Studying!

This is how I have been studying for my exams: took notes on questions from past exams. Took notes on those notes. Underlined key concepts in both sets of notes. Took notes on the notes that I took on my notes. Read notes over and over. Talk to myself.

Is it possible that even with all this studying I could do poorly on my exams?

Yes.

Also, the other night I had a nightmare about cell signaling pathways that do not exist. I woke up very cranky, and worried that I will accidentally write about these fake cell signaling pathways on my exam instead of real ones.

Recently I have been studying a lot at the Scottish Studies Library. It is way better then the main library, which is filled beyond capacity with stressed students who are furiously studying. I got an email the other day that said more tables had to be moved into the library to accommodate all the students going there to study, and more study spaces had been opened in other places. So, in short, the main library is a hub of MADNESS which I am avoiding at all costs.

The Scottish Studies Library, on the other hand, is lovely. It is small, with only two rooms and three tables at which to study. One table is in the room where the librarian works, and the other two are in the connecting room. The librarian is super nice, and barely anyone studies in this library. Sometimes I am the only one there. Then I pretend it is my library.


I can dream can't I?

Yesterday and today I took tea/coffee study breaks. Yesterday I met Harriet at Metropole, and today I met Lindsey at Elephant House. Both study breaks were so nice, but today's was a bit sad as I had to say goodbye to Lindsey. Luckily, however, she goes to Smith, so we have planned to go to Haymarket together sometime next semester. She has never been.

Okay, study time!

Molecular Cell Biology

Take that MCB past papers! I am done answering all your questions! Five past papers and five make-up past papers (for those who fail the first time) with about 6 questions each. Some questions were repeats and some not so applicable to this years course so all in all I answered around 40 essay questions. Now I just have to go over the concepts these questions didn't cover and then review everything over and over and over. Oh, and do the same for Biotechnology.

Despite being finished going through the MCB past papers I am still the opposite of happy, so I am off to watch Life is Beautiful 'cuz that will definitely cheer me up.

Coping

Things are weird right now. One of my flatmates is gone. She left for the States on Wednesday. It isn't that I miss her, I mean, I didn't really get to know her so I can't exactly miss her, but it is the fact that she is gone. Her experience in Edinburgh is over. In 4 weeks my Edinburgh experience will be over too, and I think her leaving made this all the more real.

Because I only have 4 weeks left I should really try to enjoy my time in Edinburgh, but right now all I can think about is finals, Finals, FINALS. I already turned in my final paper for Genetics, Nature, and Society, so now I just have to focus on my Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology exams. They are on May 12th and May 13th respectively, so you would think that I wouldn't be too worried. Wrong. I am worried. For both exams I will be given 5 questions of which I must answer 3, and these 3 essay questions (which I get 40 minutes to answer) are worth 65% of my grade. Three measly questions determines my grade, telling you whether I successfully "learned" all the course material. What is driving me slightly more crazy, however, is the fact that I have 11 days. Eleven days during which I have to study. I would rather a short time to study and have it be done with, but instead I have to wait 11 days for my impending doom. I suppose I should try and look on the bright side, I have a lot of time to study, but that really isn't helping this rain cloud over my head to disappear.

Once my exams are over (which seems so far away) things will be great. I'll be done, my brother will come to visit, and we can enjoy all the lovely things Edinburgh has to offer. For now I am coping by watching Lizzie McGuire and eating lots of chocolate. Tonight's chocolate dessert is a Double Chocolate Swiss Roll which I bought at Tesco for 38p. When I was standing at the fattening cakes section trying to decide the best way to block my arteries I heard a girl talking about the Swiss Roll. She said when she was younger she use to get them and eat them right out of the package, biting the end off until she had consumed the entire roll. Sounded good to me.

I will update about my Spring Break travels later, when I am in a better mood.

Gray Day, Quiet Flat

So, term is over. I spent this past week studying, studying, studying. I took two theory or practical exams (exams based on the labs I did in my sciences classes), started research for my final paper for Genetics, Nature and Society, and gave a presentation on that final paper. Now all I have to do is finish that paper (due April 23rd) and study for two finals (May 12th and 13th).

By 11:30 on Friday my work was done and Spring Break had commenced. I came back to my flat to find my new computer waiting for me on the kitchen table. I took it back to my room, ripped open the box, and started configuring and personalizing it while having an email conversation with my father.

After a lunch of carrots and humus and couscous I took the slow, old laptop I had rented back to the library, bought toilet paper, and paid my first visit to the chocolate shop across the street, Choco Latte. The store was filled with chocolate and candies. There was barely room to form a queue, and only a small space sandwiched between sweets for the people behind the counter to peak their heads out from and take your order. I bought a giant chocolate covered Mars Bar muffin. I then returned to my flat, took the longest shower ever, and talked to my mother and Ella on Skype.

For dinner Lee and I went to the Mosque Kitchen, had the Mars Bar Muffin for dessert, and then went to a pub called John Leslie. Every month this pub features beers from a different brewery and this month the brewery was the Boggart Brewery. I got a Boggart's Brew which is a ruby red beer that isn't hoppy and has a distinct, light flavor. Lee got a Boggart Rum Porter described as "A classic porter with a smooth roast finish, enhanced by a sweet spicy hop taste, complemented with a hint of dark rum." As far as I am concerned with both made good choices. The drinks were also super cheap, at £2 each, and the pub was cozy and filled with old men and this silly woman who drank two half pints of Tennants (just get a whole pint, lady!).

Saturday was a lazy day. I didn't get out of the flat until around 8:30 when Lee and I went to the Jazz Bar. On Sunday Lee and I went to the Museum of Scottish History (which we are going to have to go back to because we only meandered around one floor and there are seven) and then got pies.

Today I made cheesy biscuits and am getting ready for my Spring Break trip. Tomorrow afternoon Lee and I are heading to Belgium. We will be spending six days there, followed by 5 days in Norway, and 3 days in Germany (specifically Munich). I still can't believe we leave tomorrow. I'm very excited, and I'm sure I will have a million and one stories about food to share when I get back.

