Hannah and Rainy Day Strolls and South Carolina Thieves

Yesterday would have been a perfectly uneventful Sunday. "Would" being the key word here. I took a lovely walk with two of my friends through Seaton Park, the park that stands between where I live at Hillhead and the Uni's campus. It was misting outside, not quite wet enough to put up the umbrella and not quite dry enough for my hair to remain frizz-free (unfortunate). It was a nice walk, we walked through the park and saw:

A magical spider web covered in droplets of water.

 A holey leaf

Some very pretty flowers covered in water.

 And some more leaves, also with water droplets. (I get the feeling that water droplets are going to become a motif of the time I spend here in Scotland).

 And once we headed through the Uni's campus on our way downtown, we saw this cool old car which I want for my own!

It was when we got back home to Hillhead that the real excitement began. Okay, it wasn't really exciting, more headache-inducing nerve-wracking unpleasantness. Because once home I found an email waiting for me from my mom telling me that - guess what? My debit card isn't going to work. Beeecause, someone in South Carolina (SOUTH CAROLINA?!) used my debit card number in a Walmart and got $400 from my account. WHAAAAT?! Really? Not even someone in the UK, no no someone in the good old United States, hacked into my account somehow and went Walmart crazy.

Well, luckily since I had a notice on my account letting them know that I was out of the country for the next several months, the bank caught it right away and shut down my debit card. At least they were prevented from getting anymore than they got on that first Walmart shopping spree. But now I'm in Scotland with no way to access my money. Looks like that emergency credit card I brought is going to come in handy. On the upside, it looks as though the bank is going to refund the stolen money at some point. And I'm hoping that it won't take too long to get a new debit card. It's just a matter of it getting to my home in Chicago and then getting to me. A week? Two? Hopefully not too long.

At any rate, it freaked me out a bit. Privacy invaded. But it could have been a lot worse. So thanks to my bank for being proactive (and my mom for letting me know, since the bank called my house). I'm just glad I didn't try using my debit card while I was out and get really freaked out because it wouldn't work. That would have been even more unpleasant.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully the next entry will be about my upcoming trip to Edinburgh and of the more cheerful variety!

Hannah and Hector Boece Court

For those of you wondering what exactly my flat looks like, this is the post for you! Here are some pictures of my flat. So please, let me conduct you on a tour of my temporary abode. We'll start in my room:

 

My bed with the nightstand (which in reality is a chair) next to it. Stripey!

Window looking out at some of the other buildings in Hector Boece Court

Desk and shelves. There's not enough room in the closet (and there is no dresser) so I had to put my shirts on the shelves. At least it's colorful. Also my wall of pictures.

The door to my room and other side of the wall of pictures

The closet/wardrobe

Looking into the room from the hallway. Small but alright.

 

 

 

If we head out into the hallway, and look to the right there's the front door.

If you were to look from the front door, down the hallway, this is what you would see. My room is the second on the left (it's actually the third, but in this photo you can't see the first door).

All the way down the hallway and to the left is the small kitchen.

It's the fridge that's somewhere between mini-fridge and full fridge. But definitely leaning in the direction of mini. The top is the fridge, the bottom is the freezer, it's kind of small for six people (the number of people living in the flat).

Over here we have the sink

The sink has evil taps. One is hot hot HOT water and the other is like the arctic is melting on your hands. How do you get warm water you ask? You don't. Solutions: Fill up the sink with half arctic half fire. Wear rubber gloves while doing the dishes to ensure your skin remains on your hands. Or have both taps on and move quickly between them. Culture Shock!

The two mini stoves. They are demons. The one on the left, its burners don't work. The burners (or hobs as they are called here) on the one to the right work most of the time, except when the large one decides that it doesn't really feel like cooking right now, so it's just not going to. The ovens are small and take forever to get warm. Yup. Quality.

Microwave, toaster, hot water kettle. All of which work surprisingly well, considering the rest of the things in this kitchen.

If we leave the kitchen and head straight, to the left there are two closet toilets.

Straight on from the kitchen is the room with the sinks and shower. There are three sinks...

and one very small shower.

And that's it. Not much too it really. There are five other single person rooms in the flat besides mind, so six in total. No living room/common room unfortunately. That would be nice. But as this is a very temporary living situation, it's fine.

On a different note, as I'm settling into my temporary home, my grandma is getting ready to move to her new home. So I'm wishing her luck and sending her lots of love, hoping that her move goes smoothly!

Hannah and the First Week of Classes

Yes! I have finished my first week of classes at Aberdeen University! After all the trouble with registering for various things, I have finally sort of got a handle on the school side of things. Good, good, this is good.

This week was pretty chill, as I only had lectures and one seminar, and no tutorials. The tutorials start this week. I'm very excited about all my classes (actually I'm just excited about all the classes they have here, I wish I could take them all - they sound sooo interesting!)

My Modernism class definitely seems like it's going to be the one that stretches my brain the most. It is a mixture of philosophy and literature (and art in general it seems). It's listed as a literature class, but the philosophy of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Simmel, and Pater have all already made an appearance. And this week we are reading Kafka's The Trial.

