SOO I made it to Scotland! I’ve been here about 3 days now and each day has been very very different. My flights were fine, except the 2 hour delay ON the plane before we took off for Scotland. I guess our antenna broke, and they needed to fix it otherwise, our radar would not function and we would get lost over the ocean…so I was definitely ok with waiting. I also loved that I could walk as fast as I wanted all over the airport and no one would be yelling at me from behind to slow down…

When I got to the University they basically handed me my key and sent me off to find my way to my little cottage in the woods. The first day was pretty rough I’m not gonna lie, I basically had no where to go and no one to go anywhere with and it was 1 in the afternoon and felt like 8 pm. My roommates are great, all from Scotland and are in their fourth years or just graduated. Liam, Kim, Claire, and Jaimie are their names. They’ve been extremely helpful with giving me shopping tips to where I need to visit.

The next day was better as I met some girls from America at our orientation stuff that started Sunday. I met 2 girls from UMASS, 1 from Kentucky (who hates KU which is awesome), 1 from Ohio (Indians fan, also great), and some from New Jersey and Minnesota (apparently the show Jersey Shore is a horrible representation of New Jersey people…who knew?? haha) That night I met some people from London and Scotland who we talked to for a while at the university’s bar in their union. They like a lot of American things really, the music and shows and such. I was asked if I own a gun….and that American football is confusing because they “stop and start all the time and it doesn’t make sense”. But they like baseball even though they don’t get it, but they love the atmosphere of eating and drinking beer haha. They actually did know what a baton twirler was and they had quite an excited reaction when they found out I was one (as they all made their own impression with their hands of what they thought it looked like haha)

Today went better as I got to meet even more people and learn more about the university, and tonight we’ve got some trivia quiz game thing at the bar so that might be fun! but I don’t want to blab too long so here’s some main points of things I learned.

- Diet coke has 1 calorie in it…(aka America lies to us)

- Automatic doors on campus do not open as you approach them

- Some guys don’t wear anything under their kilts because it is “F***in’ Roastin’ under there”.

- Everything seems to be in smaller portions at the grocery store…why does this not surprise me.

- Fanny does not mean what it does in America but here is a female reproductive body part…(to which my roommate said was quite taken aback when she was at Disney world and heard lots of moms talking about their “fanny packs”

- Just because I’m not driving does not mean it will not affect me…when looking for cars, you have to look in different directions for cars because while you might think it’s clear…it’s definitely not.

- -Stirling is a school known for its sports…”so there’s no reason for you not to be fit here”. (Thank you, I can only guess which students you were directing that towards)

That’s all I've got for now!