Farewell

This will be my last post about Scotland. I plan on continuing this blog about my general travels, so keep checking in every once in a while. At the end of the month I will traveling to our country's capital for the first time. I am excited about going to D.C. but I am sad to have left Scotland. There are random things I thought I hated, that I actually miss. Taking a shower was a weird experience when I got back home. My shower here is about twice the size of the one back in Stirling and it was so strange to have all that space. And to have water pressure, it almost hurt I was so unused to it. I am not a fan of physical activity and I even miss walking and hiking. Maybe this means I am a changed woman, or maybe just matured. I don't know, but I can see that in my interactions with friends, things have changed. My character is the same, who I am to the core is the same, but.....I can't explain it. I have had an experience that not many people my age have had, and that makes me different. I miss Scotland and the people I met while there, but I know deep down that I will see the Highlands again and laugh with my new friends before long.

Last Week

I have to say that I am disappointed in myself. I am less than 48 hours away from flying home. The last week of my time here in Scotland, I have to say, is the highlight of my journey. I am just now getting to see life through the eyes of a local. I am getting out and just living my life, not having it planned out for me. I have gone to a few local hot spots, gone to the William Wallace Monument and just living I guess you could say. And more than ever I realize that although there are things that I miss back home, there is really nothing here I don't like, or could if I do dislike something, it's easily fixable (like the plumbing).

Yesterday, a group of us went to the William Wallace Monument, something we all said we would do in the first week. The campus we are at is literally right below and next to the hill the monument sits on. From our place it was about a fifteen minute walk to the monument and then we spent about an hour and a half walking up the 246 steps and checking out the three floors of things to see on the way to the top. The view from the top is absolutely amazing. You can see the start of the highlands and even a minuscule part of Edinburgh from the top.

Tonight we had our farewell party, our ceilidh (cay-lee). I danced a lot of the traditional dances and sweated my face off in the process. We were holding our ceilidh in the Stirling Rugby Football Club, and the room we were in was not the biggest. There were about fifty of us trying to do dosey do's and swinging from partner to partner. I wish I could remember the names of the specific dances we did, but I think I was having too much fun to pay attention to what the leader of the band was saying.

Tomorrow is my last full day as a Stirling Uni student. And I will be spending the day inside my room packing and cleaning the mess that has become my room. Hopefully if I get done early I can go into Edinburgh, but I highly doubt it. We'll see. I have to say I am not happy about leaving, but I am also very anxious for the day when I return. And you better believe that I will be returning.

Isle of Skye

I spent the weekend on the Isle of Skye off of Scotland's west coast. The weather wasn't exactly ideal, but it was beautiful all the same. On the way to Skye, we stopped at Eilean Donan (Eel-in Doo-nin) castle. The most photographed castle in Scotland lived up to its reputation. It sits on a little island connected by a bridge, and the surrounding mountains and water make it the ideal photo op. It was a pretty cheap price to get in, but the coolest part of the whole castle is the part you can't photograph. They had real letters from the royal Stewart line, and I so badly wanted to take pictures. But I understand that these are precious and very old documents and pictures and they need to be handled with the greatest care. So no pictures, bummer. After Eilean Donan, we headed across the bridge to Skye, went to the Co-op(one of their grocery stores) for food and checked into the hostel. My first hostel experience and I have to say that I am not terrified of the idea, movies try to ruin everything. It was clean and nice, and I shared a room with two of my flatmates and three other women I had never met before in my life. A french mother and her daughter and a woman who only came in the room to sleep, at about 11:30 then left at six in the morning, she didn't say a single word.

Saturday we left bright and early and headed up the Storr which is rock formation/mountain that we climbed only a 1,000 feet up. The rocks were giant boulders that had fallen and covered most of the side of the mountain and we had to climb around them. It was steep and difficult and very, very cold. But as with Dumyat, I feel so proud of myself that I can say in two weeks I have climbed a combined 2,300 feet. Even just writing it feels good. We went to Kilt Rock afterwards to stop and take pictures. We tried to go to Elgol, to see what is supposed to be one of the prettiest spots in Skye. Unfortunately for us, the clouds were hanging so low that night that we couldn't see anything above the shore opposite us. But the beach in Elgol is really pretty and I took a lot of pictures of the calm loch water. It is very serene in Skye. There aren't a lot of people living there, so the pace of the entire island is calm and slow. You take your time there, which is really nice compared to the States, where we speed down the road just to wait impatiently in line somewhere else. Its depressing that I will be leaving this beautiful place in five days. I am trying to spend my last days here thinking of what I will miss and not what I am looking forward to at home. I have already spent too much time thinking of that long list.