I'm so sorry it's been so long since the last post!! You know what this means... THIS post will be a doozy!
So, two weeks ago I went on a saturday trip to go see Elgin. Elgin is a small town to the West... very pretty and quite small. We stopped at a Castle, a Cathedral, a palace, and... A DISTILLERY! Hahaha and NO I'm not just excited about that because I like whiskey (although I do like whiskey) I'm excited about that because of the Chemical Engineer in me! Sheesh!
The trip was fairly quick and I did learn quite a bit about the distilling process but I won't torture you all here with that. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.
The LAST weekend was my trip to London!! The Uof I study abroad program for British Exchange put this weekend together so we could all get together and tour about London. It's true what they say... when you're tired of London you're tired of life. The city had an amazing ability to be absolutely gigantic but still feel small enough so as not to be overwhelmed. The best part of the trip, I'd say, was the company. Matthew Feickert came from Cork and Kristin Segovich and Michael Theis came from Leeds while I came from Aberdeen with Katie. What a BLAST it was to see everyone again. Of course, there were a total of about 45 of us U of I kids when we all had dinner and what not.
We arrived on Thursday night (March 5th) and had delicious gormet pizza with some really tasty wine. The first night was mostly just good food and conversation since everyone had traveled pretty far to get to London. Day two, friday, everyone had the hotel's complimentary cereal and toast before getting on a bus for a city tour. I know it's cheesy, but it made me so well oriented for the rest of the trip. I'd recommend bus tours on the first days of trips for almost any place you go... we got a little taste of everything so that we could pick what we wanted to come back and see in more detail.
The bus dropped us off in Trafalgar square the big group broke off into smaller groups for the afternoon free time. Feickert, Katie, Michael, Kristin, and two other guys I can't remember.. went to China town for some lunch. Then we hit up Westminster Abby... HOW AMAZING!!!! They don't let you take pictures inside but it took my breath away, really. Well worth the visit. We also saw Parliament and Big Ben. Then we headed back into the inner city for a Pub Quiz and my first ever Guinness courtesy of Matthew Feickert. How appropriate.
The next day Katie and I went to London Bridge, the Tower of London, and the British Museum (PHEW... LONG DAY!) Before meeting everyone for some really amazing food and a performance of traces... modern cirque de sole basically.
Sunday was our last day. Katie and I hit the town about 9:30 seeing Buckingham and then winding down through the Harrods shopping district to catch the tube back to Heathrow airport and coming back to Aberdeen.. ahhh home sweet home.
OH! I almost forgot! I've joined the football club here and even played in a game!! Apparently I'm "that crazy American keeper who dives around like a maniac". Fantastic. I have so much fun practicing with those girls. I probably won't play in any more matches this season because of class conflicts so I made them take a picture at our game last week. Bahaha I got SOOO much crap for that. Apparently it's a VERY American thing to do to take pictures of everything... yeah... oh well. :D
I'm doing great guys. I really love it here.
