine chapel, this one we just weren't up for. I mean, it was after 1:00 and we were very hungry. We did take some pictures of the outside though, which kind of makes up for it.

St. Peter's Basilca. Check out the statues along the roof (and the line of people in front).

From here, we went in search of food. Cheap food is not easy to find, but we came across a a little sandwich place where we sat down. Let me just say, Italy is the place to be if you're a vegetarian. Sure they've got their ham sandwiches, bet there's ALWAYS veggie sandwiches and pizza and pasta. It's awesome. Anyways, after my lovely egg, lettuce and tomato sandwich (might sound strange but it was really good) we crossed over a bridge to the other side of the city.

Now it was time to hit all the other places on our list. We passed the Mausoleo di Augusto on our way to the Spanish Steps. Since, Rachel's knee wasn't 100% better, we figured it was best to avoid going up the steps. To that end, we took a side street and emerged at the top of the steps, which gives a nice view of the square below. We made our way down the stairs, stopping to take pictures at each level, until we reached the fountain at the bottom. The street directly in front of the steps has all the big designer shops. So, we walked down there, past Gucci, Prada, Valentino, Armani, etc. Sorry to disappoint you, but none of our souvenirs/gifts came form that street. It was fun to see them all though. After stopping for a mandatory gelato (two scoops, chocolate and strawberry, sooooo good) we headed to the Trevi Fountain. There's a myth of something about throwing coins in, one to come back, two for getting engaged or married or something. Needless to say, Rachel and I each threw in a coin. Rachel's coin worked last time, since here she was again, so hopefully they'll work again.

Tossing my coin into the fountain

After tossing our coins, we walked to the Pantheon. I honestly didn;t know what the pantheon was, so I didn;t know what to expect. It sort of looks out of place in it's little square, surrounded by less historic buildings. Inside it's a church (I didn't know that) with some statues and an alter and other churchy stuff. Unfortunately, it was really dark, so the pictures didn't turn out so well, but it was quite pretty. From the Pantheon, we went to the Wedding Cake. It as an Italian name, but I don;t know what it is. The building is quite stunning, but of course they were doing renovations so much of the front was covered in sheets or something. I can imagine it would ahve looked really remarkable uncovered. The statues flanking the sides were cool though, so we took some pictures of them. Sadly, I can;t add more than 5 pictures to a post, and these didn't make the cut.

By this point, it was starting to get dark, but we still hadn't seen everything. Luckily, it was all fairly close by. Just behin the Wedding Cake is the Roman Forum. This is more what I expected to find in Rome--ruins of old buildings. The forum actually covered quite a large area. We walked around the perimeter, but didn't have time to explore inside. If I ever go back, I'd like to spend more time there.

Roman Forum

We then took a longish route to the Colosseum so we could go by the place where they used to have races. Now it's just an oval of grass with a dirt/gravel path around it. But it's still cool to tihnk, I'm walking where they used to race. By this time, it was dark, but we had to see the Colosseum. It's absolutely immense. I could only see inside a little bit. This is another place I would definitely return to, if given the chance. By now, we were both exhausted, so we went back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. I will admit, we committed a grave sin in our choice of restaurants. We ate Chinese food in Italy. But it was good, and it was cheap, and it was close to the hostel. It doesn't matter, somewhere inside, I still know that it was very wrong.

So there you have Rome in a day. I must say, I think that if I had it do over again, other than spending more time at the Roman Forum and the pantheon, I wouldn't do much different. Since we'd managed to fit everything in, we decided to take a day trip tomorrow to Pompeii. Rachel desperately wanted to go, and I thought it sounded cool, and since you never know when you'll have another opportunity to go to Pompeii, we decided to take it. So, next up in my Reading Week blogs: A Day in Pompeii.

