Home Stay in the Lake District

Seeing that Heathrow Airport definitely does not count as a legitimate trip to England, this past weekend marks my first official trip to the land of Beatrix Potter, The Beatles, William Wordsworth, and Daniel Radcliffe, just to name a few (which is going to cause me to digress ever so quickly just to point out that the HARRY POTTER PREMIERE HAPPENS THIS WEEK!!!!!!!) Alright. Back on topic now.

The home stay was part of my study abroad program with Arcadia so everything was all organized and set up for us ahead of time, all we had to do was show up ready to take in the beauty of the Lake District. Louisa Williams (another Davidson student studying abroad through Arcadia) and I just happened to end up placed with the same family, so it was very nice to have a familiar face there with me and someone to freak out with every time we saw a sheep. Honestly, I'm not sure exactly what my obsession with them is... they are just so cute! I have been seriously contemplating how I can sneak one (or two... or three) back to the U.S. and let them loose to graze outside of my new apartment building at Davidson next semester. I'm sure Physical Plant wouldn't mind... in all honesty they'd probably my little sheep friends lightening their landscaping workload.

Our train arrived in Penrith around 7:00 on Friday night and we were greeted by our host family, Alan and Jackie Wright and their 13 year old son Paul. Our information cards had told us that both of the parents were teachers and that Jackie's hobbies included reading, music and needlework while Alan's included DIY, caravanning and home computing. They were both incredibly interesting and we learned much more about them throughout the weekend. It turns out that they have been caravanning all over the UK and Europe for many years now and they have friends all over the place that they like to meet up with for big annual events. So this meant that Louisa and I got all the 411 on the British caravanning scene and were driven all around the area by someone who knew the landscape like the back of their hand. Jackie also plays six instruments (let's see if I can remember all of them... piano, clarinet, flute, basset horn, organ... and... I'm blanking on the last one. But as you can see, her musical repertoire is quite impressive). Their son Paul is also really into cross country and had a meet on Saturday morning. We got to hear all about it while marveling at the intensely muddy state of his clothes when we picked him up after the race. We also got to hear Jackie giving him a hard time for dirtying his white shorts and white shoes to the point of being unrecognizable, which was quite funny and reminded me of the good old days when my very own mommy would nag me about such things. Good thing she'll be in Edinburgh just next week to get me back in line and make me do more than just the bare minimum when it comes to laundry and cleaning my room...

Here are some pictures from our full day of adventuring on Saturday. As you can see, we covered lots of ground!

Hiking down towards Ullswater, one of the largest lakes in the area

Aira Force Waterfall

Climbing back on up

The Kirkstone Pass Inn - the oldest pub in the Lake District

It's also the highest pub in the Lake District - 1,481 feet above sea level!

THE WORDSWORTH COTTAGE!

You know... just being an excited English major

Just in case you were really worried you might get lost on the one path leading through the graveyard

And there he is, William Wordsworth himself. He's got a pretty nice location too, situated right near the shop selling the famous Grasmere gingerbread. I was glad to see that good old Wordsworth gets to enjoy the smell of the top secret recipe wafting through the air on a daily basis.

Castlerigg stone circle just outside of the town of Keswick

Louisa and I pausing for a picture

Lowther Castle just outside of Shap

After a jam packed day on Saturday we spent the better part of Sunday relaxing, catching up on reading and doing crosswords while nestled on their incredibly comfortable living room couches. Jackie prepared a delicious meal for us for lunch that day (we're talking lamb, neeps, mashed potatoes, gravy, the works) and even shared her recipe for golden syrup pudding with us. Louisa and I were quite proud of ourselves for crafting the dessert from scratch and it tasted amazingly exactly like the pancakes from my all time favorite breakfast place in Wilmington, Causeway Café. So it was quite nice to have a little taste of home all the way in England.

After I played the piano for a little while at Jackie's request, Louisa and I boarded the train and headed back to Edinburgh. The temperature continues to drop over here so we weren't surprised at all to see snow on the ground outside for most of the trip home. Looks like I'll be bundling up even more from here on out!

Well this will probably be my last post for a while since come Thursday I am on the go again, this time heading to Vienna to visit Patrick for four days! Now, Patrick is always way overplaying my role as travel guide in his blogs, whether it is in his entry from his trip to Edinburgh or the one recapping our time in Paris. So I would like to take just a moment to thank him for the incredible itinerary that he has planned out for my visit to Vienna. Highlights include ice skating, a Rapid Wien football game, visits to the famous Christmas Market, the Harry Potter premiere (alskdjf;aowijefoawiejfoiwJefl;KSdjclksdjf;lLAKJSOFAIWEJFOAWIEJFOI!!!!!!!! SOOO EXCITED!!!!! Ahem. Anyway...), and even a trip to the Coffee Museum (yes, they have a coffee museum. I'm already thinking it is one of the greatest cities on earth and I haven't even gotten there yet). He has also carefully selected a famous café for each day that I will be there, meaning that he is going to willingly sit with me while I marvel over each and every delectable caffeinated beverage. In a nutshell, I couldn't ask for more :)

