So It's Been A While Since I've Posted...

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay with the posts, it's been busy and not busy at the same time. It actually takes some motivation and enthusiasm to sit down and type out everything that has been happening. So here we go; this is either going to be a really long post with everything or not so long but packed with small explanations about everything.

I'd just like to start out by making a point that it is already getting dark here and it is 4:30pm. Cool.
Since our daylight savings starts a week before the Canadian one, for a whole week there has only been a 4 hour time difference!

Okay, where to start.
Post-Thanksgiving:

People here don't really stress much here about anything, which can be extremely frustrating coming from a less-than-laid-back school/country - which is probably what contributed to my frustration and unease upon arriving here the first few weeks.
So when one of my professors cancelled class for two weeks but moved those classes to a time that conflicted with another class, it wasn't a big deal. It was deemed 'unavoidable', but not a problem if you had a conflicting class. So for those 2 weeks I only had 2 classes, mondays and fridays, tough life, I know.

Then mom and dad came to visit! There was about a 3-week build up of excitement and anticipation so when the day actually came it was grrrrreat. I was up and out the door at 6:30am and headed for the airport via bus.
There is no longer feeling than watching hoards of people come through international gates but still sitting there waiting for your own famjam. But they came, and it was exciting!
First stop, Starbucks. Enough said.
When we got into town we went to see about early checkin in their apartment, since I had gone to previous week to check, the gentlemen at reception recognised me by name and we were in! ;)
Saturday we wandered the city - checking out the shops and sights.
That night we went the the Atholl Arms and had fish n' chips! (My first haha after a month and a half)

Sunday we did a hop-on, hop-off tour of Glasgow, which was nice because I haven't strayed to far from the city centre. We went to the Riverside Museum of Transportation and Kelgrove Museum.
Monday I had class so mom and dad did the tour again (they were 2-day tickets).
Tuesday they went to Edinburgh.

Wednesday we went on a tour to Stirling Castle, Aberfoyle, Loch Lomond and Glengoyne Distillery which was really cool. There was only 5 of us on the tour and the tour guide was super nice and friendly and full of information. She went on for a bit about all the things wrong in the movie BraveHeart which was actually really funny and interesting.

Stirling Castle in Stirling was really cool. It wasn't super big but it was full of history and cool things to see. The guided tour we did there was kind of random, the guide was nice and full of information but the way he lead us around SOME of the castle and in and out of places was really odd so I didn't care for it too much and just took pictures.











We made a few random stops on the tour for pictures and stuff which was nice of our tour guide. We went to Aberfoyle for lunch which was a little tiny village with a few touristy shops and some places for food. Loch Lomond was really nice and pretty, we didn't do the walk around it

Stirling Castle 

like we could have but there was a nature centre tourist place that we went into and had a look around on before boarding the bus again.

Lastly we went to the Glengoyne Whisky Distillery in Glengoyne. It was pretty cool, we got to try some 12 year old whisky while watching a brief video about the distillery. The guide for that tour was really good and full of information. Single malt whisky has quite the process before being stored away for 10 years minimum. We couldn't take pictures in the distillery because of dust and stuff so I only have a shot from the outside.

Also, fact: In Scotland the spelling is 'Whisky' and in Ireland its 'Whiskey', but of course it's Scotland that has the correct spelling...says the Scots. :P

This was behind the distillery, where they use the water to in their cooling system.

Thursday Ma & Pa went on a tour to Loch Ness. I had already been previously so opted out. And Friday they went to St. Andrews while I was in class.

Saturday we stayed in the city centre and just hung out and did some shopping for souvenirs and gifts. Our last dinner together was italian. I know. I couldn't convince them to try haggis.

When they came over mom brought me Kraft Dinner and Starbucks Pumpkin Spice flavoured Coffee packets and a magic eraser! A little piece of home :)
I won't lie, it really sucked when they left. But as I see it, I've got 2 seminar presentations, 1 trip to Ireland, 2 papers and a class presentation left before I am home for the holidays! (That's only 6 weeks on Friday!)




Anyways, since then, Monday night was Zombie night at Jackson's bar so we went all out for that (see picture of yours truly). The gashes come from liquid latex and makeup/paint. It was really messy and really fun to do. It was also really itchy. But totally worth it.


<= Wouldn't you just love to see that outside your window one night??

Canadian Zombies...

Today I had a meeting with 2 Canadians and 2 Australians about our booth for the Exchange & Study Abroad fair happening next week. For whatever reason, they have put Canada and Australia into one booth... So we volunteered to run it and got together to figure out how we were going to do it, so that should be fun.

