• baked potatoes are a really popular street food.
• a lot of people roll their own cigarettes (possibly just because it is substantially cheaper – the taxes on tobacco here are higher than in the US).
• people say “sorry” instead of “excuse me” when they bump into you or squeeze by you on the street or the bus or the stairs.
• “girly” drinks are as popular as more popular than they are in the US. i mean, we have smirnoff ice and apple pucker and all that, and they hold their own, but here they have entire other worlds of malt liquor variants, and there are quite a few drinks that involve mixing them together, and these seem to be more widely popular than they are in the states. i don’t really know why this surprises me, but i think it’s because i have this picture of hard drinking old men knocking back pints of heavy ale in dark rooms, and so it is kind of funny to me to see a lot of young people drinking bottles of fruity technicolor and dancing to gold digger. but i’m getting over it. and it’s not like the old men and beer aren’t here, too.
• egg salad is called “egg mayo” and is Everywhere, but it doesn’t have any salt in it.

and specific to scotland:

• haggis is not really very gross, and is more of a genre than a specific food item. it was always described to me as something of a sausage that gushes blood when you cut it open, which sounded rather dramatic. but really, it’s just meat scraps mixed with oatmeal to make it go farther, making it rather similar to scrapple, a traditional food in pennsylvania dutch country that is basically pork scraps mixed with cornmeal mush and baked or fried. the differences (as the rather extensive wikipedia entry points out) are that haggis is made from sheep bits rather than pig bits, and that haggis is traditionally boiled in a sheep stomach, which makes for the sausage-style imagery that stuck in my mind so fiercely. most of the time, though, it’s not served in the stomach. it is taken out and prepared in a variety of ways – in a pile with turnips and potatoes neeps and tatties, as a baked potato topping, battered and fried, or, at more high-end restaurants, as a filling for spring rolls or phyllo pastry:
  there is also a fair bit of vegetarian haggis, which i laughed at a year or so back when i saw it on the menu in a pub in indianapolis, but there ya go…

i Have noticed things that aren’t about food, but i can’t seem to remember them right now :)

this should be a recurring column anyway.

today i took a job at the hollytree hotel, which is in the very small town (“town” really isn’t even that appropriate) of kentallen, right on the bank of loch linnhe, which is quite pretty.

and cold.

but people dive in it! i saw some this morning!

i also saw several rainbows in the mist over the lake loch, and had a nice little walk through the woods on my way into town to meet the woman from the hollytree. the hostel in edinburgh was at the top of a flight of 77 stairs, and the hostel in glencoe was a mile and a half out of town, with no buses. at this rate i’ll be climbing mountains bens soon. :)

i had a hard decision to make between this hotel, which is quiet and somewhat formal, and the clachaig inn, which has a famous pub and is rather laid back. the manager at the clachaig was very friendly and the chance to work in the pub was very tempting, but, at the end of the day, i chose the hollytree because the clachaig wanted me to stay at least until december, and i really think i want to set off again before that. the pay is also higher here, and there is wireless internet, so those are both nice bonuses.

hopefully, i won’t mind the quiet too much, and there will be different experiences of scotland to make up for not working in the pub. one of the potential perks is that there are bikes here that i can ride around for free, so that will be fun, and i should be able to drop by the clachaig every once and a while when they are playing music. i’m a little bit worried that i will regret the decision, i admit, but the fact that i’m worrying about it aloud while making use of the wireless makes it a bit less compelling, as worries go…

i don’t think that it has sunk in yet that i am planning to stay put now for a few months. i realized this morning that i have been on the road for a month and a half, so it’s nice to be somewhere with a room of my own and a chance to spread out a bit. i just hope that, once i’m rested up, i don’t freak out and wish i had stayed in edinburgh. :)

hopefully, i’ll be able to get my camera charger situation figured out now that i will be in one place for a little while, and then i will take pictures, because it is very beautiful.

now i need to do some laundry, and tonight i start work!

tomorrow i’m going to the required BUNAC orientation so that they can tell me about taxes and stuff, and then i’m going here.