The Celts, Druids, Romans and Warriors class looks like it's going to be interesting. I learned this week, among other things, that often what we take to be Celtic art is actually a mixture of ancient Celtic art and ancient Germanic art. I got a kick out of our professor showing us a picture of a giant tattoo on someone's back, that was one of the standard "Celtic" designs, which was really Celtic/Germanic in origin and him saying that this person wouldn't be very happy when some spoil sport came along and told him that it wasn't a legit Celtic tattoo. It is made funnier by the fact that my professor is a cute little old guy with a Scottish accent.

My third and final class, Arthur in Celtic and Welsh Literature, I'm just looking forward to on principle. It's King Arthur, how could you not like King Arthur? It only met once this week, so I didn't get much of a sense of what it's going to be like yet, but I'm still very excited about it.

This week also included....CUPCAKES!

They are so cute.

And...a Butterfly!

Randomness is the watchword.

Hannah and Stonehaven/Dunnotter Castle

Alright. Well my mom harassed me and told me via skype that I better hurry up and write this so she could read it (why I couldn't tell her about it via skype is a mystery...oh well). At any rate, this has been by far my favorite thing so far here in the UK. It was absolutely beautiful, I would say probably the most beautiful place I've ever been and if not, definitely in the top three.

We headed off to Stonehaven early on Sunday morning. The 'we' I will be referring to on this particular outing consisted of all the K people (we organized ourselves into a little field trip, it was kind of cute actually) plus a very nice German student who is also studying at Aberdeen for a semester. So there were 13 of us in all.

The first task was finding the train station in Aberdeen, which is downtown (or in town, apparently 'downtown' is not a thing here). We walked from from Hillhead to the train station, which took a little under an hour and got our tickets without much hassle. I even scored a map of Stonehaven (a photocopied one, but good nonetheless) from the very nice conductor who sold me my ticket.

It was only a twenty minute ride from Aberdeen to Stonehaven on the train, the trains are very efficient at least from what I saw of them. They remind me of the Metra in Chicago. Nice and clean and fast. So basically the opposite of the 'L' (even though I love the 'L' because it gets me where I need to go most of the time, it can also be ridiculous).

Once we were in Stonehaven we walked into town which was very nice and cute. It only took us a few minutes from there, to find the trail that goes up to Dunnotter Castle. This castle is quite famous as it is very beautiful and the ruins are fairly well intact. So we set off on this trail, which took us past the beach: 

The harbor:

Some beautiful gardens:

Up a fairly steep path:

There we go like duckies in a row

Up up up

And up some more

 Until we reached a field at the top of the hill/cliff thing.

Lots of fields on one side

And the sea on the other

We also came upon a war monument at the top of this cliff

 Then we passed some cows:

 Made our way around the edge of the cliff:

 Until we caught sight of Dunnotter Castle!

It was very windy up there

 It took us quite a while, but we finally got close to Dunnotter Castle.

 We headed down many, many steps until we were at the foot of the castle. Then we climbed up the steps towards the castle and entered into the first of the old buildings:

We went through a passage, paid the fee for entering the castle, and came out into a wide grassy area that had more than a dozen ruins spread out across it.

The views from the castle were absolutely spectacular, especially of the sea. 

There I am creeping in the darkness off to the side

We could see part of the path we had take to get there

The sky and the water were both so blue, and the grass so green. The colors were incredible.

We had a good time wandering around all the different rooms

And finding what we assume were places for soldiers to look out of and perhaps shoot out of when defending the castle.

This is what I'm talking about. Amazing. This is the kind of castle I had in mind when I came here.

One of my favorite views, if I could wake up and see that, I would be beyond happy.

We got really lucky in that we had what I would call the perfect weather for this trip, not only was it sunny, it was also breezy and not too warm so when we were doing all that walking we didn't get too hot.

Another one of my favorite views. This is looking straight down from one of the windows.

It was very breezy up here as well, I felt like I was going to get blown out a window.

I honestly have never seen anything like this. This was the day that I was picturing when I decided I wanted to study abroad in Scotland.

Once we had satisfied our curiosity about the castle we headed back towards Stonehaven. Although, I could have stayed there forever and still have been overwhelmed and happy to have been there, and there is no hyperbole intended here, it was that amazing. By this time we were all quite tired and hungry. When we finally made out way back to town we found a restaurant willing to deal with our large group and had a tasty lunch. Sitting down at that point was fantastic. Then we had to walk back to the train station to get back to Aberdeen. We determined that we probably walked over ten miles (much of it uphill) that day. Lots of walking. I found myself back at my flat later that afternoon with sore feet, a tired body, a camera full of beautiful pictures, and a head full of amazing memories. It was definitely worth the effort. If ever any of you are in Scotland I highly recommend a visit to Dunnotter Castle, I can't put into words nor can pictures do justice to the feeling and look of that place.

Up next: I've had my first week of classes. How did it go you ask? Well I'll tell you, in the next post!


Didn't get enough of Stonehaven and Dunnotter? Visit my facebook to see some more pictures! http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150318277321236.359516.693511235