Lily and London!

So of course after I write a post about how lovely things are something horrible happens: right before heading out to watch the England vs. Scotland rugby game I trip with laptop in hand. When I turned my laptop on to see if it was alright all I got was a gray screen telling me that the wiring in the monitor was no longer as it should be. Thus Lily's visit was a little less enjoyable then it could have been as I was a) spending a lot of time trying to find a way to fix my computer, b) sending frantic emails to my father, and c) studying in the library for exams. Incidents like these really make you miss home as this sort of thing would have been a lot easier to handle if I wasn't abroad. Also, without a computer I didn't really have any connection to home. However, I now have a beautiful, shiny, new laptop and all is well. So onto Lily's visit and adventures in London!

On Saturday I picked Lily up from Waverley Train Station and then got her settled in at my flat. For dinner we went to a place called Susie's Wholefood Diner which is a vegetarian restaurant set up sort of like a small, homey cafeteria. The food was pretty good, though at £6.50 it is not somewhere I can go all the time like the Mosque Kitchen. I got a carrot, squash, couscous mash that despite the odd mixture of foods was quite nice, an "enchilada" which was good when I didn't think about it in the context of the enchiladas I eat at home, and a pasta salad. All in all I enjoyed my meal and the homey atmosphere.

After dinner Lily and I went to some pubs with Lee. We tried to go to Brass Monkey (a pub with a back room that has lots of cushions), but being a Saturday night it was super full, so we popped over to the next closest pub, Aspen. Nothing to exciting to report there. They had the usual array of drinks accompanied by speakers blasting the top 100 and TV screens everywhere playing the weird Cartoon Network cartoons for 10-14 year olds. As soon as we finished our drinks we went to another pub, The Green Mantle. This pub was much more my style: a cozy, neighborhood pub with live music and well priced drinks. We stayed there for a while and got talking with some of the musicians.

Sunday Lily and I went to The Green Mantle to watch the Italy vs. France rugby game. Rugby is way more fun then American football. In rugby they lift people up by their shorts! It is an actual move, though I don't remember exactly what the purpose of it is. Near the end of the game the sound was turned off, however, because Sunday afternoons at The Green Mantle are dedicated to traditional fiddle music, so Lily and I just decided to make up our own commentary for the game. After the game we were joined by Lily's Australian friend Karl. We sat around talking and drinking for a bit and then headed to the Mosque Kitchen for dinner. Later that night Lee, Lily, Karl and I went to a pub on Grassmarket called Biddy Mulligans. The pub was Irish themed, but the atmosphere felt somewhat cheesy. The drink variety wasn't that impressive and was somewhat expensive. That combined with Lee being tired lead to Lee and I leaving the pub early.

Monday Lily and I got a late start, but we spent the afternoon walking up and down the Royal Mile. We went to the castle and we went to Parliament and Holyrood park. For dinner we went to Bella Italia (the Italian restaurant Lee and I went to in Glasgow) and spent the rest of the evening watching Friends with my Phoebe, Phoebe's friend who was visiting, and Aby.

The rest of the week mostly involved me going to class and studying during the day, leaving Lily to her own devices, and going to pubs at night. On Wednesday (St. Patrick's Day!) Lily and I went to the Blind Poet and a place called Opium. The Blind Poet had a nice variety of ciders and had big comfortable couches everywhere. The atmosphere and the people were quite friendly, definitely worth another visit. Opium was not exactly what I would call a pub. There was a bar downstairs and a dance floor upstairs, and most of the people there were young and quite drunk. Although we ended up staying there until 3:00 in the morning I didn't really like the general vibe of the place and don't think I will be going back.

Thursday evening Lily, Lee, and I met one of Lily's other Edinburgh friends, Josie. We drank Tennants at her new flat, and then headed out to the Three Sisters, a very popular pub on Cowgate. The Three Sisters is a popular spot to watch rugby games, and I can understand why as it is pretty big pub. There was live music playing when we got there, so we sipped our drinks and listened to the show. When the show ended and it was getting close to closing time Lee and I decided to head out.

Friday Lily and I caught a 3:00 train to London. We got into King's Cross around 7:30 and were starving so we bought some fries at Burger King. We sat around eating them and watching a one footed pigeon hobble around. For only having one foot it was pretty good at maneuvering. Then we took the Tube to Hyde Park where our hostel was. We had a bit of trouble finding it, however, so eventually we had to hail a taxi. We got there, checked in, put the sheets on our beds, and then went in search of some real food. We stopped at one of the first places we came to, a Malaysian and Chinese food restaurant, and ordered the vegetarian platter. The vegetarian platter consisted off mini egg rolls, mini samosas, weird vegetable-stuffed fried things, and mini cheese jalapaneo poppers, of course. It was not much food and rather expensive, but it hit the spot. After dinner we went back to the hostel, talked some, and then went to sleep.

Saturday morning we woke up and took a walking tour around London. We saw the following things: the Wellington Arch (dedicated to the Duke of Wellington who beat Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo), Buckingham Palace, the Place where the Princes' live, Hampton Court (the Tudor castle where King Henry the VIII lived), Pall Mall (famous street in London where many of London's elite live), the exclusive gentleman's club Winston Churchill was a member of, Trafalgar Square, an old World War II bunker, the house of the royal guard, the London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and Parliament. For lunch we went to Leicester Square and ate Dorrito nachos at a pub called Vibe. Then we walked around Chinatown and got dumplings and bubble tea. Afterward we headed to Oxford Circus and spent some time at Top Shop and Primark. I didn't get anything at Primark, but I did get these excellent socks at Top Shop that have red telephone booths on them.