the two hotels that i like the best are in that area, and i figure i will have better odds if i present myself in person, so what the hell.  i’m getting fidgety sitting in edinburgh, i will enjoy the trip even if i don’t end up staying, and today i was approached by three eastern european girls in the dining room who accidentally bought an “any five days” bus pass when they only needed three days.  they sold it to me for £10, and it is good for unlimited travel on any two days between now and sunday.  so i can use it to get to glencoe tomorrow, and then if i end up wanting to come back, or go to inverness or something, i already have a ticket.
pretty handy, eh?

so into the highlands we go…

today i applied for five different live-in hotel positions scattered throughout the scottish highlands:
one in inverness, which is the city on the edge of loch ness
one on the ‘road to skye’ (it really is a road, but it’s also the name for the region), which is the westward stretch of highlands before you reach the ocean and the islands (one of which is the isle of skye that gives the road it’s name)
and a few more scattered throughout the western and southern highlands.

i will probably be able to describe the differences in their locations better once i have been out in the region.  that’s how that stuff always seems to work.  sometimes i say to myself that travel is a way of making the rest of the world real.  until we go somewhere, no matter how much we read about it or see it on tv, we might as well just be making it up.

anyway, a few of the positions could last for several months, but for the most part the live-in season ends in mid october, when the bulk of the tourists leave.  i decided that it is worth it to try to get a job for the remainder of the season because i really want to spend some time exploring the “highlands and islands” (as the countryside is referred to), and getting a hotel job sounds like a good way to do it.  hotel jobs are better for saving money than restaurant/bar jobs because they often include food and/or lodging, and because the countryside is less expensive than the city.

it was a tough call because the room in matthew’s house is a very good find, but it will only be available through mid-october because a new lease will start then and they will be looking for someone for the whole year, so i would most likely have to look for somewhere new then anyway, and it seems worth the risk of losing it in order to investigate the highland option.  i can always just stay at the hostel here if i decide to stay and find nothing else.  they have long-term rates that rival most flatshares, and while there are downsides to sharing rooms and bathrooms for long periods of time, there are upsides as well.  in just the last few days, i have had conversations of some length with people from ireland, england, spain, portugal, australia, and korea, and short encounters with several more.  the hostel has a tradition of a free communal dinner on sunday nights, so we had spaghetti and i hung out in the dining room for a while with people playing ping pong.  it’s nice.
the irish girls and i (there were three of them in my room) went out on saturday night, and that was quite a story…  but it should be another post.

hopefully, i will hear back from at least one of the hotels in the next few days, so i will know how good the odds are of getting one of those jobs, and i can start dropping CVs (they call all resumes CVs in europe, not just academic ones) around edinburgh soon if it seems wise.  as it turns out, right now is an awesome time to be looking for work in edinburgh because all of the summer help is leaving, so it honestly seems like every restaurant or pub that i pass has a ‘help wanted’ sign up.  today i dropped by the BUNAC office to check in and use their printer and free internet connection, and a young woman from france passed through.  she is getting ready to leave, and told me that they are losing 5 of the 8 waitresses at the restaurant where she works, which is right in the heart of town.  she says it’s a great place, and i also found a listing for a waitress at the malt whisky society (which sounds educational), so those are going to be my first two options if the hotels fall through, and i am not feeling very worried about finding something if push comes to shove.

so that is a relief.

hopefully, even if i get a hotel job that only lasts until october, it will still be pretty easy to find work in edinburgh, so i can come back if i want.  the BUNAC receptionist said that it doesn’t get very busy again until january, when the students arrive who get their visas right at the end of the six-months-after-being-in-school window.
so apart from the fact that it is going to be dark and cold and rather dreary soon (in edinburgh it apparently gets dark before 4 in the winter, and if i head north, it will be even earlier), it seems like a good time to be working.
another perk of the hotel job would be that it will be a good addition to my resume if i decide to go looking for work in other countries in europe later on.  there are exciting chances to work in ski or beach towns during those respective seasons, but experience is a big help, so…

no more talk of plans for now.
we’ll see what the next few days bring as far as replies are concerned.
now i’ll read a bit, and go to bed.

