Loch Lomond

Liane, Annie and I went to a little town called Luss to see Loch Lomond. I took a bunch of pictures and uploaded them to Facebook. Here is the link to see them.

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2041014&l=af2fc&id=215700014

What's for dinner?

After noticing today what poor shape my shoes are in because of all the walking I've been doing, I decided to make them a focal point in some of my frames for my B & W Photography class. This is what I came up with. The thought of doing this made me giggle my whole walk home from class.

Scrum-Diddly-Umptious. :)

I do have other pictures that I will have to wait and see how they turn out, because those are not on my digital. I just had to get a digital of this and share it with you all. :) Oh, and don't worry I scrubbed that plate good.

Cheers!

I'm finding...

... that it is really hard to adjust to the different time zone here. I am still on central time. Bah. It is now 2pm and I am finally ready to start the day except now I only have 2 and a half hours left of daylight. Hmmm. . . Oh well, after all how can I be angry when the things and people in my life make me so happy? I just can't be.

Life is good.

Mmmm Hmmm. ;)

The air in Scotland....

...must be messing with my head. Either that or it's just all this new independence. I don't know. I love being less dependent upon people. Makes me feel like a grown-up. :P One of the reasons that I love being away at college. You learn to do things for yourself. But, being in a completely different country has been even better. I've been learning to do things for myself more like sticking up for myself and speaking out when I have something to say without feeling like everything I say is idiotic... my confidence has definitely boosted. Yeah, you've all probably noticed that some of this began last semester, but I feel like it's already so much higher than before.

Anyways, the reason for all of this is because I made homemade mashed potatoes for the very first time. AND they were delicious. Also, I boiled broccoli for the first time ever last week. I'm so proud of myself. :D

Cheers!

Feels like home.

Well, it has been a few days since I last posted. I am now through my second week of classes. I started my art classes at the Glasgow School of Art this week. I'm really, really excited about them, especially my Rendering the Human Form class. I keep calling it my drawing class, but I know that we are going to be painting as well. My teacher is someone that I feel like I can relate to. Her name is Debra. She's very down to earth and easy to talk to. I have a feeling I am going to learn so much from her. There are only 5 people in our class, making it easy to get to know one another and have more one on one time with her and also the others in the classroom. The other class that I have at GSA is Black and White Photography. The teacher doesn't seem to be as personable as Debra, but he sure does know his stuff. We are all going to be given fob keys to get into the buildings of the GSA... I love that, I feel like I'm important and it's a privilege to be attending that school.

Yesterday morning, I had my first bag piping lesson. My tutor's name is Chris. I have talked to the other people that have his as their tutor as well and we all get the feeling that he doesn't really want to be there. Hopefully it was just that he was having a bad week or something. I kind of wish I had Finlay as my tutor instead. He seems so relaxed and likes to have fun. In our class today, we learned so much about the bag pipe itself, including all of the components that make it. We also got to hear him play some tunes. I love the way the bagpipe sounds, I don't care what you all think, it's pretty freakin' sweet. Anyways, we all have chanters to practice with. We will have the opportunity to play the bagpipes but, we need to learn the fundamentals first. I have now learned how to play the scale. :D I felt at first like I had some standards that I would have to live up to because I used to play the flute, but really the chanter isn't anything like it. Oh, I guess I should explain what a chanter is.. A chanter looks sort of like a recorder. It's black and comes in three pieces. A top, bottom, and a reed. The reed goes in the middle of the two pieces, you don't actually blow on the reed directly like a clarinet. The chanter is also a part of the bagpipes. It's basically like just putting the mouth piece and the part where you place your fingers together. It sounds like a muted bagpipe. But, because of the poor quality and cheapness of the ones we have, it tends to squeak and sound like a duck. :P You have to clean it out like every 15 minutes of playing... and I guarantee it's one of the grossest things. There's so much spit. lol. Anyways, I can't wait to get home and impress you all with my amazing chanter playing skills!