After a long shop, we dropped our purchases at the hostel and then headed to the neighborhood Lily had lived in when she was abroad. We went to this delicious Thai restaurant for dinner, and then went to her old dorm to met up with some of her friends. After hanging out for a while waiting for everyone to get ready we finally headed out to a pub thanks greatly to a fire alarm. The first pub we went to was a live music pub, but the place was full so we walked for a while to another one. The second pub was full of the closest thing England has to frat boys, and had a horrible band playing. Picture a 45 year-old man who thinks he is still young and punk rock singing crude, crude lyrics. Soon after the band started the once packed pub had cleared out quite a bit. While initially we were enjoying making fun of the band, after a while we couldn't stand it anymore so we left. At that point Lily and I decided to head back to our hostel, and so we took the night bus home. This was quite an adventure as we didn't quite know what buses to take or which stop we needed to get off at to change buses. Luckily, both of the bus drivers we had were very helpful and nice, and we made it back to the hostel in one piece. Though when we got off the last bus we went running madly for our hostel as we both had to pee so much it hurt.

Sunday we spent most of the day at Camden Market, an outdoor market with lots of antiques, clothes, and food. The best thing we saw had to be this necklace:


Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's a caveman. After eating delicious veggie burgers and wandering around the market a bit longer we went to the graveyard where Karl Marx is buried. We sat on Herbert Spencer's grave and observed Karl Marx's grave and then walked around for a while. Afterward we went and sat in a nearby park. For dinner we went to Chinatown, and then we headed back to the hostel and played Scrabble and watched Jaws until it was time for me to leave to catch my bus.

My bus left London at 11:00 in the evning and got me back to Edinburgh a little after 7:00 the next morning. I was able to sleep most of the bus ride, waking up only twice: once at 3:00 am when the bus stopped at a rest stop and once a 6:00 when we were passing by rolling green hills in the Scottish countryside. I was only briefly able to appreciate their beauty in the golden morning light before falling back asleep again.

Lovely

It's a gorgeous Saturday morning and I am sitting at the kitchen table in my flat drinking green tea and trying not to spend too much time gazing out the window at rooftops and mountain-scapes. I need to get some work down this morning so I can go to the pub in the afternoon to watch the Scotland v. England rugby game. Then at a little before 6:00 I am heading to the train station to meet Lily for the best week of our lives.

This week has generally been a good one. Last Saturday Lee and I went to the Edinburgh Farmers Market which is picturesquely placed right below the castle. Although many of the booths were selling meat and fish there were also some booths selling foods more tempting to a vegetarian. There were a few vendors selling homemade jams, a vendor selling different varieties of honey, vendors selling cheese, breads and baked goods, and apple juice. Lee got a bottle of the apple juice and I have to say it is the best apple juice I have ever had in my life. EVER. We also got crisps from a stand that made the crisps right in front of you and allowed you to choose the flavor. We got salt and vinegar.

After sampling our way through the farmers market we walked around the West End for a while. When we got hungry we headed back to the farmers market to get some lunch. I got some soup, which was nice, but did not truly excite my taste buds. Lee was feeling adventurous and got venison haggis with neeps and tatties (turnip and potato mash). He didn't like the neeps and tatties so I ended up eating that, and he didn't really like the haggis either. I tried a tiny bite just so I could say I tried haggis, and it was... weird. I think I disliked the pâté-like consistency. It wasn't quite so smooth as pâté, but definitely a different consistency than most meat and quite rich too. I think I am going to stay away from haggis for the rest of my time here, though I might try vegetarian haggis.

After a somewhat unsatisfying lunch we came back to my flat and had afternoon tea. We drank Earl Grey and ate chocolate covered Digestives, Jaffa cakes, and toast with Nutella. It was quite a spread. We spent the rest of the afternoon watching a free show in a jazz bar. The band played mostly smooth jazz along with some jazz oldies such as "Old Black Magic". I think Lee and I were among the youngest people there, but that was rather nice. I liked watching all these elderly men and women with there friends singing along to the songs they had known when they were younger. When the show was over Lee and I got a dinner. We ate pizza and chips (1/2 a mini pizza and chips for £1.95!) and spent the rest of the night drinking cheap cider.

Monday was a day of doing little productive things like laundry and letter writing. Lee and I also began the finalization process for our Easter Break travel extravaganza. We are going to Brussels, Oslo, and Munich.

Tuesday was a busy day. I had a meeting at 9:00 in the morning to finish up a poster for a group project for MCB. We worked until 10:00 lecture. After lecture we were given 45 minutes of class time to finish and submit our poster, and then the rest of class was spent critiquing other groups' posters. The whole class period was just a laugh. First one of the girls in my group decided our poster had to be perfect and kept trying to make little changes to it when we hadn't even finished adding all the content, then the girl who still needed to add her information typed incredibly slowly, pecking daintily at the keys, and the whole time the professor was going around yelling "20 minutes left!" "10 minutes left!" "20 minutes left!". It was as if he had no concept of time, or perhaps just enjoyed making us nervous. We submitted the poster on time and then begin looking at other groups posters. This is when I lost it. It was obvious that some groups put no effort into their posters (likely because it was just an exercise and wasn't for a grade), and the outcome was hilarious, such as yes or no answers to questions that weren't yes or no questions. We were suppose to give feedback and all we could say for the yes-and-no answer group was, "Nice colors, but maybe answer the questions more in depth next time." Afterward I ate lunch, had BioTech lecture, and then BioTech practical. At 4:15 my friend Harriet and I walked home together, telling each other all about our respective experiences with the MCB poster project.

Tuesday evening Lee and I saw Beach House and Grizzly Bear at Queen's Hall. It was an excellent venue, with places to stand and sit. Lee and I decided to watch the show from the balcony as the stage was not elevated, thus in order to see the band you had to be in the front-most standing rows. Both acts had excellent lighting accompanying their music. Beach House had these white fuzzy structures that looked like closed beach umbrellas and that would light up pink, green, and blue. Grizzly Bear had glass jars with lights hanging all around the stage that lit up in response to the music. The music was great, but what was most amazing about the concert was that everything was on time. Lee and I got there at 8:05 and Beach House was already playing (they went on at 8:00). Then it took less then 30 minutes to move Beach House's equipment off the stage and move Grizzly Bear's equipment on to the stage. Grizzly Bear played for an hour and a half or so, and the concert was over at 10:45. I have never gotten out of an evening concert this early. I wasn't tired and the evening was still so young.