if you want to see the reworked-for-positions-for-which-i-am-overeducated version of my resume, knock yourself out.

today i traveled to edinburgh. i woke up, showered, packed, checked out of the hostel, and made my way towards the underground station. i had decided that i would take the underground to the train station even though it’s only one stop, because it’s a rather long one stop, and my extra duffel bag was much heavier than i liked on the way in. i shuffled things around a bit in my bags, so that made a big difference, but it still seemed silly to make life too difficult. and it sounded fun to see the underground!

underground stations in glasgow are Super different from subway stations in new york. first off, they are very small. the trains are only four or five cars long and the station is sized to match. it seems like they just must not ever be that crowded. and, like everything else in central glasgow, they struck me as quite clean (i saw two separate dustpan sweepers in the train station while i was sitting there waiting to leave this morning, and they were chasing after paper scraps and sandwich wrappers very vigilantly. a street sweeping machine also made it’s way down the pedestrian mall in the middle of the day yesterday, which leads me to believe it runs through pretty often).

the instructions once i got to edinburgh were somewhat vague, and i should have procured a better map before wandering around and trying to follow them. i succeeded in finding the right bus, getting off at the right stop, and heading in the right general direction, but then i walked in circles for a while and got myself squarely lost. i was about to walk into a shop and ask directions when i saw a sign pointing toward a parking garage that happens to be on the same street as our dormitory, so i followed it, and found that i had been only a couple blocks away the whole time. such are the joys of learning your way around a new city.

i checked in, and the organizer (yngve – swedish names rock, eh?) mentioned that there was some early festival stuff happening in a park a few blocks away, and showed me where it was on a map. i was hot and tired from walking around in circles with my stuff, so i just wanted to get to the room before thinking about anything else. the rooms are again in university dorms, but these are suites, so we each have a room with a desk, closet, little bookshelf, nightstand, and sink (sink! that’s cool. this makes the room better than the one in glasgow, though the bed is not as comfortable), and then there’s a common room with a little kitchen. the kitchen does not have a dishwasher, but it has a washing machine. this is awesome, though there does not seem to be a dryer, so i guess we should figure out a clothesline. luckily, it is not that humid here, and while a lot of people would probably consider it too cold for august, i have found the weather absolutely blissful since my arrival. it is that cool enough that long sleeves are ok but warm enough that they aren’t really necessary kind of weather that is so rare in indiana, and the skies have been sunny with a nice breeze.

edinburgh is bigger and more crowded than glasgow, which is not something that i knew before coming here [editor’s note: edinburgh is NOT actually bigger than glasgow. it is substantially smaller, actually. the difference is in the proportion of city center to suburb. glasgow has a small, compact center and a large sprawling industrial area. edinburgh has a larger, more diverse center that just kind of tapers off into suburbs, but the overall area and population are smaller], and it is somewhat dingier. it still seems quite nice, though, and once i wasn’t lost anymore, and could put down my heavy bags, i had a great time.

i looked through the materials they had given us, including a huge book of a schedule for the fringe, which is the festival that is running this month, and beginning tomorrow in earnest. i have expressed sadness at having to miss sugar hill this weekend because of my travels, but i suppose that the chance to attend one of the largest arts and music festivals in the world (The largest, according to the flier, but i have yet to verify this) is a bit of consolation. this is apparently the 60th year of the festival, and the schedule they gave us is just way too big to really be able to take in at a single sitting. i saw another mention of the sunday in the park thing that was happening this afternoon, including the big proclamation that it is FREE (unlike many of the other acts and shows, which are separately ticketed and i don’t really know how one goes about deciding what to see) and decided that the best way to get acquainted with the city and the festival was just to go have a look. i felt well rested, and the shellshock of arriving in a new country on my own and not really knowing how to get about was wearing off, so it seemed a good idea. it really was just a few blocks away, and i had a wonderful time.