I also found out that the GSA and the Piping Centre are only about a 30 - 40 minute walk from MSSV. Which is nice. I will save lots of money on taking the tube. Walking has been a great way for me to get exercise and I love all of the little things and places that I would usually take for granted or miss completely if I were to just drive by. I'm starting to really find my way around the city and it's definitely starting to feel like home. I like it here, a lot. But, don't you worry I'm not going to move here, I will return to the States. :)

Love you, miss you, wish you all were here,
Ashley
xoxo

Take a Walk With Me

Instead of going to Edinburgh today, I decided to stick around Glasgow for the weekend to try and get rid of this darn cold. I didn't want to make it worse by going around and staying up late.

Today I decided to take a walk. I took a left instead of a right on Maryhill Road and just kept walking. I took a ton of pictures. I for sure thought that I was lost until I saw a pub that I had been at a couple of nights before and was relieved to know where I was. I uploaded all of my pictures to Facebook.

The walk was a span of about 3 hours and it includes pictures of the University and the Botanical Gardens.

Here are the links to the pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2040717&l=5e116&id=215700014

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2040718&l=96eeb&id=215700014


Enjoy!
Ashley

Bagpipes and Kilts

Take a look at the website for the National Piping Centre. This is in the city center of Glasgow, which I found out that is only about a 20 minute walk from MSSV. That will save me a lot of money to not have to use the underground to get there. Also, the Glasgow School of Art is just a couple of blocks from there. I love that I'm starting to find my way around this place!

As I was looking at the website I noticed that my instructor was on there and there is a link to his band's website. Have a look at that as well. Found out that he not only plays the bagpipes but the flute as well, he and I had a discussion about that because I also played. Anyways his name is Finlay MacDonald. His hair is amazing. He has a side Mohawk. When anyone that knows him and is talking about him, they always put their hand on their head to gesture the famous hairdo. lol. I noticed this last night when we were all at a pub called The Primary last night. I laughed every time someone did that. I don't think they realize that they do it.

The National Piping Centre:
http://www.thepipingcentre.co.uk/

The Finlay MacDonald Band:
http://www.finlaymacdonaldband.com/

Tomorrow I am off to Edinburgh with a huge group of people from the International Student Society. Should be a lot of fun!

Here are my own pictures that I took of the Piping Centre

My Friend Liane and I in front of the Piping Centre... I do love Glasgow, but I hate what it does to my bangs! Oh well!

The Piping Centre

There are a few stained glass windows in the Piping Centre. This one, Finlay explained to us that it represents the Scottish Dance called Ceilidh. Not sure if he was joking or not because he said it looks like a few of the objects in it were toppled over from a long night of drinking. :P

This is the art museum on the other side of the Uni. It is free and can you believe it? I still have yet to go there!

The Main building of the Uni at night. Apologize for it being blurry. I was kind of doing this while walking. My friend Charlie was upset that he forgot his camera when we were walking by and then later that night he told me that he forgot that he put his camera in his backpack, so he did in fact have it with him at the time.

So...

I'm starting to think that I don't really need to tell you guys every detail of my life here. HAHA. Please forgive me, I've never done a blog before. :P From now on, it'll only be the exciting stuff. Which will be hard, because everything is exciting. :)

Slumdog Millionaire

A bunch of us went down to Buchanan street in the city center last week and went to a movie. The movie theater was flipping huge. I had to go up 7 flights of escalators, yes... I went up that far even with my fear of heights. All of the movies start at the same time. It's kind of a neat ordeal. The movie that we saw was Slumdog Millionaire. SO GOOD! I would recommend this movie to anyone.

Today I went down to Tesco's myself. It's a really short walk which is nice. But, I bought a plate, mug, bowl matching set; set of silverware; 3 saucepans and a frying pan; tortellini, ravioli, and cheese sauce; bananas; and some turkey. All for only £28. I would think that was a pretty good deal. Also, I am going to be a club member at Tesco's. Yay! You get money off of things every time you purchase something from there, including trips to London and for mailing. The weather kind of sucks today but it was so nice the last couple of days.. so much sun! :D

Oh, and I'm extremely frustrated. I tried logging on to abc.com to watch Desperate Housewives, and it won't let me because I'm not in the United States. Boo.

