Current events

So, after a month and a little prodding from a certain family member, I'm finally posting again. Now, unlike my previous posts, I'm not even going to try to catch you up on everything that has happened to me in the past 4 months. I've talked to most of you a bit, so you know some of the stories already. What I will talk about instead, is what I've got coming up in the next month! That's right, in one month exactly I'll be boarding a plane bound for the US of A! Weird how that seems like a really short time now, when usually a month feels like forever.

My last classes are next Monday, and then I don't have exams until the 23-24 of May, so I've decided that in that time between university work, I'm going to go to Italy! I feel like a travel agent because I've spent the last 5 days on the computer getting everything booked and sending emails to different property owners and everything. I finally just got it all figured out about an hour ago, so now I have flights there and back and beds for every night! The plan is for me to fly into Rome on Tuesday, spend three days there exploring, then take a train up to Florence on Friday where I will meet Katie (another US student here at Stirling, she's going to fly into Italy on Friday after spending a few days in york with a friend of her mother's). Then we'll spend 2 nights in Florence, seeing all the amazingness, then take a train up to Venice where we'll spend 2 nights as well before flying back to Scotland on the following Tuesday. It should be amazing. And I found pretty cheap transportation for the whole thing too, so I was able to splurge a bit and avoid the hostels for Florence and Venice. I'll take tons of pictures to make you all jealous.

And just to rub a few more jealous-making facts in your face, I've also got a weekend in Belfast booked for the weekend of the 19th with some friends. We're going to go see the Giants Causeway, which I heard is pretty spectacular, and wander around the area a bit. I'm living so close to Ireland, I figured I had to get over there sometime!

And last but not least, once my finals are over on the 24th, I'm going to have 5 days to pack everything up, and then I'm flying down to London with Katie on the 29th to spend the last few days there. We'll go see some shows, maybe Spamalot, and take a day trip over to Cardiff, which should be really pretty.

Oh, that reminds me, when I was in London for my spring break I got to see Wicked (which is fantastic) and Equus with Daniel Radcliff. Equus was pretty impressive. Great script, amazing lighting, very well performed. Definitely impressive.

I think my quantity of travel plans kinda says it all about my feelings about this last month. Suddenly realizing that the things that are so close to me now and only cost a couple hundred dollars to see are going to be an ocean and thousands of dollars away when I get home really got me into action.

Like I said before, I'm definitely excited to go home, but I'm definitely going to miss Stirling and Europe in general. I've kinda been compiling a mental list of the little things that I think I'm going to appreciate the most about being home and the little things I'll miss the most about being here. This is all aside from the big stuff like "seeing my family," "getting licked by Te Beagh," and "seeing my friends."

• I'm excited to have a real kitchen again with pots and pans of all sizes and clean dishes and a full sized fridge. (Not to mention better snacks to raid at 2am besides a block of cheese and some butter.)
  
• I'm going to miss the prevalence of multiple languages and accents around me.
• I'm excited to have a car again.
• I'll miss living on campus and having more of a feel for the student goings-on.
• I'm super excited to spend some time in Rocky Mountain National Park! I already have intricate (well, maybe not) plans to spend a weekend up there with a backpack and a map and compass.
• Looking forward to having a big bed again! The one here is just a twin I think.
• I'll miss being able to look out my window and see the Wallace monument, or climb up the hills behind my flat and see the Arthry castle on campus, the monument, and the Stirling Castle all at once.
• I will definitely miss the whisky.
• I'm excited to play with my computers (3 now) and install linux on some of them and play with my router too. I know I'm a nerd, but you should all be used to that by now.
• I'm getting tired of the hot-faucet cold-faucet setup over here. I want warm water from just one faucet dammit!
  
• The light switches here are different too, they're more of a plate than a switch. And all the electric sockets have switches on them too! So you can turn of lamps (or your refrigerator. Whoops!) These are little things, but I think it's stuff like this that I'll notice the most.
• I do look forward to having a cell phone that I'm not afraid to talk on (it's soooo expensive here).

That's about all I can think of. I'm sure it'll be very different when I'm actually back home so I'll have to compare my expectations to what I really do end up missing and noticing is different.

But really, life is just good. I've had an amazing time over here so far, and this last month is going to be pretty amazing and intense too. I've got exciting things to come home too, I've got friends that I made over here than I intend to keep in touch with for a very long time. And to top it all off, spring is beautiful. The hills behind me are absolutely covered in blue bells right now:




I just don't know if it gets much better than this!







Until next time, I love you all and can't wait to see you!