the park that it was in is very big, and the tents and crowds just kept going further and further as i walked in. there were dancers and jugglers and a few guys on unicycles scattered throughout the field, with rings of people gathered around each of them, and there were tents with other acts and face painters and souvenirs and food, and there were a couple of music stages. in other words, it was a festival, and it was fun to stroll through and look at the people. i ate chips and curry (i heartily approve of this culinary partnership) for dinner, and an ice cream cone for dessert. then i sat on the grass listening to music and watching kids play with bubbles for a while. they were selling these plastic swords that were sheathed in a vat of bubbles so that when you took them out and swept them around they made big blobby rainbow trails behind them, and this had quite a brilliant effect, really. it seemed like approximately 1 out of every 10 kids had talked their parents into buying one, so they were everywhere, and it was fun.

as i left i watched a few of the busker acts more closely – a juggler who finished up with battleaxes and knives, and a unicycling juggler who did fire and apples. i was struck by the skill that they employed, not in their acts, but in managing the crowds. these were seriously professional street performers, and they know how to draw people in, keep them there, and get them to pony up at the end without feeling like they’ve been swindled. it was fascinating, but also somewhat sad. no matter how persuasive you are, i imagine it’s hard to support a family on juggling fire, but there is this whole culture of people who do it anyway, and it got me thinking. part of their pitch is something like “you’ll go down to the pub after this and pay £3 for a pint of beer without really thinking about it. did you enjoy this show as much as you would enjoy that pint of beer?”

and there really is something to that, though with the streets and fields of edinburgh so full of performers this week, it would be quite an investment to give each of them £3. still, it makes me think about value, and how value is reflected in our economy. events like this festival are built, in part, on the basis of our attraction to the margins (or the fringe, i suppose ;) of society – the artists and performers who both attract us and scare us a little, because they represent a lifestyle that is different from the standard 9-5. people throng to events like this because of that attraction, but for the most part they only think about it for the few days a year that it fits into their schedule, and they don’t like to be reminded that there are people actually doing these things for a living. nevertheless, it is precisely beCause they do it for a living that things like this festival are possible.

you can’t juggle fire atop a ten foot tall unicycle without a good bit of practice, after all.

so festivals (and carnivals) (and vegas) are like cultural zoos – little pockets of the margins that have been transplanted and made safe for the general public to ooh and aah at while they eat some chicken on a stick.

i’m not sure this is a bad arrangement, really.
it just got me thinking.

i also thought of my first festival-themed design idea while wandering around.
instead of parceling out money to performers as you go, always trying to decide how much the show is worth and wondering whether you will see anything you like better later, what if you could put some money into a performer payment account when you got to the festival, and then keep track of something like how much you clap at each thing you see? then the money could be doled out proportionally at the end of the day based on what you liked the best.

clapping probably wouldn’t be a very good metric, really, because they make you clap all the time, and you might grow tired or jaded and clap less at things that you really like a lot.

but something else might work.

shrug

time for summer school to start!

i’m sorting through the stuff i wrote when i didn’t have internet for a few days, because i want to be done with it, but i keep thinking that i’ll add to it, or synthesize it, or something…

sigh

i never learn, do i?

JUST POST IT, KYNTHIA!!

it is interesting for me to read, even two weeks later, because i feel much more settled in now.  making friends, doing some work that feels familiar, and finding a good pub or two will all do wonders for making a place feel more like home.

—–

it took me a while to get up this morning, but i don’t think it’s jetlag. the time difference isn’t all that huge, and i slept a little on the plane, so it was kind of like a weird time warp where we flew all night and i floated in and out of sleep and didn’t really have a sense of how much time passed. i Thought it was only 8 hours, but hey, if they say it was 13? shrug. that happens.