One week down...

First off, just want to give a shout out to my homeskillet, Kate. It is her Birthday today. Happy Birthday! lol. I say it like I'm on a live tv show. :P

Anyways, I can't believe that I have been here for a week already. I have personally met only 2 of my flatmates. I have seen the other 2... but, I don't really think they care too much to meet me. Eh, their loss. :) I am living with 2 other girls and 2 boys. Alex, Sabrina, Emil, and Gordon. I'm not sure where Alex is from but Sabrina is from Germany, Emil is from Sweeden, and Gordon is from Scotland. My flatmates are so noisy. I don't know what they are all doing, but I would like to get some sleep sometime in the near future. Last night Gordon brought a couple of his friends home with him at 3:30am, I'm pretty sure they had been drinking. They were playing on a guitar and singing really loudly until about 5am. Yeah... I'm downright tired today. Sabrina and Emil are really nice. I had lasagna for dinner with them last night and we watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother, which they like to call "The Naked Man". lol. It was even funnier because it was an episode about Minnesota. :D They kept asking me questions.

I bought some more groceries today. I need to go out and buy a pan and some dishes and silverware still. Celtic Civilizations seems like it's going to be a pretty neat class. We have 3 teachers, and 5 tutors. The class works as follows: Monday and Tuesday we have lecture and then on Thursday or Friday we have a small group session with one of the tutors that we will be assigned to. I don't start my art classes until next Wednesday. YAY! And then on Thursdays I have Bagpiping. :) Which leaves a three day weekend Woo Hoo!

Alright, well I best be off. More later.
xoxo
Ashley

PICTURES!

Here are some pictures! I have more, but I only have so much time to upload them

This is the pub that we went to on Friday night, which is in an old church.



















This thing is being feisty, so for the rest of them we have:

The bridge to Murano Street Student Village.
River that goes under Byer's Street/Queen Margaret Road.
The door to my loft.
Lomond House 6 in MSSV.

Feels like spring.

Here I am, in the computer lab... soaked like no other and I could care less because I am in FREAKING SCOTLAND! The weather has been kind of depressing here the last couple of days. I mean, I do LOVE rain. I love playing in it and I don't mind walking in it, but the wind is TERRIBLE! Janene and I walked to Tesco's (the cheaper supermarket) and we had the hardest time trying to walk there and back to MSSV. I had to stop a few times to keep my balance. I'm so glad I didn't buy that umberella at Tesco's. It would have been shredded by the time I got back. I think I've decided that I'm just going to stick out the rain and not worry about buying an umberella, especially if it's this windy. I would end up going through a lot of them. Waste of money if you ask me..

Janene and I had a late lunch at McDonald's. Late lunch because we didn't start our day until noon. My flatmates have been coming in at 3:30am and get quite loud... I have to resort to using my ipod to overpower their noise. It has also been really hard for me to get used to the lack of daylight here. The sun doesn't really shine much here, and the daylight starts at 9am and then sets at 4:30pm. I am wicked tired by 6pm and just want to go bed. But, anywho even though I really don't care for fast food, I was just way to hungry to care. Just so you all know, it doesn't taste any different than the ones back at home.

So I noticed that my blogs are ridiculously long already.... hopefully my internet is up and running tomorrow so I can post pictures. We start classes tomorrow and I only have one and that doesn't start until 1pm. YAY! The class will be Celtic Civilations. Tonight, I think a few of us will be going down closer to campus on Byer's road to catch a movie. What movie you ask? I don't know yet. We'll see.

Well... off I go. I'm cold, wet, and stinky from walking in the rain. I need to change my clothes. One more thing. You all would love my hair right now. No, I am NOT going to take a picture of it, but let's just leave it at the fact that I have been wearing my winter hat all day. Frizz fest! I looked at Tesco's to get a hair straightner and yeah, there's no way I am going to pay 74 pounds for one. NOT HAPPENING. I'll just have to look around at other places. But, I did buy some hair spray to maybe enhance the wave. :D

xoxo
Ashley

Hi!



