{"id":38,"date":"2010-01-10T16:07:45","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T00:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ups.edu\/studyingabroad\/?p=38"},"modified":"2013-04-01T08:50:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T15:50:15","slug":"hello-from-edinburgh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/2010\/01\/10\/hello-from-edinburgh\/","title":{"rendered":"Hello From Edinburgh!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I arrived safely in Edinburgh on Saturday morning at about 11:00. Here’s an awesome picture of the Canadian Rockies that I took during my 10-hour flight from Portland to Amsterdam (I then flew the 1 hour from Amsterdam to Edinburgh):<\/p>\n

\"Canadian<\/p>\n

After arriving, a shuttle bus took us from the airport to campus where I got the key to my flat. It was quite a walk (in the snow and with my luggage, too) to my flat, but I got help from some amazing locals and students that knew the area better than I did! I made it to my room and set everything up (not too bad when you only have a couple suitcases worth of stuff to set up). I have a single, and then share a kitchen, living room area, and 1.5 baths (1 shower and 2 toilets, basically) with my 4 other flatmates. My heater is a little tempermental, so I might invest in a space heater because the room is really cold… but I get by with warm PJs for now. Here’s the view (you can see part of Arthur’s Seat, the large cliff, from my window):<\/p>\n

\"Window<\/p>\n

They also had pizza for us on Saturday night (What would college be without free food?), and that gave me a chance to meet some new people. It wasn’t nearly as good as The Cellar’s pizza, but I’m sure once I have pizza in Italy, all others will seem paltry… One of my flatmates is actually also an international student from Brown University, so it’s nice to have someone in the same boat right down the hall!<\/p>\n

Today (Sunday) was Orientation. They showed us on a tour of campus and gave us lots of information. It was not nearly as awesome<\/em><\/strong> as Prelude, Passages, and Perspectives. But it served it’s purpose. This evening, I walked down to Princes Street (EVERYTHING in Edinburgh is within walking distance, which is so fantastic). It, High Street, and George Street are the main “downtown” shopping area of Edinburgh, and I needed to go there to get a cell phone with an international SIM card. It’s a cute little LG with pay-as-you-go service… there are people here that had to part with their Blackberrys and iPhones back at home (because international calls wouldn’t work with the UK’s different bandwidth, or would just be too expensive). My phone wasn’t quite that integral in my life, but it was<\/em> weird to turn it off for 5 months!<\/p>\n

Paying for things with pounds (and pence coins) is so much fun! It can be dangerous, though, since it feels like “toy money” and doesn’t really have the significance of using the dollar bills I am so used to. The bills are quite pretty. Here’s a picture of one of each:<\/p>\n

\"Pounds\"<\/p>\n

I also bought groceries on Nicholson Street at a grocery store called Lidl. I wish I had taken a picture in the store because it was SO different than American stores. Very minimal, and only a couple varieties\/brands of each item. Not the sprawling options we have in the States! It was all pretty affordable, though, which was nice.<\/p>\n

Classes start tomorrow. Edinburgh has about 25,000 students total, and my 9am Chemistry class is about a 45 minute walk from my flat (but they offer a free shuttle, which shortens the trip considerably to about 10 minutes). Definitely a different experience than Puget Sound! I have yet to buy spiral notebooks, so I think I will just bring my laptop and take notes using that for the first day.<\/p>\n

I’ll let you know how that all goes as well as my week ahead. Be sure to check out the other Study Abroad blogs once everyone is at their international institution! I know I’m excited to read them. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I arrived safely in Edinburgh on Saturday morning at about 11:00. Here’s an awesome picture of the Canadian Rockies that I took during my 10-hour flight from Portland to Amsterdam (I then flew the 1 hour from Amsterdam to Edinburgh): … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[77,84,129,186],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2010-alayna-schoblaske-10-scotland","tag-airport","tag-arriving","tag-edinburgh","tag-orientation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5359,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/5359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}