so i was not all that confused when we arrived, and it was 9 in the morning, so i didn’t have much trouble just accepting that it was morning and wandering around the city for a while. it was nice to take a nap in the afternoon, however, and i ended up just staying in my room and reading and sorting through my things for the rest of the night. i had been feeling stressed out and tired by traveling and last minute errands, so i had been telling myself that all i really wanted was a chance to lie somewhere safe and soft and sleep for a while. i have learned over the years that i really rely on having periods of time to myself where i don’t really have to talk to anyone and i can think about whatever i want, and that sort of time is alarmingly difficult to come by when traveling alone, especially if you are trying to save money by not staying in hotels. if you stay with people, you have to interact with them, which is usually a blessing, but it is draining after a while. and if you stay in a campsite or a hostel, it’s hard to fully relax because there is constant activity, and not much personal space, so you have to be a bit more vigilant about your stuff.

because of all this, i am realizing that i may have to get better at being by myself when other people are around, but i haven’t quite figured it out yet, so i was a little worried on the plane because i felt tired, and the reality of my trip was starting to sink in and scare me a little, and i wasn’t sure how long it would be before i could just sit in a quiet place by myself and get my bearings.

this uncertainty made me cranky.
but i had forgotten something remarkable about my accomodations in glasgow – i have my own room. i am staying in a hostel that is converted student housing, so i basically have a very small single dorm room, and then the bathrooms are shared. it is clean, secure, and not that far from the city center, all for £12 a night (pounds are worth right about $2 each right now, so that’s around $24). it is perfect for me right now, for while i look forward to the social aspects of hosteling, i enjoy having this small dose of time where i am truly on my own. i took this very seriously yesterday afternoon, and stayed in my room for the rest of the night. this morning, part of me was tempted to remain cloistered away, but i needed water, and breakfast, and i wanted to explore the city a little bit more and make sure i know how to get to the train station for tomorrow.

so out i went.

i visited the lighthouse, thought about the difference between design and Design, and figured out the train schedule for tomorrow so i wouldn’t have to wander around too much with my bags in tow. i thought about going to the people’s palace, but couldn’t really decide if i could walk there or not, so i decided not to risk it and just wandered around. i went back to the internet coffee shop and wrote most of this post, but decided not to pay for wireless access because they told us we would have it in edinburgh, so it seemed a waste.

last night i dreamed that the summer school was over and i had decided just to go home. it was hard to find work or something, and it seemed like the thing to do. when i woke up, a little of this was still in my head, so it was doubly surprising to remember that i was still in glasgow, that the summer school hadn’t started yet, and that i still didn’t know when i would be going home. i like glasgow a lot, and i feel safe and prepared, but it is very strange to recognize that i am in another country for an unknown amount of time. it is more disconcerting than just being in another state or something, because then it is easy to call my parents and friends, and i can always get in a bus or a car and go somewhere familiar if i need to. now the phone is farther from my reach – i don’t have a phone card yet, and i’m contemplating get a pay as you go cell phone if i stay, but i can’t decide that yet, and since i haven’t had my computer online yet, i haven’t had access to skype. i know i could fly home if i needed to, but it could be really expensive, and there is just something harder about thinking about how to go about it. there are taxis and buses and trains, just as in any city, but that slightly foreign veil is over them, so they take a bit longer to understand, and my instincts about what to do in an emergency are not very strong. i don’t know anyone within miles (or kilometers), and there are both benefits and drawbacks to being that alone.

the internet definitely changes things from how it must have been even a few years ago. i have already chatted with my mom, and i know that i have ways to contact people via email and my blog, so i am far from completely cut off. and being in the UK is definitely helpful as well, since there is no language barrier. i know that i feel somewhat uncomfortable being the typical tourist in countries where i don’t speak the language, but it is relatively easy to figure out how to get by for a few weeks. this process of adjustment would certainly be harder in a more foreign country, however. that half-awake time in the morning when i wonder about what i’m doing would be scarier, and the hurdle to get myself out the door and going would be higher.

but that’s the thing to do – just walk out the door and start learning; give myself things to do and do them.
so away i go.

well, we finished up with the convivio summer school yesterday afternoon, had a nice last night on the town together, and said our goodbyes as everyone took off at their own appropriate moments to catch planes or trains.

since i’m not leaving right away, my schedule was quite relaxed, though there was a bit of confusion this morning when i found out that we were supposed to check out of our accomodations at 10 instead of 11. but they didn’t end up being super picky, so it wasn’t a big deal.