Wednesday I went to the King's Buildings in the afternoon and worked. In the evening I meant to do work, but I ended up making brownies instead. The brownies were amazing. I think they were some of the best brownies I've ever eaten. Lee and I ate them with ice cream.

Thursday I read for most of the day and then went to Genetics, Nature, and Society. Only four other people showed up, and after 20 minutes we all decided to leave. None of us received an email informing us class was canceled and there was nothing on the class website. I emailed the professor to ask if there is going to be a make up class and she has still not responded. Have we been ostracized? That evening I had tea and biscuits with my friend Lindsey from 6:30 until 9:30, and then spent the rest of the evening working.

Friday I had MCB lecture and tutorial and BioTech lecture and practical. I presented in tutorial and I think my presentation went fairly well. On my feedback forms I got mostly 4's and 5's (scale 1-5) except on one of them where I got 2's and 3's. Although the forms are anonymous, the people who fill them in hand them back to you directly so I knew who had given me the form. It was a guy who I gave 2's and 3's to for his presentation. My low marks for him, however, were justified as the tutor pulled him over after class and told him he needed to improve his presentation skills. Also, our tutor that day was Graeme Reid, whom I adore! He is an engaging and informative lecturer and an all around nice guy. BioTech practical was short and the last practical of the semester.

Friday evening I watched a movie and then Lee and I went out to a pub. After one pint I felt quite nice, but also somewhat sleepy so we headed home, stopping at Tesco along the way to buy some delicious crisps. There was something really lovely about walking lazily back to our flats in the crisp night air while munching on balsamic vinegar and caramelized onion crisps. I felt like I was gliding instead of walking.

And today Lily comes, which I know I already said, but I am very excited!

I've been drinking a lot of green tea in the morning recently and it is sending me back to summer mornings in China.

The Highlands and Loch Lomond

You take the high road
And I'll take the low
And I'll be in Scotland before ye
For me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond

So the essays are all done, and I spent my weekend gallivanting around the Highlands and Loch Lomond with the International Student Center (ISC). I woke up bright and early Saturday morning and walked in the snow to the ISC office. The morning started with check-in during which three small buses pulled up, one blue bus and two yellow buses which said "Haggis Adventures Wild and Sexy" on the side. This should give you some idea of what my weekend was like.

Lee and I got on the blue bus, ascending the stairs to a song whose only lyrics were, "Me so horny." The blue bus was driven by Tony, or Uncle Tony as we so fondly called him by the end of the weekend. I brought my iPod and a book for the bus journey, but it turned out I didn't need either. When Uncle Tony wasn't humorously relating bits of Scottish history or telling us embarrassing stories from his childhood he was playing silly music. Some of it was 80s and some was techno, but he also played Flight of the Conchords and Paul McCartney.

Anyway, the first stop on our trip was the William Wallace monument in Sterling which is the tallest monument to someone named William Wallace. The monument is on a hill and offers an excellent view of the town. Next we payed a visit to everyone's favorite hairy coo (highland cow) Hamish.


Isn't he cute?

For lunch we stopped in the small town of Aberfoyle. Lee had packed lunch for us, but after eating in the cold we decided to take refuge in a nearby cafe and get a pot of tea. We sat around drinking tea and eating caramel chocolate eggs and sugar cookies with icing (which I had made the night I finished my essays) for almost an hour. The sugar cookies dipped in tea were lovely. After tea we took a short walk around the town and then headed back to the buses and on to our next stop on the trip: Daivd Marshall Lodge at Queen Elizabeth Park. We took a nice nature ramble through the woods near the lodge and I took many a picture of zip-liners zipping over tree tops and a waterfall. By this time the sun had started to peak out from behind the clouds, so the ramble was very refreshing. Afterward we took a quick stop at one of the two lakes in Scotland, and then made our way to famous Loch Lomond. We took a walk around the banks of the loch and climbed a hill which marked the boundary between the highlands and the lowlands. Here is a picture of the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.


After our long walk we headed to the place we would be staying for the night: an old caste converted into a hostel. Upon exploring the castle Lee and I discovered that most of the rooms had been converted into bedrooms with bunk beds, but there was a main hall that was quite pretty as well as some other rooms that hadn't been too modernized. For dinner the organizers made tortellini and cucumber salad, and Lee and I had alcoholic drinks which we bought in Aberfoyle. When dinner finished we assembled in the main hall to watch a traditional Highland costume and weapons display, following which we had a Ceilidh (a traditional Scottish dance party). The Ceilidh was so much fun. Lee and I danced the night away. My favorite dance was the Flying Scotsman, which involved lots of galloping. When the Ceilidh became a modern day dance party Lee and I took our leave and went outside for a short walk around the castle grounds. At about 12:30 we headed to bed.

Here is a picture of Uncle Tony in front of our hostel. He is on the left:


In the morning we had a delicious breakfast of toast and cereal. I had buttered toast and half peanut butter half chocolate spread toast. I love toast! After breakfast we packed up and headed to a snowy mountain and valley area that was quite pretty. Then we went to a little town called Inverary which had a nice castle owned by the Duke of Argyle. The town was right on the waters edge so Lee and I walked to the pier and then walked around the town. We saw a church that looked like a mini cathedral, and also saw lots of cozy restaurants and bakeries. Next we went and saw a castle that once belonged to the nasty Campbell's (the Campbell's are not a well respected clan in Scotland because they massacred the clan MacDonald at Glenco in 1692). Then it was lunch time. For lunch Lee and I both had a delicious bowl of Cullen Skink, which is a traditional Scottish soup of potato, onion, cream, and smoked haddock. I know, I know I am a vegetarian, but I had to try it because it is a traditional Scottish dish. Also it was a cold day and I wanted lovely, warm soup.

After lunch we went to a town called Killin where the clan McNab have a burial ground. We were meant to take a brief stroll, but Lee wanted to go into the burial ground so he jumped the fence. He didn't get back to the bus at the pre-appointed time, however, so I had a bit of a freak out, but of course everything was fine and he soon made it back to the bus. We then moved on to another little town which I forget the name of and then headed back to Edinburgh. It was quite a full weekend.

