the last little bit….

Hey guys, sorry it has been so long since I last posted, but life has been interesting over the last week or so. Last weekend we went to St. Andrews, the home of Golf, some beautiful ruins and an amazing amount of water both falling on and surrounding the city. ( it is on the North Sea in case you were unsure what I meant… it didn’t float away or anything). Anyway there is an album devoted to that trip on my Flickr account (which is now the only link of the side of the page). It was exquisitely beautiful and at times may have rivaled anything else I have ever seen. It was odd though, to see people living amongst such history. The ruins of the cathedral are actually a grave yard now, and it was a little unsettling to see graves that were only a few years old, right next to graves that were over a hundred years old. While we were there we saw a wedding party, and it made a really interesting statement that this couple was starting their life together in ruins that were over a thousand years old.

On Sunday we went to Glamis Castle which is where MacBeth is supposed to have happened, but it didn’t. We started the day off a little later than we wanted to, which sucked because it meant we had to book it to the bus station which was about a 20 minute walk away. We get there and have about 10 minutes left til we have to catch the bus so I go to get a drink and something to read on the bus, and while I am in the shop, the bus comes and leaves. This is a span of about 3 minutes, at the main hub, on a Sunday morning. Everyone else got on the bus and before they realized I wasn’t there they were out of the station and on their way. So I got to spend 20 pounds on a cab up to the castle, which was kind of funny because I got there a good 30 or 40 minutes before everyone else got there. It was really nice to get to spend a little bit of time in such a beautiful place by myself. People say the Smokie Mountains are beautiful, and they certainly are, but it seems like any time you are remotely in nature up here it is far more beautiful and seemingly untouched than anywhere I have seen in the states. Maybe its the air, or the way the ground feels, but I have never been happier in nature than I am here.

Anyway everyone got there finally and we started to make our way around the grounds to the walled garden which, sadly was a walled fielthat used to be a garden. It was spectacularly nothing. It was litterally a field in a wall with a small green house on the other side that you couldn’t get to. The Italian gardens and the Pineiary were much better. In one of the areas there was actually a Giant Red Wood that had been transplanted over there from California, and it was massive. We saw Highland Cattle, and Grouses (which we innitially thought were pheasants). We then made it around to the castle, which was amazingly beautiful. It has been built over the course of about 600 years and started as an old hunting lodge. It was spectacular, though it had nothing on the castles in Germany. After that we made it back home and pretty much went home to bed, we were spent.

On the domestic front however, classes have started and I already have 3 projects, but I am psyched about all of them and I think I’ma rock’em all. I have a typography project that I think I am going to do on Victorian Typography or on Web typography, I have a design contest that I am doing which I am doing a campaign that hopes to “Bring back Spam” (should be interesting to say the least), and I finally have a poster project that is for a hypothetical compendium of miscillany called “8 Things you didn’t know about…”  one side is a promo poster and the other side is a taste of what would be inside. I am doing “8 things you didn’t know about tea” I think it will be lots and lots of fun.

This weekend we are going to Glasgow which should be tons and tons of fun. I’m sure there will be plenty of pics from that!

It’s the end of the world as we know it… and I feel fine,

Josh

A few days in… and all seems to be well

So after the terror of the first 48 hours in a foreign country with no one but Grayson and myself to rely on, things are looking up very much. In the past 2 or 3 days (I don’t actually know because the days here seem to blend together, though I am sure that will change when classes start on Monday.) we have met several Americans and some Scots and a Canadian, which has made this place seem much less scary and bleak. I feel much more at home here than I had expected, and the people that we have met are all very interesting and neat people and everything seems to be working out rather well. Things here actually feel very similar to home, and I’m not sure if its because I’m just laid back or what, but I have had almost no culture shock at all.

Although Sunday night one of our friends got a bit of a shock when he sprained his ankle playing DDR in the student union. It was hilarious because he is not a small guy, and a metal head, and he over stepped the front pad. He’s ok now so I don’t feel bad laughing about it but man… I died laughing when it happened the other day.