now here i sit in one of the common rooms in the hostel that i have booked (maybe i should offer to redo their website as my first job) for the next week while i begin the job hunt in earnest. i have wireless access, a squishy chair, some lunch, and the afternoon ahead of me to get my head together as i shift from one travel mode to another. i’ll try and post a wrapup of convivio before the weekend’s out, and on monday i’m going to the office of the employment agency that got me my working visa, so hopefully i’ll have a good sense of my options pretty soon.

the first decision is going to be whether i stay in edinburgh or not. it seems like a great time to be looking for small-time work around the city because the summer help is all getting ready to quit, so that is somewhat promising. i also have an awesome opportunity to sublet a room in the house where matthew, one of my new friends from convivio, lives, so that solves a huge question right there, and i’m very tempted to just snap it up. money goes a lot farther out of the city, though, so i still want to do a bit of research into what my options would be if i went somewhere else for a while. i hope to be able to decide on monday or tuesday, so i’ll let you know.

here’s a bunch of stuff i wrote in the internet cafe the day i wrote made it!, but then couldn’t post because i didn’t have an account to access the wireless, and i didn’t understand how to get one.
it’s confusing to write offline and then not post, because i forget what i have and haven’t said, so i’m just going to post anything intelligible that might also be interesting, and then try to write in shorter bursts from now on.

so feel free to skim.

(because i know you always read so closely unless i give you explicit permission otherwise. ;)

—

i made it safely across the ocean, but i don’t have pictures yet because of my brilliant plan to charge my camera battery in the airport while i was waiting for my flight, which was only slightly delayed. unbeknownst to me when i was booking the ticket, my flight did not leave from the main orlando airport, but rather a smaller, less busy one, and so even though we had to drive farther to get there, the lines were short and security was a breeze. given the situation, i think it was a good tradeoff.

when i woke up yesterday and saw news of the terror alert shifting from bert to ernie, i was worried that i wouldn’t be able to take anything on the plane at all, but it turns out that they were really more worried about things coming Out of the UK than they were about things going In, so all i had to do was pack all my liquids in my checked bags. here on the other side of the big blue, however, they were operating on level elmo, which seems to mean that you can only take money, ID, and the medication that you will need while on the flight, and you have to pack that all in a clear plastic bag, leaving your purse, your laptop, and your crossword behind. that would suck, though as it turned out i slept for most of the flight, so it really wouldn’t have mattered much, apart from the ulcer that would have formed on account of me worrying about my expensive electronics traveling in the cargo hold.

and speaking of those electronics, let me finish the story of my camera charger. while waiting in line to check my bags, i moaned a bit about the fact that my battery was dead, because i didn’t want to wait to find my hostel and stuff to be able to take pictures with my new camera (which was successfully acquired during the errand run yesterday. woohoo!). then i remembered that i was going to be sitting in the airport for 4 hours, so i extracted the charger from my soon-to-be-checked bag, and, once i was through security, i located a comfy spot near a plug and charged away. after a bit, i decided to move, so i dutifully unplugged the charger, refitted the battery, and felt pleased with myself. soon, however, i decided that the area near the international gates was still too busy, so i went and sat down again, and decided to try my plan again, since the battery had not gained a full charge the first time. i must have grown cocky at this point, believing myself an expert in airport pit stop charge-ups, because i paid much less attention to the operation this time. i read a bit, talked on the phone a little, and once again decided to move closer to my gate. i got up, put my book in my bag, scanned the area, and walked away without even thinking about my battery, still chugging away in the outlet beside me. it really baffles me to realize that i did this, and it baffles me even more that i didn’t think about it again for the rest of the time i was in the airport, even though i wandered around for another good hour at least, and i think i even considered taking a picture at one point. it didn’t occur to me at all until i was on the plane, waiting to taxi away, starting to doze off, when i jolted awake, rummaged through my purse, and smacked myself on the forehead, forcing myself to admit that there was nothing i could do, even though, at that moment, the charger was not very far away. i decided that i would tell my mom to call the airport in case it was turned in to lost and found, so maybe i will be reunited with it one day, but in the meantime, i am going to have to replace it, and it wasn’t even a day old.