Sunday was Lee's birthday. I made him a chocolate orange cake and we got Chinese take out from a super cheap place called Good Will.

So far this week I haven't done much of anything. Monday I took it easy. Tuesday I had class all day. Yesterday I took a three and a half hour walk during which I walked down the Royal Mile to Parliament, around Holyrood Park, and up to Prince's Street. Then I walked up Castle Street for a while and up some other streets until I found myself in a really posh neighborhood. After walking around there for a bit I got really tired and so I headed back toward my flat, stopping at Piemaker along the way. I bought one savory pie filled with tomato, basil, and mozzarella which I ate in the shop and one apple pie which I saved for later. When I got back to my flat I had tea and biscuits with Aby.

Today has been a wonderful, lazy day. I stayed in bed for a long time, got up to have coffee with a friend, went to my Genetics, Nature and Society class (which I love!), had dinner, and now I am eating a delicious cupcake with butter cream frosting. Lovely.

Snow!

It has been snowing in Edinburgh for almost an hour now. Maybe even longer as I didn't notice until I woke up. This sort of weather is apparently very rare here.

View from my window

Courtyard

I am taking this snow as a good omen. It was so lovely to open my window this morning and see all this fluffy snow falling.

So now for the most interesting part of my update, the status of the many papers I have due this week! I turned one in on Monday and have two more due on Friday. I have relatively solid rough drafts for both of my Friday papers, so I am feeling pretty good, however, when reading through one of them I realized how incredibly dull it is. Maybe that's because the prompt is incredibly dull. The paper is on DNA synthesis and the professor wants us to describe the methods used to prepare synthetic genes (this is the incredibly boring part, "The method used to prepare synthetic genes involves... First you do this. Then you do that. Following which there is a blah step." I feel like I am in fourth grade again writing a "How To..." paper), explain what factors limit the size of DNA that can by synthesized, and discuss what barriers must be overcome in order to synthesize an entire genome and then use this genome to engineer an organism. So yeah, it is a pretty dry and straight forward paper.

The second paper has been stressing me out to no end. The professors designed an organism and they want us to hypothesize as to how certain mechanisms work and then describe experiments we could do to prove these hypotheses. While in theory this seems like an interesting prompt, it isn't. It is instead extremely difficult. I am not a molecular cell biologist and I've only been learning about molecular cell biology for a few weeks, so I really don't know that many cell biology methodologies. Not to mention people have been super unhelpful. I don't have a methodology for one of my hypotheses, and I don't quite know what to do about it. Every time I think of a possible experiment there is always some fly in the ointment. There are just so many methodologies out there and I don't really know where to look. I emailed my professors and they seem to think guiding me in the right direction or telling me where I can get information on methodologies would be cheating and my peers haven't posted any response to the questions I asked on the discussion board. Ugh. I am sure I will figure out something, but I am getting fed up. I just have to remind myself that the paper is almost over.

In other news look at this giant box of chocolates I have been devouring!


Also, last night for dinner I made a delicious butternut squash with garlic, butter, honey, herbs, and cheese. Yum!

Oh food, you are my only comfort.

Addendum: Apparently the snow was gross snow, but it certainly did look pretty.

Crunch

So I really should be working on an essay right now. I have multiple essays to choose from too. I have one essay due a week from now and two more due in two weeks. I have started them all, which is good, but I would like to get them done sooner rather then later otherwise I know I am going to get stressed out. Granted, they are all five page essays. I don't even remember the last time I was only expected to write five pages.

Anyway, instead of working on these essays I am updating my blog and drinking Irn Bru, Scotland's most popular carbonated beverage. It is orange and tastes slightly of bubblegum. The cap says "feel phenomenal". I hope I do feel phenomenal after drinking this. Phenomenal enough to get some paper writing done. I am going to be pretty upset if it is false advertising.


Oh, and here is a picture of my room.


And Jelly Babies! These chewy candies are a lot more like jelly then jelly beans are. At first I didn't like the consistency, but now I've sort of grown to like them. Also, it is hard to resist biting off their heads.


In my last post I said I would talk about the deal with grocery stores here. I think I was feeling very strongly about my grocery shopping experience at that point. Basically you shouldn't expect to walk into a Tesco and get the foods you want to get. There was one week where I went to Tesco twice and both times they didn't have Baking Powder. I ended up buying some from a random little convenient store. So if I see something in Tesco and think, "Oh, that might be nice" I buy it right away because it might not be there the next time I go. Before I go to Tesco I usually stop by a store called LiDL. They don't have all the food stuffs I want, but the ones they do have are super cheap. You can get a loaf of bread for 45 pence (less than 90 cents) a bag of flour for 41 pence (less then 80 cents) and so on. Also, spices here are super cheap. I think the most expensive spice that I have seen and wanted was 55 pence (a little less than $1). I almost want to by a bunch of spices here and bring them back so I don't have to deal with buying horrendously expensive spices in the states. Even at Deals and Steals they are upwards of $2. Okay, enough about spices.

This Saturday Lee and I went to Glasgow. We had a very full day, and it was quite nice. We took a 10:15 bus to Glasgow and got there sometime after 11:00. First we headed to the Glasgow Cathedral which had beautiful stained glass and is home to St. Mungo's (the patron saint of Glasgow) tomb. The cathedral is right near a massive graveyard called the Necropolis, which is basically this giant hill covered in tombs and tombstones. It was beautiful, and one of the things I really liked was that there were tons of people there walking their dogs. Yup, just taking their dog for a walk in a graveyard like it is the most normal thing in the world. After walking around there and exploring as much of the graveyard as possible Lee and I headed to Merchant City to find some lunch. Merchant City is crazy. There are tons of big shops up and down along a pedestrian only street and to match the tons of shops there are tons of people (who aren't very good at being conscientious and self aware). Lee and I ended up eating at a Japanese restaurant. He got sushi and I got fried butternut squash and sweet potato in curry. Not quite Japanese, but it was delicious.