That's kind of all I can think of right now...

Anywho, hope you've enjoyed it :)

T.

Happy Thanksgiving! From My Country to Yours!

I love Thanksgiving. 

I love everything about it; the fall season, the baking (pumpkin EVERYTHING), the food & time spent with family. All of which made it that much harder to be away from home and family for the holiday. Nothing says homesick like talking to your family through a computer as they're all gathered around the table after what can only be assumed to be was a delicious meal with lots of laughs. I know, it's sad but I'll stop with the sad part now.
My home-away-from-home Thanksgiving was actually pretty nice. A group of us Canadian international students went out of our way to let just about all of Glasgow know that it was Thanksgiving for us and we were celebrating.
Sunday night we were going to sit down and have a big family style feast (every student for themselves, unless you wanted to bring a communal dish), so Sunday we trekked to Tesco (supermarket) to get the goods. I myself was set on having pumpkin pie and assumed others would be just as excited so I found all the stuff I needed! Yea... Canned pumpkin here...not cheap, but so worth it. And champagne of course. I ended up having to run back out again and purchase some necessary spices I had missed but all part of the adventure in the end.
I also kicked a pigeon on the way back - now before anyone goes all 'save the wildlife' on me you should know that the pigeons here are so lazy, they are everywhere. Half of the time they will walk right up to you if you are sitting and have food or something shiny. This one just happened to be walking right in front of me as I was walking - he went to move out of the way, I took a step, he started to open his wings as my right foot just kind of swooped under. He was fine. I kicked a pigeon.

Now baking is not always an easy and usually requires some relatively accurate measurements, but when you seriously lack baking tools and measuring objects in general you do the best with what you've got. So I followed the instructions on the side of the pumpkin can and started mixing up my pie filling in my pot (my makeshift mixing bowl). I couldn't for the life of me determine how much of a can  of evaporated milk 1/2 pint was so I eyeballed it as I poured and threw in a pile of sugar (thanks to google conversions) and some spices. Put the filling in the shells and 45 minutes later at 220 degrees I had two gorgeous homemade pumpkin pies ready to go for dinner and you know what? They were delicious and a huge hit! I was pretty impressed with myself after being on a baking craze before I left and then just not being able to for the past month.

This is my pie! There were 2, the other one got eaten fast. It's darker than
usual but it was very good.

So we had a nice dinner, Alex and I had some store bought turkey and instant mashed potatoes (just add boiling water) and Alex made a delightful green bean casserole and gravy. Lauren (also from Brock) had found and cranberry sauce and shared that as well as gluten free stuffing. We had great dinner conversation and explain Thanksgiving to our Finnish and Swedish friends.
Today despite being a Holiday in Canada... was not here. It was not the greatest day in my existence but you can't have a few good days without some bad ones too.



Anywho, hope you have enjoyed reading about my makeshift Thanksgiving. I hope yours was good and filled with lots of turkey, friends & family!
Tomorrow I am off on a hike in the highlands with my friend Kayla so I shall post about that later!

Peace out girl scout!
T.

Taking on Paris! C'est la Vie!

Paris AKA The City of Light, The place where people fall in love, etc.
And just like the other millions of tourists, I too fell in the love with the city instantly. It's hard not too.

Plans for this trip fell into place about 2 weeks ago when I found round trip tickets to Paris for 30 pounds. I asked Alex if she was down to go, tickets were bought, a hostel was booked and shortly after our friends Holly and Shayna joined the adventure.
Friday at 12:30 we hoped on a bus and made the hour trek to the airport located in Prestwick, Scotland. RyanAir is a very cheap airline, you literally get what you pay for with this company, so they don't fly directly into major cities but rather small airports on the outskirts of them. We only took carry-ons since we were travelling light (and it costs 30 pounds extra to check baggage, seriously though - everything except for the basic bare ticket costs extra with this airline), went through security, and had a bite to eat before boarding.
We actually met a couple other Canadians and an Australian from the University of Glasgow travelling to Paris so we chatted with them for a bit. When we finally boarded, we ended up having to de-board and re-board another plane due to a technical issue. So we took off about an hour or so later. When we got into Paris Beauvais, we went through customs and made our way towards the line for the bus into Paris (about 1hr 15m). When we got there - we were looking at a billboard map to try situate ourselves and figure out where our hostel was (no 3G on my phone:( ) when a man out with his kids came up and helped us figure out where we were going by googling our hostel and directing us to the metro.  All of the french people we encountered were so nice and even appreciated if we tried to speak french (Most of which consisted of 'Est-ce que tu parles anglais?' and 'Bon Soire!') and to be honest I am surprised with how much I have retained from my grade 1-9 french classes. I even had a semi-full conversation in french with one guy running a souvenir shop! He totally knew I was english-speaking but went with it anyways. So that was my only full-french purchase. 