Still no sign of getting internet connection in my room. :( Should be working on Monday. yay! Then, I'll be able to post some pictures.



We had orientation for the study abroad students all day Thursday and Friday. Wednesday night I asked one of the ladies at the reception desk how I was to get to the university. And it's basically just a straight shot walk of about 25 minutes. For anyone that's wondering, the street is called Queen Margaret Street which turns into Byers Road, then take a left on University Avenue. The campus is HUGE! It's hard to even tell if the buildings are even academic buildings. It's so different here than back at Stout. Anyways, the lady gave me directions, but also had a worried look on her face when I asked. She said she didn't recommend going down there that late at night, especially by myself. When I told her that I was just making sure that I knew how to get there and would be going in the morning, she was extremely relieved. I guess things get dangerous here when the sun goes down.



Thursday morning, I made my first walk down to campus. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Although I have learned that the pedestrians do not have the right of way around here. :P I met so many people that day from all over the world. Including Australia, Boston, Chile, Czech Republic, California, Virginia, Texas... yeah, you get the idea. During our lunch break one of the professors asked that all of the Wisconsin students meet up with a group of graduate students from the University of LaCrosse. Who can refuse a free lunch? I felt like I was on a panel with all of those other students questioning us, but it was also relaxed at the same time. I was finally able to meet up with Carrie and Ben who are from UW Stout as well. After the initial orientation, we had to sign up for our classes and then had a 3 hour break. My classes this semester are going to be great, I can just feel it. I have Celtic Civilization-Medeival times, Photography, Human life drawing, and last but not least, Bagpiping!

I got to see where Ben and Carrie are living and Carrie came to Murano street to see where I live. Also found a cute little cafe called Pico's that has free WiFi, but is a bit slow on my laptop. Later that night the study abroad students had a social gathering in the main building. They had a buffet and I was then able to meet even more people! There were about 70 to 80 students that were included in on the orientation this week. Just to give you a rough estimate. I learned a lot about the University that day. Started in 1451. Isn't that crazy to think that they had a University before our country even exsisted? I thought that was intriguing for sure. After the social gathering a bunch of us went down to a pub that is located in an old church. It was a pretty weird feeling, but the pub was beautiful inside. I made a good friend who is from Sydney, Australia by the name of Janene. We both found out that we are living in MSSV. We have become walking buddies to and from campus.

Friday we finished orientation and I had fish and chips (not french fries, chips) for lunch. We then went on a bus tour to the city center. I didn't realize how large this city really was. All of the buildings are gorgeous. I started not feeling very well on the ride around, so I didn't get to enjoy it as much as I wanted to, but I did get a few pictures. I'm planning on taking a bus down there with Janene tomorrow to explore the place on foot. As well as go grocery shopping. I really need to get some food!

It's crazy how easy it is to make friends here, I never had this at RCTC or Stout. For example, I was down in the computer lab earlier today and started a chat with a girl by the name of Laura and we are now friends. It's just that simple. Oh, I finally was able to meet one of my flatmates, she is from Germany. Her name is Sabrina. She apologized for the kitchen looking like a complete disaster. And she even said herself that she gagged when she walked in there. lol. Nice to know that they don't actually live like that. I was worried.

I don't know what else to say at this point, so that's about it for now.
Wishing you all well!
Ashley

So it begins...

So, I originally wrote this on the 7th, but am posting it today... I'll try to keep you all updated more, now that I found a place with free WiFi and some schools in the Reception area at Murano Street.

Well everyone, the web address is correct. Ashley is in fact, in Scotland. First off, for anyone that wants to mail me anything here is my address:

Ashley Nandory
MSSV
Lomond House
6 Caithness ST
F3
Glasgow
G20 7SB

MSSV is an abbreviation for Murano Street Student Village, where I am staying obviously. I am on the third floor of Lomond House 6 right across the street from the reception desk, which I have been to about oh, 8 times since I got here less than 24 hours ago. I hope I don't start to annoy them with all of my questions. Jet lag did not hit me. :D Or maybe it did. I slept from 10pm to 3am then 5am to 10am. Sounds like a normal day in the life of Ashley to me. I haven't been able to explore much yet, because I've been waiting for my internet connection to be hooked up in my room. Apparently before Christmas there were some computer viruses going around campus and they shut off all the Internet connections to every room. Masterpoint, that is. AKA *6 on my phone.

