Hellooo there, I've made it to Edinburgh. In a hotel now hanging out...getting pretty tired, which is good because I only got 3 hours of sleep on the plane. And I should be pretty well adjusted if I go to sleep around 11pm here and wake up around 8am. Today was lovely, the flights were super easy. On both of them I ended up with the whole row to myself and was easily able to stretch out and relax. Got to Edinburgh around 2:30 and caught a shuttle with another person from my program who was on the same flight.
Then I got to wander around for a bit, which was great. Was with a few other girls and we had a good time just walking up and down the streets and getting to see some cool things. I found that it was suddenly Fall and I'm happy for the change. It was a great feeling to walk around a city and not see one recognizable store name. No chains or commercial influences, just a lot of small stores selling a variety of things. A few vintage shops, lots of pubs, bookstores, convenience stores, kitschy kind of stores, and restaurants. I'm excited to have time tomorrow to go into them. The streets are just beautiful, I'll post some pictures at a later date but they wind in so many directions and the buildings line them so pleasantly. I quite like it. After dinner, went to the Three Sisters pub for the Scotland vs. Iceland football match with someone from my program. It was us and a ton of football-loving Scots, and it was great. Really great.
Can't wait to explore more and get myself really acquainted with this place. So much to look forward to...
My stomach is in a thousand knots that I wish would untangle. I'll write as soon as I get Internet in Edinburgh, not sure when that will be, hopefully by the end of the week. Ta ta for now, dearest reader(s) & much love!
If you want to talk to me, my flight is tonight at 10:45pm, call before that.
I leave in 48 hours from 7 minutes from now. I'm pretty much packed. My suitcase is about 10-lbs overweight. Oh well. This has been a busy week. In a really good way. This summer was really long. Also, in a good way.
The summer began, in my mind, with Jenny and my trip to the Sasquatch Music Festival and Seattle. That was Memorial Day Weekend. It's ending now, I guess. Though classes don't actually start till Sept 22nd. It's nice to feel like my summer really went from Memorial Day to Labor Day. I moved out on Saturday and we dropped Michael off at GW. He is happy, that's nice. From there, it's been a whirlwind. From NY to home then back to DC and then finally setting at home for a bit. Able to sleep and relax and do some shopping. And also clean, which was necessary, however painful the process may be.
It's hard to comprehend the fact that in 3 days I'll be in Edinburgh. I wonder if it will feel very different. I've been all over for the whole summer and the adjustments I've made have been more fun than challenging, and I hope it's the same when I get there. I have some normal nerves and fears. (Like hoping I find people who like me & I like back and hoping I will really gain from my classes and hoping I am able to keep myself busy and not miss people too much) And some normal excitement and optimism. (Like how great it is to get to know a new city and the opportunity for exploring and travel and...so much more to be excited about).
I'm not in such a sleeping mood, even though I probably should be considering the fact that I need to make a time zone adjustment that is quite the opposite of staying up late in the US. But I'm antsy and I have always enjoyed late night time, even though I know I feel more productive when I wake up early and use the whole day.
Not much of an update, just some words. I've been uploading pictures to from my phone to a Facebook album that sort of documents what I've been up to...just cause it seemed like a fun idea. And it will be something fun to do in Scotland, though I'm not sure how functional my phone will be, hoping there will be some sort of Wifi available somewhere. We shall see. Taking care of mindless logistics is not fun, that's why I need some sort of technological creature to do it all for me. Come on, make it happen.
It's exciting to go back through my mind and remind myself where I was two months ago, before I started here. I've spent a lot of time frustrated--bored and feeling like I've got nothing done. And while I definitely didn't get the chance to complete my project, it's pretty remarkable the progress I've made. What's the best I think is the new-found confidence I have in my abilities and a computer-type-person.
What have I learned? I've learned about web services and databases and using the former to get information from the latter. I've learned about how information is stored and displayed by combining different techniques that I may have already known--like using HTML to display information retrieved using Java. While it might sound like crazy-talk to most of the people who read this, it's really re-affirming to me that I'm actually able to apply and use the knowledge I've been acquiring through my classes and time spent (occasionally wasted) building websites. It makes me eager to use what I've learned and I've already begun.