After lunch we walked through Merchant city, only stopping at a large candy store to ogle the goodies. Then we walked down to an open air market I had read about called the Barras Market. I thought it was going to be artists selling crafts and maybe some food like a farmers market, but it turned out to be more like a flea market. A slightly dodgy flea market. We wandered around a little bit, and then headed to the People's Palace and Winter Gardens. We sat around in the greenhouse garden for a while and people watched. There were lots of parents with their children and some of the children were being so silly and having so much fun. Eventually we relinquished our bench and headed to the attached People's Palace which is a Glasgow social history museum. We didn't stay for long though because the exhibits were mostly targeted towards children (hence all the children in the Winter Gardens). We left and walked through Glasgow Green (where the Palace and Gardens are located) and found the most amazing playground with four extremely tall slides. We did some sliding and then walked through the green back toward the city center for dinner.

We ate dinner at this Italian restaurant called Bella Italia because the map we got at the bus station had a voucher on it for buy one meal get the other free. Lee got lasagna and I got spinach catteloni. Both our meals were cheesy and delicious. Since we only had to pay for one meal we decided to splurge and get dessert. Lee got three scoops of gelato and I got this dessert called The Godfather which involved fresh cream (which I thought I might like more than regular whipped cream, but I didn't), chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream, chocolate crunch, a chocolate biscuit stick, all on top of a nutty chocolate brownie. It was good, but Lee's chocolate and toffee gelato was better. After dinner we went to a pub called The Cask Still and got some ale. We sat around there for a while and played the game that I played with my flat on Burn's Night. Then we walked around the city some and found the clubbing area (by accident). Clubbing is so popular here it is absurd. I am glad it isn't as popular in America. Soon we headed back to the bus station and took the midnight bus back to Edinburgh. Although Glasgow has some pretty sites the city itself is not very pretty and I much prefer Edinburgh.

Here are pictures of the two best places we went:

The Necropolis


Slides!

So, yesterday was Chocolate Day and I spent most of the day doing work (good for me!). Then Lee and I went to dinner at the Mosque Kitchen. I am seriously addicted to that place. There was a sign on a nearby wall that said, "This is a wall (until further notice)". I really don't know what that was about, but it was pretty amusing. After dinner I came back to my flat and made chocolate chocolate chip muffins and Aby made cupcakes. Then she pulled out her chocolate fondue set and began melting chocolate while I made cookie dough to dip in the chocolate. When everything was ready Su, Rhiannon, Charlotte, Keilani, Aby, and I all sat down and had chocolate covered marshmallows, oranges, and cookie dough.

Alright, time for some procrastination toast. Oh, also, tomorrow is pancake day so I think I will make pancakes for dinner.

My Week (Photos!)

Monday night was Burns' Night which is a Scottish holiday in honor of the Scottish bard Robert Burns, so after my History of Medicine class (which I actually dropped in order to take Genetics, Nature and Society, but which I am still attending when I can because the subject matter is really interesting) my flat had a Burns' Night supper. Although we didn't have a traditional supper of haggis, tatties (potatoes), and neeps (turnips)--as Tesco was totally cleared out of these items--we did have a delicious supper of spaghetti, wine, cake, tea, and gummy candies. We listened to music and played the game where everyone gets a card with a famous person/character and they have to stick it on their forehead and ask questions to try and figure out who they are. I was Big Bird and Michael Jackson. It was lots of fun.

Tuesday was my long day with two Molecular Cell Biology lectures, one BioTech lecture, a BioTech practical, and a History of Medicine lecture. In MCB we changed lecturers during the second lecture and we are now talking about cell signaling which plays an important role in gene expression and is far more interesting then the cytoskeleton. In BioTech we also got a new lecturer who is much better than the first. He has a dry, British sense of humor and is incredibly knowledgeable. The only downside is that sometimes he gives us so much information during lectures it is hard for my hand to keep up. After class we had practical. Once again the protocol was horribly written. We "ran" a PCR. By run a PCR I mean we lysed cells and then added them to a pre-prepared master mix. I didn't even get to see the PCR machine. The rest of the practical was looking at plates and the yogurt we had made.

On Wednesday Lee and I bought tickets to go see Grizzly Bear in March. The venue is probably about a block away from my flat at most. Afterward we had some tea and then went to get Indian food at this kitchen connected to a mosque cleverly named the Mosque Kitchen. The seating area is a courtyard filled with long plastic tables and chairs, and the cold air served to increase the amount of steam rising off my giant bowl of hot food. Everyone's food looked so delicious (mine sure was!) and nice with steam rising off of it. I didn't finish my portion of saag aloo at lunch, but I did finish it for dinner that night. Later that day Lee and I went to play on The Meadows playground (which is apparently built over a bubonic plague graveyard?). There is a zip line, which was lots of fun.

Thursday I had my Nature, Genetics, and Society class in the afternoon. Currently we are talking about who should be involved in technological decision making and how we can increase and improve communication between scientists and the public. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy this class?

Friday was another busy day. I decided to walk to the King's Buildings that morning (it's a 30 minute walk) because I was worried the bus might run late and I wanted to get there on time for my 9:00 MCB practical. The MCB practical is proving much better than the BioTech practical. Granted all we have done so far is pipette solutions from one tube to another, but I feel a lot less coddled. Also we are going to do a Western Blot! Then again I shouldn't get too excited as this might actually mean the demonstrators are going to run the Western Blot for us. Another down side is that some of the people in my lab group are incompetent. One of the girls tried to set a p 20 pipetter to 60 µL. The 20 on top means it can only go to 20 µL. When I told her that she said, "Oh, well then I will just use this one three times." My response was to hand her the p 100 already set to 60 µL. I worry because this is a third year honors practical. Practical was followed by lecture and another practical. Then at 1:30 I had a BioTech lecture followed by a Biotech practical. The BioTech lab that day was excellent. It was simply a wrap up of what we had done over the entire unit and lasted approximately 25 minutes. It was really hard, however, looking at a gel that someone else had run using my PCR product.

