Castles and mountains and sheep! Oh my!

Or perhaps I should title this blog, '75 flavours of Vodka and a shooter called 'Hardcore' and a Jaegerbomb break. Oh my!'

As I mentioned in my last entry, I travelled to Edinburgh, Scotland this weekend to visit my dear friend, and former camp co-lifeguard, John. John's family lives in Edinburgh, but he also attends university there, so I can't think of anyone better to show me the city.

Alun and Rhi sent me out of the office early on Friday afternoon so that I could catch my train for the 7 hour journey north to Scotland. I left Cardiff around 4pm with only one train change ahead of me. I arrived to my transition station, Crewe, to find that the earlier train to Edinburgh had been delayed just a few minutes. How lucky! I didn't have to wait for the later train to come in and hopped on my train toward Edinburgh 20 minutes early.

Unfortunately, I picked the car with about 20 seventeen year olds buzzing and running about after a week long stay in London for holiday. In fact, the couple sitting just across the aisle from me decided to take their relationship to the next level and had a pretty explicit make-out session. Now, don't get me wrong - I was no angel when I was 17. But I'm pretty sure I didn't have X-rated make out sessions with my boyfriend on a train resembling a sardine can with 20 of my closest friends and a few random travellers watching. It took all I had not to stare, wide-eyed with my jaw dropped at these sexually curious teenagers. In a telephone conversation with my mom after the children deboarded the train, she reminded me of my annoying tendencies as a 17-year-old and I would like to publicly apologize to any and all then-20-somethings that I annoyed to no end. I now feel your pain.

I arrived at the train station in Edinburgh just before 10 on Friday night and found John just a few minutes later. He took me back to his flat and we spent the rest of the night catching up and, of course, being really mean to each other. We had decided not to go out because we were both pretty tired, but ended up staying awake until 3 in the morning.

We woke up at a pretty decent hour on Saturday and he and his roommate, Roderick, took me out in the city. We went to John's lecture hall, Old College, which is apparently a big deal; a museum, had some lunch, walked up by the castle, grabbed some coffee and sat in the park down below the castle, and then met up with a few of his friends to catch the rest of the Scotland football match. We went back to his place to get cleaned up and grab some dinner before heading out that night.

Now, apparently, the cool thing to do in Scotland is go to vodka bars. We arrived at the bar that boasted 75 different flavours of vodka - anything from coconut to honey. John bought me this absolutely wretched shooter called 'Hardcore' which I nursed for the majority of our stay there. We had a few cocktails and then headed to another bar, Revolution, to meet up with some of the blokes we'd met earlier. One of the guys, Allister, and I shared a spread of shooters and an entire pitcher of some randomly mixed cocktail before we decided it was time for a change of scenery. As we walked to find the other bar, we decided that it was a bit far and that we needed a pit stop. I elected to buy that round and we all ran into some random bar, ordered three Jaegerbombs and split as soon as we sat the glasses down.

We walked to the other side of the city and found the bar we were going to with a huge queue and decided to skip down to another random pub on the corner. The man who was dj-ing played 'American Woman' on my behalf and everyone quickly knew there was an American in the house. I made friends with the bartender after Rory had ordered me an absolutely disgusting shooter that smelled a lot like a plant and the bartender allowed me to choose a mixer (I chose tonic water) to mix this crap with.

We walked around downtown a bit more before deciding we were tired. The boys grabbed some kebabs and we went back to John's place. I was exhausted from being up so late the night before and decided to go to bed pretty much as soon as we'd returned.

John had American football training in the morning, so he was up and attum pretty early. I showered, packed my stuff and then Roderick walked me to the train station. I grabbed a bit of lunch and caught my train to Manchester. The man sitting next to me was from Greece and we chatted a bit about travelling, American politics and our families and his career. He was a professor at Lancaster University and left the train just before my stop to get to Manchester. When I boarded my train in Manchester, I chose the first open seat I saw when I got on the train. I was sharing a table with 3 men, who were all travelling alone, as well. We all started chatting about university, politics and our weekends and then quickly discovered that we liked talking to each other. After a four hour train ride, we all had exchanged information and had made plans to go out for drinks in Cardiff sometime in the near future.

I never felt better getting home. There is something about Cardiff that makes me feel at home. I love that I know my way and have recognition over much of the city now and it's such a comfort to be able to return here and really feel at home. I got home and exchanged weekend stories with Dianne before reading a few chapters in my book and hitting the hay.

This week is Child Poverty event #1. We will be in Llanelli on Friday to do a publicity stunt with the MP and a few ministers. Then, we'll be able to dive full force into getting the other event, set for late-November, planned out. I'm excited to get Alun into the Child Poverty campaign and hope that his ideals are well-received.

I can't believe I'll be in Germany in less than two weeks! Time has really been flying by here. It's crazy to think that I've been here for over a month already. I'm so excited to see Kilee, Jeremiah and the kids that it's really not even funny. It will be good to have a part of home over here in Europe. We're taking the kids trick-or-treating while we're there - Caleb is going as Buzz Lightyear and Lilly as a floppy-eared bunny. I can't wait to see their costumes because I'm sure they're going to be the cutest ones on the block.

I hope everyone is doing well! I'll update more this week once I get my photos uploaded to the computer. Miss everyone so much!!! XXOO