And They're Off...To Italy That Is

As I've mentioned, Rachel and I started our travels off in Italy. More specifically, we flew into Pisa, home of the leaning tower. Here, we encountered our first of many obstacles/adventures. You see, we were staying in Florence, which is about a 2 hour bus ride away--significant enough that we would not be returning to Pisa. But seriously, how can one go to Pisa and not see the leaning tower. So we collected our bags (and by we I mean me, since Rachel was still hobbling around on the crutch) and hopped on the city bus. After missing our stop once and riding all through the city, we got off at a close-enough stop. Picture the following scenario: Rachel is on her one crutch, I have my backpack and am pulling our 2 suitcases. The sidewalks in Italy are only wide enough for half a person. We cross under some bridge and fight our way through all the vendors into the square with the tower.

By the time we arrived the sun was setting, and the tower really did look beautiful against the horizon. We took the obligatory "holding up the tower" pictures. As you can see, these were taken from a distance, and we lined ourselves up to make it look like we were pushing against the tower. After setting up to take the shot, I understood why an Asian woman had been in the exact same pose moments before. (She was not in fact doing tai-chi as I had originally thought.)




Besides the tower and the church standing next to it, there isn't mush to see in Pisa. So, after our photos, we picked everything back up, hopped on the bus and went back to the airport. From there we hopped on a bus to Florence.

It didn't really occur to me until we were on the bus that I had no idea where we going in Florence. Fortunately, Rachel had the hostel reservation and it came with directions. But guess what, when you don't know how Italian and the street signs are scarce, they're only so helpful. Miraculously, we found it, only to get upstairs and find out it was full. The owner(?) led us to another hostel, and even helped carry our bags. As it turned out, the hostel we ended up in looked better than the one we had reserved. It was actually quite nice. We had our own room. There were two (clean!) bathrooms, a kitchen, and free internet. Also, the location was great, just a few minutes walk to the Academia. That night,we basically got in and crashed so we could get an early start the next morning.

Sunday we headed out bright and early. The plan was to find breakfast first. (I am very cranky if no one feeds me in the morning.) To my dismay, we happenned upon the Galleria dell'Accademia before coming across a cafe. It turned out for the best though, as we only waited in line for about 15 minutes. I hear the wait can be over an hour later in the day. We saw quite a collection of paintings and sculptures, culminating in Michelangelo's David. The scale is absoultely amazing. I don't know much (read: anything) about art, but this was spectacular. Pictures aren't allowed inside, but we did get some of the replica that now stands in the Palazzo della Signoria.

In fact, we were on our way to the Santa Croce when we noticed a large sculpture down the street in the opposite direction. Rachel and I looked at each other, said "That looks cool," and wandered over. Turns out, we had wandered into the Palazzo della Signoria. We saw the David statue, as well as Neptune, and several others. After taking some pictures outisde, we got back on track and headed over to the Santa Croce. It's a beautiful Gothic church. Being Sunday, it unfortunately wasn't open. I wish we had gotten to go inside. It wasn't a huge loss though, as there was lots more to see. Next, we wanted to go to Uffizi. When we pulled out the map, we realized that it was in the Palazzo della Signoria, where we had just been. Laughing at our stupidity, we walked back to the palazzo. In the end we didn't go in Uffizi, but the museum next door as the line was much shorter. Neither Rachel nor I know much about art, so we had pretty much had our fill of art museums after that.

Here's the Santa Maria del Fiore, known as The Duomo. You can't see the dome from this angle, but it's the best-known cathedral in the city.

This is the statue of Neptune in the Palazzo della Signoria. I was going to show you the David, but Rachel has all those pictures. I only have one from behind. I mena, its still a nice view, but I'll wait for a normal picture.

That's the front of the Basilica of Santa Croce. Unfortunately the light wasn't great, but as you can see, the building is still spectacular. Wish we could have gone inside.

I'll be honest, I don't excatly remember where this was take. i do know that it's a picture of a ceiling. It could be a ceiling in the museum we visited. In fact, that's quite likely. We'll go with that for now. If I figure it out for sure, I'll update with accurate information. :)

By the time we'd seen all this, we were starving again. (I really am like a small child, always complaining that I was either hungry or that I had to go the bathroom.) We ended up finding a sidewalk cafe in the middle of a plaza where we had delicious pizza and listened to a woman singing opera. I could really get used to this.