On Saturday I decided I wanted to go on a long walk around Edinburgh. The sun was shining and when I stuck my arm out the window it felt so nice outside. Lee came along too, but what started out as a nice walk turned into the coldest moments of my life. We didn't walk for too long as we got distracted by a street performer on the Royal Mile (he was quite funny), and by the end of his performance we were so cold we ran to a nearby cathedral and ducked in... to the cafe. Why a cathedral has a cafe I don't really know, but we were able to make our way from the cafe to the actual cathedral, which had the gorgeous stained glass. Unfortunately, if you wanted to take pictures you had to pay £2, so we just wandered. We didn't spend enough time warming up in there and the moment we walked out I was chilled to the bone again. My toes were so cold I couldn't feel them anymore, so I rushed back to my flat and snuggled in my bed. Lee stopped by his flat and then brought over tea and Jaffa Cakes to warm me up and make me less cold and cranky. Here are some pictures I took on our short walk:

Old College

Old College + Zombie for fun

Pie Shop!

Obligatory red telephone booth photo. Except I chose the first one I saw which happened to be covered in graffiti and smell like piss.

The Royal Mile

The Royal Mile

Later that night I baked with Aby and then Aby, Phoebe, Su, Aby's friend Rhiannan, and I all sat down and had tea, cupcakes, and peanut butter cookies as well as a nice chat. Here is what the table looked like:


Afterward Aby, Rhinnan and I watched a movie together. So despite the cold, Saturday turned into a nice day.

Today has been cleaning and homework. To come, pictures of my room, the deal with grocery stores, Irn Bru, and Jelly Babies!

The Flat

My flat is located on South Clerk Street and it is a 6 person flat on the fourth floor, Flat 21. The location is perfect. It is on a main street, so just outside the door there are tons of shops. Right across the street is a chocolate shop, which I have not been into yet as I am afraid that if I go once I am going to end up going every day. I browsed in the window the other day and they had these massive chocolate cupcakes with Mars Bars in them. They looked fantastic. There is another shop on the corner of the street called Peckham's. Peckham's is a bakery/deli which also has a variety of biscuits, drinks, and snacks. They are somewhat expensive, but it is such a lovely shop I couldn't help popping in.

There are also a lot of fish and chip places in the area. So far I have discovered there are two kinds of fish and chip shops: Indian fish and chip shops and Mediterranean fish and chip shops. The Indian fish and chip shops serve fish and chips alongside Indian snacks while the Mediterranean shops serve fish and chips alongside pizza, kebabs, and felafel. Mostly, the places tend to be Mediterranean. My first fish and chips experience was at The Meadows Fish Bar. They covered my fish and chips in "brown sauce" which seemed a little dodgy at first, but was a nice addition to the fish. The chips had a good flavor, but they were a little too soggy (due mostly to the sauce). All in all it was really good, and now I want to stop writing, walk the 5 minutes over there, and get me some fish and chips. It was also at The Meadows Fish Bar that I tried a fried Mars Bar. It was so delicious. Frying makes the Mars Bar just the perfect amount of gooey and the batter on the outside keeps the chocolate from getting everywhere and going where it belongs, into your stomach. The only thing keeping me from eating a meal of fish and chips everyday followed by a fried Mars Bar is the memory of how greasy my hands were when I had finished. I can't even imagine how much oil was used. Sends a bit of a shiver down my spin.

So more about my flat. It is actually more of a 6 person hallway with a lounge/kitchen then a flat. You walk in and you can either take a left or a right. If you take a left you find the door to the kitchen and four other doors to single rooms. If you take a right you find two doors to two single rooms, one of which is mine. In the middle are the bathrooms, one for each side of the hallway. For those of you at Hampshire, it is sort of configured like Merrill. My room is really nice, and not too loud because it is on the side of the flat that isn't facing the street. I don't have an amazing view of the city, but it is nice and in the distance I can see the spire of a church. Also right below me and to the left is some other buildings courtyard. I have my bed against the window and sometimes when I look out I see chickens. My room came with a bed, a nightstand with a reading lamp, a small shelf, an armoire, and a desk. I will take a picture when it is cleaner.

So my flat mates are all girls and there names are Wenqian, Keilani, Su, Phoebe, and Aby. Wenqian is Chinese and she stays in her room mostly. She barely even comes into the kitchen to cook as she keeps a rice cooker and lots of food in her room. I tried to get her to warm up to me by telling her I could speak Chinese, but she didn't seem to care and just went back to her room. She doesn't even say, "Hi" when we do run into each other in the kitchen. Keilani is American and goes to Brown. She is majoring in international studies and is part of the Parliament Program, which means she is taking classes for 5 weeks and the rest of her time here will be spent interning at Parliament. She goes out a lot with friends she has made in her program so I don't see her too much. Su is Malaysian and she is studying medicine. She is really sweet and a hard, hard worker. Phoebe is American and she goes to UChicago. She studies law and politics and is really fun, but she also works really hard. Aby is from London and is a first year medical student. She is tall and lovely and is another hard worker.

Mostly I have been hanging out with Phoebe and Aby. I really like them. On the Friday after the first week of classes the three of us went out to a club called City. However, due to the fact that they are such hard workers most of our hanging out occurs in the flat talking in the lounge area, watching shows and movies, eating dinner together, and sometimes baking. Phoebe and I made peanut butter cookies the other day that were really delicious. I really want to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, but I haven't been able to find canned pumpkin here. That brings me to the subject of grocery stores, which are ridiculous here, but I will save that for another entry.

Classes Mostly

So I've nearly been here two weeks and it actually feels like I have been here for ages. I think that means I've settled in and am feeling comfortable. It's nice.

So I am taking the following classes:
Molecular Cell Biology 3: Tuesday and Friday morning
Biotechnology 3: Tuesday and Friday afternoon
Genetics, Nature and Society: Thursday afternoon

This means I get a three day weekend as well as a random day off in the middle of my week. Also I only have to wake up early two days a week. This has never happened to me before.