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The goal I then created for myself is to build a website that is easily editable by people who don't know much about websites. And I found myself fearlessly trudging through the territory of AJAX and dabbling with PHP to make an information from an XML document appear on my HTML-based website. And even change, with no refreshing necessary. And the next goal is to let people log in and change that information that is displayed. How cool this is, working to achieve something I've always thought was really nifty but never knew how to work my way into. The load with no refresh or iframes is big for me, especially because iframes aren't really standardly used anymore.
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Okay, sorry for that computer-talk-ramble, but for the few (ie Dave) of you that will understand this, you'll know where I'm coming from, and for the most of you that don't--here's a translation: I've learned how to do something that I've always been impressed by. It's a nice feeling.
Last week on the job, and am so ready to move up & out. DC is a great city that I have definitely enjoyed getting to know, but now that everyone else's summers are ending, I am ready for something new. It's so crazy that my classes don't even start until September 22nd.
Since most of the people I know in DC area have vacated, I've had a lot more time to myself for the past few weeks & as such have been able to get to some exciting things. I've seen a play and a musical. I've been to a bunch of Smithsonians & the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I've biked in the Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast quadrants and gotten a pretty good sense of the layout of things. I love biking past the White House and seeing tourists and protestors, but am shocked every time that only 3 blocks later is Franklin Square, a block-sized park filled with homeless people. I love biking down Wisconsin, and hate biking up Massachusetts. It's fun to look at all the license plates of cars parked along the National Mall and see such a variety of states represented. It's fun to sit in Dupont, sipping on some iced tea, and just enjoying looking around. Rock Creek Park has amazing trails that, unfortunately, I didn't get to explore enough of. Sometimes it's fun to accidentally find myself in Virginia or Maryland. I feel like I've done so much & there's still a lot more to do, but I'm ready for a new venue.
Edinburgh it is. I leave two weeks from tomorrow, but would rather it be tomorrow...
The blue dot on the top is my residence, the blue dot in the middle is one of the Edinburgh campuses & the pink line is the "Royal Mile," where lots of stores and food are.
At the bottom where it says "University of Edinburgh" is the other campus. Excited to get to know what's on all of those other streets...(:
So it's been a little while, blog, but I'm back.
Have about a week and a half left in DC, a few days in transition (home-->NY-->dc-->home), and then about 5 days in Cherry Hill before I head off to Edinburgh. I got my housing assignment today, I'm really quite excited. I'm living in Darroch Court, which, as the sources on the Internet seems to point, is an excellent residence. 5 people per flat with single rooms, and shared bathroom, kitchen & laundry.
I said goodbye to a lot of people as of late, it's pretty weird.
The last weekend of July, Jason came for the AIPAC conference & surprised me. But, after that, it was saying goodbye till January. I went home (with Evan!) for my birthday weekend and said bye to the Trojans. And then Evan & Marti left the next weekend. And I said goodbye to them too. To Evan for what could be a year. Unsettling to think about. These are my friends with whom I spent the majority of my time this past year, and now it's just "See yaa." I'm trying hard to grapple with the realization.
But, as silly as it sounds, I think we're headed to interesting and exciting journeys. That's what I had to remember during this summer too. So many of my friends were and continue to be so far away. Caitlin was in Texas finding a niche in the costuming world. And Dave was in Seattle paving his way in video game community management. It's a new for me to figure out the best ways of staying in touch. Especially with no phone service in my apartment--which was probably good practice for the UK lifestyle. With many of my friends, even a few minutes of phone time when we could find each other was precious. E-mails & Skype have also proven to be quite useful.
Even with such tools at my disposal, sometimes, it's hard to just find the time. The time when we are both on Skype at the same time, the time to respond to an e-mail. And one would imagine it will get even harder once I'm in a different time zone. It's not a problem, it's just a challenge.
And as people are starting to move in at Brandeis, I have to remind myself constantly of what the Study Abroad office told those going abroad--life continues at Brandeis whether or not I'm there. And I'll be back in January and get right back into the swing of things. I'm sure there will be times when I feel alone and wish I could just be having brunch in Usdan with Missy or late nights with Jason and Evan, but it'll be okay. Things go up and down and I need all of it. I'm preparing myself.
Concluding Thoughts:
I like my friends a lot.
Perhaps my blog will be a bit out of order if expectations for the next part come before final reflections on the current. Oh well...