So our first adventure in Paris was navigating the metro - which was pretty successful! Next was to find the hostel when we got above ground, which we did eventually thanks to McDonald's wifi. After checking in an dropping our stuff in our NEON GREEN room, we went to explore a little bit and ended up at a little cafe-restaurant on the corner. We toasted to a great weekend in Paris and drank wine, ate crepes and baguette sandwiches.
The first night in the hostel I didn't sleep a wink. The street outside was so busy allllllll night long that I could not get past the noise to fall asleep, oh well, c'est la vie. Saturday we went down for breakfast which consisted of chocolate croissants, 1/2 baguettes and cereal and coffee, so that was awesome. We ventured out shortly after and began our trek all over the city.
We had bought Hop-on, Hop-off bus tour tickets ahead of time which allowed us to get on 4 different route buses that took us pretty much everywhere, they were 100% worth it and an easy and fantastic way to see Paris in just 2 days.
Saturday we kind of went a little bit of everywhere just to experience the city, all the museums were

Classic Flip Departure Board at the Gard du Nord 

open and free of admission on the Sunday so we decided to wait for that. Saturday we bussed it around; seeing the Moulin Rouge, Gard de Nord & Gard de L'est, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral, Army Museum and much, much more.
The highlight of the day was at the end of the day. We walked from the Army Museum to the Eiffel Tower stopping at about 14 souvenir shops on the way (they all look so enticing), we got the tower - took some pictures and went and got 2 bottles of wine for 4 Euros (they were good too) then went back and sat on the grass and hung out waiting for the Eiffel Tower light show to happen. At 8pm some 20,000 lights lit up the tower and blink and shimmer for 5 minutes. It was really cool to see. After that we headed back to the area of the city where our hostel was (Republique) to find out that it was Nuit Blanche Time Out - a night when the entire city is open and happening. They turned the King's

Fog Square during Nuit Blanche

My new toy.

Fountain Square into a Fog Square so that was cool. After checking out a few other events that appeared to have been happening (an art gallery, club with a strict line that we managed to get excepted into but was too expensive, Mad Hatter party for men only... yea we didn't get into that...) we went back to the hostel, and finally fell asleep after 40 hours of no sleep.
Sunday we checked out at 11am and were on the move again, lots of bussing around. The museum at the Louvre was 3 1/2 hours long and took us 10 minutes just to walk to the end of it, so we passed. Same with Musée D'Orsay and Rodin Museum. However! We did wander the Rodin Museum gardens where we saw the Thinker! We also got to the Love-Lock bridge, where couples from all over the world come and write their names on a padlock,

lock it on the bridge somewhere and throw the key in the river. It was so cool to see, they sun was shining and there was a man playing french music on an accordion too. I definitely loved the Seine River and the atmosphere of it in the warm weather.
We checked out a really big cemetery too before heading back towards Port Maillot where we would head out of to go back to the airport. We decided to have a nice french dinner as our last and it turned out very nice. Afterward we went into this cute little bakery next door and ordered dessert and I bought some pastries to bring back. We all took a bit of a needed nap on the dark bus to the airport and then it was homeward bound from there. I was a little skeptical about taking all the pastries carry-on through security, but I made it so we were good!
The flight was fine, 15 pounds (on sale) gets you a one-way ticket with ONE carry-on bag - no bigger than 10kg, a flight that is on time 90% of the time, a walk on the ground outside

Boarding the plane (1st time)

to the stairs at the plane, a seat that does not recline, a required bus ticket to and from the airport (located approx. 1 hour outside the city) and flight personnel that try to sell you stuff the entire way (no free water, or anything). But it's 15 pounds for 1hr 20min, can't go wrong there.

Over all I am really happy with the way the weekend turned out and cannot wait to go back later in life, for a longer time and maybe not in a hostel... but that's the student life and for now, it works when your travelling for only a couple days at a time!

I hope you have enjoyed living vicariously through my post. If you have any questions don't hesitate to comment or email me!

I have also attached a photo album of the trip because there were soooo many pictures. I'm warning you now that most of them are of the Eiffel Tower - so just a heads up for that. Every angle is a good one!

:)


                                       Taylor's Paris 2013 Photo Album