Molecular Cell Biology starts at 10:00 a.m. (most days, there will be about 5 times during the semester where class will begin at 9:00) on a different campus 30 minutes away. Luckily, there is a free shuttle that will take me to this different campus (the King's Buildings, where most of Edinburgh's science-y stuff occurs), however, the bus leaves at 9:20 and gets me there at 9:35 so I have to treat the 10:00 class like a 9:00 class and then when I get to campus I have to bum around for 25 minutes. This is one of the many times where I can read anything I please. Currently I am enjoying "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by Joyce. Oh pleasure reading! How I've missed you! Anyway, Molecular Cell Biology thus far has been boring. We are talking about the cytoskeleton. It's a structure within the cytoplasm that is made out of proteins and is basically the cell's skeleton. It is involved in motility. That is about the most exciting thing I've learned about the cytoskeleton. Hopefully, things will get more interesting when we start talking about cell innards. Also, we are only doing one practical in this class (they call labs practicals here) because apparently molecular cell biology techniques are too advanced for undergraduates. Instead we will be doing computer simulations of actual practicals. While I am a bit peeved, the subject matter is something I feel I need to know in order to be hired by a lab in the future. Also, like I said, hopefully it will get more interesting.

Biotechnology starts at 1:30 at the King's Buildings and lasts until 5:00 (this includes practical). Not all praticals take up the whole of the allotted time. On Tuesday we got out at 3:00. That was because the lab was absurdly ridiculous. We did the following: serial dilutions (for you non-science people this involves pipetting a specific amount of one solution into another solution and then taking from the second solution and pipetting the same amount into a third solution and so on), then we pipetted these different dilutions onto agar plates that had been made for us (!!!), then we spread out the solution, then we did this on a special plate with special agar, then we added 5 mL of one solution to 10 mL of another solution, then we looped colonies of salmonella off a plate given to us by the instructor and inoculated a tube. THE END. It took me and my partner longer to finish then other groups only because we didn't know where all the materials were located and some of the directions were horribly written. Not only was our lab completely prepped for us, but at the end our plates were taken to the incubator for us and clean up involved putting things in a basket for someone else to clean. This was all very absurd to me. Unheard of in the Lynn Miller laboratory. Tomorrow we are suppose to be doing a PCR and I hope that less hand holding occurs because I haven't done a PCR in, like, FOREVER and I am really excited. As far as lectures go the first lecture was interesting and the last two were boring so it is still up in the air. The problem is the professor went into so much unnecessary detail. Not to mention the slide show was poorly organized. Wow, I originally typed organized with an "s". How Scottish of me.

Genetics, Nature and Society is a perfect match for me, and it is so unfortunate that we only meet once a week. Today we discussed the history of Eugenics as well as the ethics of genetic screening and reproductive genetics. I was assigned an article called "Reproductive Genetics, Gender and the Body: 'Please Doctor, may I have a Normal Baby?'" by Elizabeth Ettorre and it was about how aborting foetuses with impairments will reduce the number of people in society with impairments and thus threaten those people's rights. It also talked about how society makes people disabled because society views people with impairments in certain lights, i.e. dependent on others, not able to work and contribute to society, etc. Really interesting stuff. I love this course. It was so easy to get into too. Originally I was told that I couldn't get into the course because I didn't meet the pre-requisites, but I just met with my Director of Studies, told him I wanted to be in the course, he said "That sounds interesting, sure!", and enrolled me. When I went to the class and told the professor I was studying biological sciences there was no fuss about pre-requisites at all.

Well, tonight I am going to a pub crawl hosted by the Literary Society of which I hope to become a member so I am off! Stories of chip shops and fried Mars Bars to come!

I Made It!

I'm in Edinburgh! I got to sleep in my bed! The public safety team here is the best!

The flatmates that I meet thus far are really nice. I slept pretty well last night, except I am having a bit of trouble with my heater. Luckily the heater in the hall is going full blast which I think helped. Also the duvet from the bedding pack kept me immensely warm, however, it isn't as big as the duvet I have at Hampshire and thus every now and then I would turn over and one of my limbs would come out from under the duvet and become cold and unhappy.

Well, I need to find something to eat and also an adapter so that I can plug my computer in as it is running out of battery life.

Ariane in Everywhere but Edinburgh

Number of flights delayed : 4
Number of connections missed: 1
Number of hours I should have been in Edinburgh: 6

So this traveling business has been going really poorly so far. Some of it has been snow, but the reason I missed my connection in Frankfurt is still somewhat of a mystery to me. My flight from Chicago to Frankfurt sat around for an hour, was de-iced, made its way onto the runway, and then had to go back to the gate because a girl had a medical issue. I saw the flight attendants escort the girl off the plane and she looked fine, so hopefully it wasn't too serious. After that they had to find her luggage in the belly of the plane, fill out paper work, wait around, and then de-ice the plane again. So all in all it was a two hour delay and I missed my connection in Frankfurt. They re-routed me through London and here I sit waiting for my flight to Edinburgh.

I can't wait to get into a bed. Hopefully, the bed that will be my bed for the rest of the semester not a bed at a hostel. I guess a bed is a bed though. I really just want to be settled in already.

My Last Day in America

I have about 30 minutes before I have to leave for the airport. I am sitting in the middle of my clean room, which is only clean due to the fact that all the clothes that were covering the floor have now been laundered and neatly packed into two suitcases. Despite the clean room and the suitcases and the day full of packing I had yesterday it hasn't really hit me yet that I am leaving for Edinburgh. Even the idea of leaving in general seems absolutely ridiculous to me for some reason. It will probably hit me when I change planes in Frankfurt. If that doesn't make me realize I am not in America anymore and I am not going back to Hampshire this semester then I don't know what will.

I am actually pretty nervous about going to Edinburgh. When I went to China two summers ago I wasn't nervous at all, so I don't really understand what is causing all this anxiety. Scotland is an English speaking country and when just walking around and not speaking I could possibly pass for a native. In China, on the other hand, the main language is obviously not English, there is no way I could pass for a native, and there are some major cultural differences. I guess I am just nervous because there are some things I still have to work out when I get to Edinburgh, whereas once I got on the plane for China everything was already all perfectly arranged.

Well, I better get a move on. Next time: thoughts from Edinburgh.