Everyone's probably curious as to what my first meal in Scotland was, considering I do love food. Well, it was the Brown Sugar Cinnamoniness of Pop Tarts... MMmmmMM. I bought them at the airport in Chicago. Also, I bought a bottle of water for $2.93, which was before I realized that I would be going through security again. The line was long, so I had time to chug most of it.

Speaking of security. I can tell you now that I'm grateful of the people at the Minneapolis airport. Luke took me to the airport on Monday and Mary and Jamison both told me they thought he would be able to go through security with his Military ID. When we asked the guy at the check-in, he said that the traveler needed to be in the military to do so. After struggling to find mine, I was saddened by the thought that he would not be going through with me. After the guy checked my baggage, he looked at Luke and said, "Give me your ID." He let Luke go through on a "Priority AAccess" ticket! Oh, and I was the "chosen one" to go through extra screening. It really didn't matter I was just too excited at this point to care. They let Luke go through, so I sacrificed a little of my time for them. FYI Kate, the TGI Fridays at the airport doesn't have pot stickers either. I was the very last person to get on the plane. They even called my name on the intercom to board. Everyone knows that I am never late for anything. I guess a part of me just didn't want to leave.

Everything finally hit me once I got on the plane and arrived in Chicago. That first hour of being completely by myself, and becoming more independent. My flight was delayed to leave at 8:50 instead of 7:35, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Carrie and I were one of the last to board that plane as well. When I got on the plane, there was a guy in my seat. I asked him if he was assigned to that seat as well, he showed me his ticket and there you have it. There were two people assigned to seat 29C. There was no way that I was going to be sitting on this guy's lap for 7 hours and 15 minutes. I checked with the flight attendants, and they found another seat for me while I had a chat with the guy that stole my seat. They were going to put me in the very last row of the plane, but when I got there another flight attendant asked me if I would be so kind as to move to another seat so another person, who was dreadfully sick, could be by the lavatory. I moved to my final destination at seat 42E, in the middle, right next to an older couple who were missionaries from Colorado Springs. The lady said it was very nice of me to move so the lady that was sick could be in the aisle seat. She also told me she was just plain old happy that she wouldn't have to sit by her. I had to laugh. The guy on my left was nice, but got on my nerves after a while. As soon as I was about to fall asleep he'd start clickign the little thing that held up his table. I wanted to give him the evil eye so bad. He quit after about an hour and I was able to get maybe 2 hours of sleep.

The airport at Amsterdam scared me. The place was really cool looking, reminded me of the Bauhaus style. The people there seemed stuck-up, overly confident, and self-absorbed, if you will. Usually everywhere you go you'll get a smile or something from someone that walks by, nothing. There were a lot of people there that looked like my sculpture teacher, Lars, who is from Denmark. *Shivers* It was kind of cool though, we had to ride a bus out to where our plane was on the airport grounds. It was like we were famous rockstars. I put my sunglasses on, turned around, and waved goodbye to my adoring fans as I boarded my plane.

Eek. At this point I am not in Scotland, my home for the next 5 months. I met a really nice guy at the airport by the name of Andrew who gave me his information if I needed any help. I must have looked like a lost puppy and he came to my rescue and helped me find out where I needed to go. That was nice of him to help. I got in a Taxi to take me to the University and the driver showed me some cool points along the way. When I asked him what his favorite thing about Scotland was he said, without hesitation, the people. I think I'm going to like this place. I haven't met anyone yet who hasn't been willing to help me or hasn't smiled at me. I like it when people smile, it makes me fell at home. Oh, and this 24 hour clock thing is going to take a while to get used to.

That's about it for now, I have orientation all day tomorrow and Friday. So, Anywho... ;)

Love you and miss you all,
Ashley

P.S. As promised, I did not read the book until after I got to Chicago.... Bailey... You all crack me up.