Great Weekend!

Well my first official weekend in Scotland was pretty good. If this is a reflection of how the rest of this trip is going to be, I'm gonna be back on a plane before I know it. And that will be good for many reasons. If time flies, then obviously I had fun. Time flies when you're having fun, it's as simple as that. School didn't seem to be too much of a burden if time has flown by...that one is yet to be seen haha. And the other good thing is that I'll be going home to see the people I miss and love so dearly Anyways, I woke up this morning to head to class and it was snowing outside! I thought it was snowing a little on Friday but it was just an occasional flake. Today it's snowing a lot! This is like a blizzard for a Southern boy like me! It's really cold outside, but it's still kinda pretty. Well this weekend was a lot of fun! Me, Keith, and Mike went to Edinbourgh on Saturday. We got up and got breakfast at this little place. They tried the haggis, I still haven't worked up the courage for that yet. We got to Edinbourgh and it was so cool! The city is so old and the buildings all reflect this. We walked around for a little bit looking at different things, then we made our way up to the Edingbourgh Castle. This was my favorite part. There are so many cool things inside the castle, and the views of the city are amazing! The castle is up on this cliff in the middle of the city, and you can see all around you from the castle walls. My favorite part was seeing the Crown Jewels. They have this whole exhibition thing where you walk from room to room and it explains the progressive history of the Crown Jewels. It takes you from the history a long time ago, to the creation and presentation of the Crown Jewels to the king of Scotland from the Pope. It walks you through all the different kings and queens and their roles. Apparently there were many times that they were almost destroyed, but somehow the people managed to save them. Finally at the end you walk into this room after seeing the entire history of these 3 items...a sword, sceptor, and crown, and there they are. They are absolutely beautiful and magnificent. For me it was amazing to stand there in front of these and think about how hundreds of years ago the Pope had these items made, carried them to Scotland, and presented them to a king. They were then passed down through generations of kings for hundreds of years, and now they are sitting right in front of me! That was just really cool to think about. So after the castle we went up to Arthur's Seat. We saw the mountain in the distance and tried to work our way over there. We kinda had to trek through these woods to get there, but we made it. Then Keith had this brilliant idea. We could follow this walking path and then follow the trail up the mountain, or we could just go straight up the mountain. So he takes off, him and his hiking boots. Mike and I are standing there in our slick tennis shoes looking at each other like, well I guess we don't really have a choice. So we started up. Most of the time I was literally on all 4 against the mountainside. I didn't want to lose balance and fall, and I needed my arms as well as my legs to get up the side. It was like a grassy side, not rocky or anything, and there were little footholes, but they were all muddy and some were slippery. I wanted to kill Keith about halfway up. But we made it and even though it sucked in the end it was all worth it. The view here was even better than the castle. But we were just on the trail, so we had to keep walking to get to the actual peak. Turns out that we were on the wrong mountain, so the trail actually led us back down a ways then we jumped on a new trail up to Arthur's Seat. So we did a lot of hiking, a lot of climbing, a lot of pain, and a lot of tiredness. But once we got up there we realized how worth it the whole thing was. The views were incredible! I don't kow if I have ever seen anything this amazing. It was great just to sit up there for a little while and rejoice in the creation of my God. If you can, check out some of the pictures on Facebook. If you can't, let me know and I'll try to post a few online here so you can see. We didn't stay for a very long time because it was very cold that day, and the wind up on the mountain was brutal. We got too cold, so we had to start making our way down. We walked around the city for a little while longer, stopping at a pub for drinks and to rest our tired legs. Then we continued back into the city and started looking for something to eat. We walked around for quite a while until finally around 9:00 we found this little Italian place. Everywhere we had checked was either packed full with no open tables, or it was more expensive than what we were looking for. But we settled on this Italian place. Dinner was good, the wine was good, and we had a great time. We met some friends Keith had met on the plane ride over to Scotland and we spent some time with them before heading home. It was an amazing day, and I was completely exhausted.

Sunday was just a nice relaxing day. I don't have a church to go to yet, so I watched NewSpring online. It wasn't quite the same, and so I'm still looking for a good place to go. I'll find one this week though. I was able to get some little things done like putting pictures up, catching up on a few things, organizing. Then some friends came over and we watched the Superbowl. We get 5 channels through BBC on our little tv in the living room area of my apartment. Apparently one station was airing the Superbowl, so we didn't have to go out anywhere to find it. Of course we were the loud Americans watching the game no one else in the world understands haha. We tried to explain it to my Nigerian roommate but he eventually gave up. We all talked to him for quite a while and learned a lot from him...he's very cool. I feel like a lonely Steelers fan. Everyone picked the Cinderella story team to cheer for, so no one is a Steelers fan. Dad grew up in Pittsburgh so I feel like I have a connection to the city. So after the Panthers, I've kinda been a secondary Steelers fan. We won! It was a great game, a lot better than in years past. But the weird thing was, we didn't have any commercials. That makes sense since American advertisers are paying NBC to show their ads, not BBC. But they would cut to this British announcer and 2 American football analysts and they would talk about the game when we would normally have timeouts. I was somewhat disappointed with that haha. But it was still fun...I'm one of those people who watches the Superbowl for the football, not just the commercials. But it was a great night, and a great finish to a great weekend. I can't wait to see what this week has in store, as well as all these future weekends!