sigh.

so now i have a new battery – my first purchase in the UK that i can neither eat nor exchange for transportation – but the guy at the camera shop says i might have a hard time finding a charger. they are apparently very popular, and he can’t keep them on the shelves. lucky me. i’ll keep my eyes peeled, and hope that someone else at the hostel or the summer school might have a charger i can borrow so that i can at least get started. this seems quite possible, since, after deliberating about one of these waterproof options from pentax, i went ahead and got a canon, because i know so many people who have and love them, and because my mom offered to pay for part of it as a graduation present, so, with our powers combined, i was able to spring for an exciting upgrade that it was hard to resist.

so pictures soon, hopefully.

now i am going to head back to the hostel and take a nap. my plane arrived shortly after 9 and i got to the hostel at 10:30 or so, but i couldn’t check in until 2. they were kind enough to let me drop off my bags, however, so i got something to eat and have been wandering around the city. my first impression of glasgow is very positive. it’s pretty, bustling but not overcrowded, and a nice mix of familiar and foreign. this is my first time in the UK, and the experience of knowing the language but still not knowing all the lingo is amusing, even though i was prepared for it. i love a lot of british fiction, and pop culture in general prepares one for a great many quirky differences, but it is still somewhat offputting at first. i think i looked like a fool standing at the cafe counter this morning because it took me several minutes to order just because i didn’t fully know what everything was (like filled rolls, pasties and toasties – i get the idea, but how do i know what i like when i haven’t really had one before?!), and i couldn’t help but smile at the puddings and haggis and chips with curry or gravy. so i spent a long time just staring, which is evidently very rare at this counter, and probably all similar counters, because the staff just eyed me a bit uncomfortably, and every scot who entered the place knew what he/she wanted within a nanosecond, barely skimming the menu. i eventually sat down and had white coffee and an egg with bacon and sausage and potato thingies (it was breakfasttime after all, and i was starving), and while i ate it all up like a good lass, next time i think i’ll go more of the toast and tea route for breakfast and save room for fish and chips. the woman across from me had toast and beans, which, again, i was aware of as an option, but it still struck me as amusing. it was a fun first meal, and i look forward to being a bit more adventurous in the future.

for now, though, i think a nap will do wonders, and i’ll explore some more tonight and tomorrow. i can’t pronounce the street that my hostel is on (buccleuch), so hopefully i can make it back without having to ask for directions.

i got a new battery for the camera, but not a new charger. the man at the store told me the new battery would not have a charge, but i tried it anyway, and so far it has taken hundreds of pictures, so…  either i have a magic battery that never dies, or i will be out of luck soon, but either way i am enjoying it for the moment.  :)

you can see some of the shots of edinburgh here: http://flickr.com/photos/kynthia/sets/72157594240539072/

enjoy!

howdy.

i successfully arrived in edinburgh on sunday afternoon, and found my way to the flats where we are staying for the summer school. they told us there would be wireless access, so i didn’t worry too much about finding an internet cafe right away.

as it happened, this internet wasn’t at our flats, it was at the university where we are meeting during the day, and it wouldn’t work until we filled out a form for them to process, and now there is a rumour (<- look at me be british!) that we can only have four people logged on with our access code at a time. sigh i have overcome these adversities for the moment, however, and i am here to say: i don't have time to write! we have a two-week design project to finish, lectures to attend every morning at 9:30, and a festival to explore all around us, providing both inspiration and distraction.

there might be quite a flood of posts here before too long, but don’t let that trick you into thinking that i’m lying about not having time to write. i have been writing while the internet was not gracing me with its presence (while i was in the void, as i sometimes call it), so i might post some backlog. i might also put my lecture notes here on the main page, but i haven’t made that decision yet.

ok, back to paying attention. the lecturer is giving a general overview of ubicomp, so i can get by with only giving him half an ear, but i should still probably give him that. :)