After Vienna I will be stopping over briefly in London to meet up with Mom, Dad and Julia! They get into Heathrow on Sunday and once I get there on Monday we will embark on some whirlwind sightseeing before I head back up to Edinburgh early Wednesday morning to be a good student and get back in time for class. They'll be spending one more day sightseeing before taking the high speed train from London on Thursday morning. We are renting a flat just off the Royal Mile and I am currently planning a hodgepodge of a Thanksgiving dinner for us to enjoy once they get here. If anyone happens to have heard of stove top stuffing or canned pumpkin being sold in Scotland, please let me know ASAP. As of right now I believe our menu is going to consist of either some wimpy little turkey breasts (since I am striking out every time I go on a hunt for a legitimate turkey) or a pre-cooked Tesco roast chicken (I wouldn't want to assault my poor family with haggis right after they hop off the train) accompanied by traditional Scottish neeps (mashed turnips transformed into smooth, buttery, mashed up deliciousness), Mom's sweet potato casserole and the golden syrup pudding I have recently added to my dessert repertoire. So loosen up your belts family, it's going to be a random, but still delicious nonetheless, Turkey Day feast.

Until next time! I hope everyone is doing well. Thanks for reading as always!

Oh and just to end on a wonderful note... SHEEP!!!!!!

Come on... you know they made you smile.

A Weekend in the Great Outdoors

I have decided that one of the main reasons why I love Scotland so much is that it is simultaneously allowing me to indulge both the grandma and the little kid sides of my personality. Exhibit A - today I cooked my favorite childhood meal for dinner (SPAGHETTIO'S!!!!!! But more fondly known as "Uh-oh Spaghettio's" in my house. Except here the brand I buy has dubbed them 'Spaghetti Hoops.' Sure, whatever. As long as they keep costing just 19 pence thus allowing me to stick to my budget they can call them whatever they want). Please note that this cooking took place at 5:00 in the afternoon, my new dinnertime seeing that it gets dark around 4:00 and my stomach is just way too confused and impatient to wait until a more normal mealtime. And finally, please note that once I finished eating I proceeded to cozy up in my PJ's around 6:00. Gosh... writing this out I am beginning to recognize how lame I sound. Just to clarify, this is not exactly a daily occurrence. Just weekly. Maybe two times... or three.

Regardless, anyone who knows me well enough knows that I love nothing more than to wake up at a freakishly early hour to go running and then go to bed around 8:30 or 9:00 PM (clearly the grandma side). And even if you hardly know me at all you probably have heard me get far too excited about Disney or some other random childhood memory (ahem... my little kid side). Obviously this schedule doesn't really work so well in the world of college, so it is rare when I do get to partake in such a gloriously early to bed, early to rise sort of schedule. However, here in Scotland it has become a frequent occurrence and I am half loving every moment of it and half growing ashamed of my newfound love for cooking dinner at the same time you usually find Early Bird Specials at restaurants like Denny's and then crawling into bed to do a crossword.

But don't get too worried now, I am still partaking in plenty of activities which do not involve PJ's. I suppose I just prefer to do most of my exploring during the daylight hours, even though the number of hours of sunshine available each day is slowly dwindling. When I was sharing this phenomenon with Patrick the other day, he sent me the link to a website where I could look up the sunrise and sunset times for Edinburgh. I played around with it for a while and found that the shortest day I will experience during my time here is going to be December 15th with the sun set to rise at 8:44 and then say its goodbyes at just 3:39, giving us a whopping 6 hours and 55 minutes of daylight. Woo hoo!

Yet despite the shorter days, I continue to just randomly head off on adventures and get to know Edinburgh during my wanderings. Last week I went on a Muriel Spark adventure at the recommendation of my English professor. We had just finished reading her autobiography Curriculum Vitae so I thought it would be neat to see where she grew up here in Edinburgh as well as many of the places that have served as an inspiration for her novels. Here are some pictures from my wanderings.

The Meadows on a beautiful afternoon

Pretty building over on Warrender Park Road

To whoever lives in this house, sorry for being super creepy and not only snapping a picture of your front door but also posting it on my blog...

Oh hey Scotland - windy much?

Does this really even need a caption?

So now on to the portion of the blog post that actually goes along with its title. This past weekend I went on another trip through my Arcadia program, this time to the University of Edinburgh Firbrush Outdoor Activity Center. We left on Friday afternoon and then spent all of Saturday and Sunday gallivanting through the forests around the area surrounding Loch Tay. Okay, not really - that makes it sound like we got there, hopped off the bus and then were just set loose into the forest or something. There definitely was much more of a structured element to the program, but it was just so gloriously outdoorsy that I felt like describing it that way.