Exhausted from our day of travel the day before and walking around all morning, we went back to the hostel for a quick nap. It turned into more of a two hour nap, so we woke up in time for dinner. We went out to find a restaurant, which ended up taking about an hour, maybe more. (This ended up being the norm. We spent a large portion of every day looking for places to eat.) After walking all the way down to the river, along the bank, and back towards the center of the city, we found a nice little place. It was quite small, but the food was great. Fresh bread, spaghetti with tomato sauce, and a bottle of wine. On the way back to the hostel, we stopped for gelato. (I think gelato is heaven, an pretty much demanded that we have it daily.) Really, I could eat like this every day.

On Monday, it was time to catch our train to Rome. We had to check out by 10, but our train wasn't until 12:20, so we packed our bags and went looking for a cafe. We were lucky to find one right by the station. We had time to kill, so we had breakfast--muffins, oranges, and cappuccinos. And yes, we enjoyed feeling quite European drinking our cappuccinos in a cafe in Florence. Then, being the responsible people we are, Rachel and I went to the station a full hour before our train was to depart. We stood watching the screen, waiting for it to come up. Waiting....11:40, 12:00, 12:20. Yea, it was a 12:20 train, but there was still no sign of it. Off we went to information, where I spoke to an Italian guy whose English was terrible. He told us we missed the train. Not possible I said. It never came. Well, that's because we were at the wrong train station. Ha! In that case, perhaps we did miss it. Who knew there were two train stations in Florence? Not us. In our defense, the station we were supposed to go to isn't even on the map, and the Italian train system is not exactly straightforward. In the end, we took a train from the central station to the one we were supposed to leave from, and caught the next train to Rome. other than gettin to Rome a few hours later than planned, it all worked out.

So that was Pisa and Florence. Stay tuned for the rest of the trip. Next up: Rome!

A Whirlwind of a Week!

I'm back at St Andrews after an absolutely amazing Reading Week. I had sincere intentions to blog all about my travels during the actual week, but we can see that that didn't happen. We crammed our days so full and then came back and collapsed into bed every night. But there are lots of stories and pictures that I can't wait to share. At this very moment, I am downloading 132 pictures from the second half of the week, not including the ones I plan to steal from Rachel. (For those of you who know I NEVER take pictures, that's impressive!) Once I can get them somewhat organized, I plan on having a blogging field day. I should of course be doing work, but since all I want to do is go back to travelling around Europe, telling you all about it is the next best thing. Check in over the next few days for my belated posts from Florence, Rome, Pompeii, Prague, and Geneva!

Countdown to Reading Week: 7 Days!

OK, first, the Reading Week plans.
Let me just say that planning a week of traveling (especially on a student budget) is not easy. Rachel and I had basically no idea how to go about doing this. We didn't even know where we wanted to go. We had a few vague ideas, and, being list-makers, we decided to write them down. We ended up with an entire page of places, including London, Bath, Dublin, Paris, Nice, Prague, Italy, Greece, and Germany. And that's just what I remmeber! Clearly, we needed to narrow it down. Having never been to Europe, I want to see and do everything. Other than definitely wanting to Prague to visite my cousin George, I didn't have any strong preferences. We both want to go to London, Bath and Paris, but since those are relatively close, it makes more sense to do them as weekend trips.

So, we were left deciding between the rest of our option. Rachel's been on a few vacations in Europe, and had a better idea of what she wanted to do, so I pretty much let her decide. Greece is on the top her list, so we looked into that first. We initally tried to plan a trip that would include Greece and Prague. We began loking into flights, hoping to find something affordable. Initially, we found a pretty inexpensive flight to Prague, but the cheapest one from Prague to Athens was over $3,000. We thought that was the end of our Greece trip, until I realized I had selected Athens, Georgia, not Athens, Greece. Fixed that, and the price went down substantially. Seemed like it would work, and we planned to get together later to buy the tickets and book the hostel rooms.

In the meantime, it occurs to me that I should contact George and let him know that I want to come for a visit (perhaps before I book my flight, in fact). After about a week of waiting to hear back from him, figuring out I had an old email address, and waiting for my Mom to get me the new one, I finally get a reply. Good thing I asked, because it turns out he and his wife Marketa are going to be in the States during most of our Reading Week. Bummer. However, they are getting back on Thursday and he graciously offered to let us stay with them Thursday to Saturday. Not the original plan, but still good.