I do believe however that I have shocked my Russian flatmate and two Scottish girls beyond hope. I was cooking last night, just some sausage and eggs and what not, but I brought along with me some chili powder, cayanne pepper, and crushed red pepper. While I was cooking, I decided to put some in like I usually would, no big deal, I couldn’t smell it or anything. Well Peter (the Russian) and two Scottish girls from the dancing society or something walk into the kitchen and immediately start choking and their eyes start watering. I had no idea that America’s spices were so strong, but apparently they are.

Pubs here are amazing and I cannot say enough about them. The first time you walk into a pub, you feel more at home than at a bar that you’ve been to a million times at home. The US really has nothing on the pubs here.

Sorry this is a rather scattered entry, but I hadn’t posted in a couple days and didn’t want anyone to complain or worry.

We’re Here

This is the obligatory post where I annouce our arrival to the new town, discuss the joy mixed with paralizing terror that is felt when you realize that you know litterally one person in an entire country and lay out a plan for our time in Dundee.

WE’RE HERE! Alright now that all that is taken care of, I’ll say some things about the trip. We got on a flight in Charlotte on Thursday sure of only one thing, that in 12 hours we would be on an island that neither of us had ever been on and that all we had once we got there was each other. (The “we” I refer to is myself and Grayson Hancock my partner in crime whilst abroad.)

Once we got into the airport, we had to go through security and all that jazz, which should have been no problem at all. I am however not the brightest colored plaid tartan in the country as it seems, and managed to walk through security with: my watch still on, fingernail clippers in my chest pocket, and change in my pocket that I did not know what there. So, needless to say, security took a little whille, as I was patted down and wanded until all these things were made known to me and security… this was not the beginning to the trip that I had imagined.

After the debacle that was security, we managed to find our gate without much problem, only to find out that: A. our flight was delayed almost an hour and a half, & B: despite the size of Charlotte’s airport, there is nothing to do there. Once we boarded the plane and were on our way, we managed to get stuck in a holding pattern over JFK airport and then got stuck on the tarmac for 40 minutes or so. This wouldn’t usually be much of a problem were it not for the fact that when we got to our terminal, our plane was already boarding all zones. So what should have been a leisurely break between flights became a mad dash from one flight to another only to sit for another hour on the runway waiting to take off.

After a sleepless flight over the atlantic, we arrived in Heathrow Airport, with no problems save our exhaustion. We made it to the hotel where we checked our luggage and decided to go find phones. Well, if you’ve never been to London, Heathrow airport is in actuality nowhere near real London, or anything for that matter. Grayson and I manage to find a T-Mobile store and set all our stuff up, and then go back to the hotel to “nap” which actually meant that we would be sleeping for about 6 hours before either of us woke up. Realizing that it was now almost 9pm we both went downstairs and grabbed a bite at the pub downstairs, and set up our cab to show up at 5am so that we could catch the 7am train to Dundee which would put us there at about 2:30 in the afternoon. The first leg of the trip was no problem at all, we made it to Leeds no problem, but when we got off the train we found out that our next train left in 5 minutes from the other side of the station… cue mad rush with 100 lbs of bags a piece across the platforms and up and down stairs, only to barely make it to our train and find that it is packed. Then to the short train from Edinborough to Dundee was no problem.

We make it to our dorm and find everything is alot nicer than we had expected, then get lost in Dundee, because my dumb ass thought I could find a shortcut home. We find our way back and decide to shower and go get a drink and some food after we unpack a little bit. After realizing that no place did food around us late, we had a couple pints (and they hit hard on an empty stomach) and staggered back to the flat to order some take out. Grayson ordered fried rice and I get Kung Pow Chicken, no big deal right? If you said right you would be wrong. It gets here, in a very timely manner I must say, and we get it and are starving because the last thing either of us had to eat was a tomato and egg baggette at Kins Cross at 5am. It is currently 11pm. We get into the kitchen only to realize that there is no silverware at all with our food. No fork, no spoon, no sticks, no nothing, not even a napkin. So we caveman a little food and pass out… and now we are here.