The view of Loch Tay from about five steps outside the front door of the Firbrush Center

After a delicious meal and a good night's sleep, we all went hill walking as one big group on Saturday. We "bagged" two munros (that's five total for me!) and all had a great time hoofing it up the hills and enjoying some amazing views.

Mairead, Stephanie, Jill and me about to set off on our hike

At the top! It was rather chilly and we were in a cloud for most of the time, hence the lack of scenery. It was beautiful, I promise.

There we go! A better view this time

Everything was frozen! Apparently they had just had snow the weekend before. As fun as that would have been... I'm glad we went when we did.

After we got back, there was a mad dash for the showers and then a period of about two hours where the entire building was dead silent since everyone had conked out for a nap. Given my terrible napping abilities, I just spent the time planning my post exam adventure down to Belgium. As soon as I finish up my last exam on December 11th I am hopping on a train down to Dover, where I'll spend the night in a B&B and see the white cliffs before taking a ferry over to Calais in northern France the next morning. From there I'll catch a train to Brussels and explore that along with Bruges and Ghent before flying Ryanair for £6 back to Edinburgh. My mom is less than thrilled (possible understatement? I think yes...) about me undertaking this excursion all by my lonesome, but I am really looking forward to it. All my friends I have talked to are just amazed that I want to go on my own, but I have always enjoyed traveling alone and I think it'll be a good final travel experience before heading home. But I am getting ahead of myself. Back to the here and now and this past weekend's ceilidh experience.

What our group did on Saturday night is precisely what people used to do back in the olden days when it was so freezing cold and snowy that it was difficult to get out and socialize on a regular basis given that your neighbors were miles and miles away. In Gaelic the word ceilidh means "gathering" and consists of an evening filled with dancing, the reciting of poems, story telling, and, of course, bagpipes. I had been to two ceilidhs during Freshers Week back at the beginning of term, but this one was by far my favorite, mainly because it was the first time that I really had an inkling as to what I was supposed to be doing. At the other two I just resorted to following the most Scottish looking person near me in hopes that their knowledge of the dance steps would magically transfer over to me and get my feet and arms moving in the right directions. This time there was an actual instructor and also a much smaller group, so I ended up being able to get the hang of many of the dances. Also, when I woke up the next morning I do believe that I was more sore from the ceilidh than from the hill walking...

The bagpiper piping us in to our Scottish feast of haggis

Sunday we got to choose which activities we wanted to try out, with our options being canoeing, kayaking, mountain biking, road biking, orienteering, and a historical tour. The instructors were amazed since not a single person signed up for the historic bus tour designed specially for those who were too sore or tired from the previous day to partake in more intense outdoor activities. Nope, instead we were all raring to go. I ended up doing mountain biking in the morning and then orienteering in the afternoon. Seeing that I was the only person out of 30 who signed up, it was a solo mission... and quite the experience. I had been thinking about going on a trip with the University of Edinburgh Orienteering Club Halloween weekend, but ended up skipping out and going to St. Andrews instead since my achilles tendon had been acting up. On Sunday, as I crawled under fallen trees, scrambled uphill, and trekked through boggy terrain, I came to the conclusion that not participating in aforesaid orienteering trip was a very very wise decision. Given that one of the courses was a night event that weekend (think headlamps and navigating your way through a forest with just a compass and map to guide you in the pitch black dark) I honestly do think I would have died in a forest in Scotland if I had gone. I mean, I would have eventually found my way back I do believe, but I would almost certainly have been in over my head. It was also amusing since, during my debriefing the instructor Mike pointed out that the map I had been given was from 1985. Therefore, areas marked as light green and falling under the 'open forest - brisk run possible' category had long since graduated on up to the dark green 'impenetrable forest - slow walk advised' department. Somehow, I did manage to find a good number of targets and I rather enjoyed bush whacking through the forest and just laughed at the times when I had to struggle through densely wooded areas, slog through marshes filled with ferns, and (the icing on the cake) lie flat on my stomach in order to pull myself Mammoth Cave crawling style underneath a locked wooden gate that was too slippery to climb over. But overall, very glad I experienced true orienteering. I now have the utmost respect for anyone who does it on a competitive level!

Well, that is my weekend of adventuring. Just to make sure of one thing - my amusement with the weather here is by no means meant to be viewed as complaining. I am still absolutely loving Edinburgh and Scotland in general - plus, it's probably good for a little beach girl like me to experience some truly wintery weather rather than going through my entire life thinking that 35 degrees Fahrenheit on an early December morning constitutes legitimate cold. However... I did still wear my rainbow flip flops the entire time I wasn't hill walking, mountain biking or orienteering this past weekend. Let's face it, some things just never change.