Meeting with Rachel again. This time, we're REALLY going to make our plans. Turns out there's some kind of unrest or something in Greece, so we scratch that idea. Back to squre one. We entertained the idea of doing a Mediterranean cruise. Haha. Not on this budget. But. now, we were fixated on Italy. So we look into flights and hostels, and it seems doable. We factor in the two days in Prague. We figure out the that cheapest way to get home from Prague is to fly on EasyJet through Geneva. To do that, we have to stay one night in Geneva. I'm not complaining. (By the way, EasyJet is AMAZING. Yea, they only fly to like 3 places from Edinburgh, and yea you can only take a suitcase that weights like 3 lbs., but seriously, the flights are sooooo cheap.)

And so, after much deliberation, and much time spent on the money conversion website, here are our final plans:

We leave next Saturday, fly to London, then connect to Pisa (yes Mom, the one with the tower).
2 days in Florence
Train ride
3 days in Rome
Another flight
2 days in Prague
Plane again
1 night in Geneva
Last one (we're gonna be so sick of peanuts)
Back to Edinburgh

How fabulous is that? Best part, all the travel was less that $500. Hostels were pretty reasonable. That means we might actually have money left for attractions, and shopping, and food! We're still working on what we actually want to do and see in each city. I'm sure it will be hard to fit everything in. I know we can't do it all, but it will still be an amazing trip. I can't wait to tell you about it. The current plan is to bring the laptop. With any luck, there will be WiFi and I can post throughout the trip.

Happy Halloween! (Hogwarts Style)

I must say I was quite happy to find out that Halloween is almost as big in Britain as it is in America. They still get dressed up and have parties. I think most kids go trick-or-treating, but apparently fewer houses give out candy. With Halloween falling on a Wednesday (and morning classes falling on a Thursday) I didn't actually go out for the night. However, Uni Hall had a special dinner that was waaaaay cooler than any Halloween party.

Harry Potter!

Yes, we had a Hogwarts-themed hall dinner. And they went all out. For all you Muggles (non-witches in Hogwarts-speak), you may not appreciate the great lengths they went to. The rest of you will be quite jealous. The tables were arranged in four rows, just like at Hogwarts. When we arrived, we picked our table from the sorting hat. I was Hufflepuff (boo--everyone now Hufflepuff is the reject house). Two of my friends got Gryffindor. I'm not bitter.

Inside the hall, the decorations were amazing. They had ghosts hanging from the ceiling. Spiderwebs were stretched across the tables. They had plastic bugs all over, including in the salad bar--that was a fun surprise. There was even the music from the movie playing in the background. Possibly the best part was seeing everyone dressed up. First off, its pretty cool that the University has gowns in the first place. Even better, they are perfect for a Harry Potter dinner. Most of us had the red gowns on and witches hats, along with the occasional wand. It looked quite authentic.

Fortunately, the cooks stuck to the regular menu. In the past, they've tried to do the gross looking Halloween-themed food and it just ends up being gross tasting. I was very afraid of the possibility of slimy, green-dyed, and/or fake-body-part-looking food. Thankfully, the scariest thing was Sahara-dry chicken, which I don't even eat.

So, the dinner pretty much made my night. I hope everyone at home had a fun Halloween, too. I did miss getting to see little kids all dressed up. I also missed candy corn. Apparently, it's an American thing. I went to a candy shop and asked for it. This place literally has hundreds of jars of candies. I got blank stares. I then try to explain candy corn. Before you read this, imagine how you would try to explain it to someone who'd never seen it before. It's hard!

My attempt: It's a sugar-type candy...looks like a corn kernel...but longer...(I'm gesturing at this point)...with three colors. Blank stares. I leave the store.

After this fine moment, I call home and ask Dad to buy a bag and not let anyone eat it. I can have it all to myself when I get home--in December.

Oh, and just an update from the last post: I have told the parents about my travel plans. However, it's late and I don't have the energy to get excited about them again right now, so you'll have to wait for the next post. I promise I'll share them soon.