Last 2 days of Edinburgh and my travel to Leeds

Hey again. Sorry this is taking longer than I expected. Life here is dramatically crazy, but is slowly starting to settle down. Pictures will hopefully come soon. As for now I will continue where I left off, the beautifulness of Edinburgh and how I got to Leeds!

Day 2 of Edinburgh was our meeting day. Even though I was jet-lagged I woke up at around 7 am and decided to get up. Left the hotel by around 8 and then realised the study centre doesn't open until 9 am. So I walk to starbucks and order a coffee and a croissant, not realising that the hotel offers a continental breakfast. At 9 I walk to the study centre and just chilax and talk with folks and go online for a bit. Then I help them get the meeting started at around 10 am. We have a nice meeting until around 12 at which point I realise that I have no sweatshirt for the day and since it was already cold I decided I needed to buy a sweatshirt stat in order to not freeze. So I walked to Princes St. by myself since no one else wanted to go shopping and I finally found something in my size at gap. It was really cute and only £35. I mean yes, that is $70 but really everything was around the same amount. Then we met up the scottish parliament to walk to the top of the mountain. They call it Arthur's seat! It was such a fun walk to the top. It was a 4 mile climb and was amazingly fun. Everyone else was tired of walking and hated it, but I was running and dancing and having fun. We got to the top or Arthur's seat and it was AMAZING. You can see almost all of Edinburgh from there. I took a couple of panaramic pictures and I hope that they will end up looking nice. The top was really windy though. I swear the wind was around 60 mph. It was a lot of fun though cause no one moved at all and I was the only one willing to take pictures of people cause I was able to control my body to be able to handle the wind. At the end of the hike we started going down to go to a chinese buffet. I thought that this was weird. Going to a chinese buffet in the UK? But I decided it would be fun to see if there was much difference between American chinese food and British chinese food. We got there and it was actually pretty good. We again didn't have to pay for it so it tasted better but it was still pretty good. They didn't have too many vegetarian options, but it was still enough to survive. That night we decided we were going to go clubbing. Apparently there was a fun club that was going to play live music. So later that night a few of us went to the club. The drinks were very pricey compared to America. It was £3 for a vodka redbull. Odly though it was only £2 for 2 shots of vodka. So I got a vodka redbull and 2 shots of vodka and was ready to dance. No one was dancing though. So we, being the crazy Californians as we are, decided to go ahead and dance ourselves. It was alright. The music was hard to dance to cause it was rock music, but we somehow managed to do it. And after we started dancing, it seemed like everyone else was dancing also, which is a good sight to see. At around 1 am the band finally showed up and started playing. They were not particularly good, but they had good sound. After they stopped playing we went home and went to bed.

The next day was much more lax. I got up late and headed down for the complimentary breakfast where I ended up seeing a few EAP students. We chatted and decided to head to the study centre again. At this point I went there in order check email and a couple of other details that needed to be worked out before I went to Leeds the following day. After a few hours of this we went shopping and we all bought cell phones at the carphonewarehouse which is a nice store that has many pay-as-you-go options. At this point we were made to go on a tour to Edinburgh Castle. I personally wouldn't have paid to go there, but it was still a fun time to walk in the castle and see the grounds. Afterward we went out and got italian food and then set out to our Ghost and Ghouls tour. The tour was at 9 at night and was an ok tour. The guy was from Leeds and seemed to enjoy his job, but there was nothing really to creepy persay. It was fun to hear some of the stories, but eh, again I wouldn't have paid for it. The last part was in an underground cavern which was actually pretty cool. He kep trying to scare us, but it never really worked. After this I just went home and slept, cause I had to be up at 4 in the morning cause our train left at 6. So I went home and slept, it was midnight.

Finally it was saturday, 15th of September and it was time to wake up at 4 in the morning in order to get ready. We decided to meet downstairs at 5 in order to be good to go. I got downstairs at around 4:45 and I called home to let them know what I was up to and such. Finally at 5 everyone came downstairs and we called a taxi and took it to Wavereley station. We got there about an hour before our bus came, but we just sat and got our tickets. We were all hungry and exhausted from the previous night out. Finally at 6 the bus came and we loaded and got on. We took the bus to Newcastle. The drive was very beautiful, but I was so tired I slept the whole way. I think most people did. At newcastle it took us only 5-10 min to find our train and board. We took up almost the whole luggage area which was fun, and we each had our seats next to other people. I sat and read during this trip and made a list of everything I needed to do when I got to Leeds. Finally we hit York and breezed into the next train to Leeds. We were worried because our ticket said we only had 8 minutes to catch the train at york, but we found out that the train from York to Leeds was actually a small company that did a train every 20 min and that we can catch any of the trains. So we waited like 15 min and got on the next train. It was a short train ride to Leeds (only 30 min) at which point we unloaded and met up with the meet and greet service which took me to Clarence Dock. I was the first person in my flat to be there.

Now that I am at Clarence dock I will stop. I am super hungry and must go make myself food. I hope to get this week online soon and hopefully with pictures. Eventually though this will be converted into a private journal, or be very exclusive on the details given. So that is all, I hope you all have fun and chat then.

With love and hunger in his belly,
Aram the Garmo