Just Another Day...

This morning I had a class at 10 and my first ever tutorial at 11. The tutorial was really great, the professor was really nice, he works at an architecture firm in Edinburgh and had attended the university of Edinburgh.
Of course it has been raining all day, so my tennis this afternoon got canceled which is really too bad. I decided running in pouring rain was not fun, so much for daily exercises. I did see quite a few people running this morning with their dogs though. I don't know why anyone would want to walk, let alone run, with their dogs in the pouring rain. I know from experience that walking my two dogs in the pouring rain is awful, but I guess people here are just used to the rain.
At one point when there was no rain my flatmate and I went on a journey a few blocks away to recycle all of our empty cans and bottles. It's annoying that we have to go so far to recycle. The good thing about the journey was that on the way back we found a rug store that had pretty cheap rugs. So on an impulse buy I decided to get one of those really soft sheepskin rugs, I don't think it's real, but I got it for 15 pounds, which is a little over $20. It looks great in front of my bed, and I know I'll be happy I got it tomorrow morning when I get out of bed and my room is freezing.
I got a care package from my mom today:) Full of food and stuff that I forgot, it was very nice.
My flatmate got her books that she ordered from amazon and got these vouchers for wine, spend 80 pounds and get 40 pounds off. So three of us will chip in and have wine to last us quite a while.

Accents, strawberries, and fire

I think it's amazing that even though the people here speak English, I can't really understand people. Especially the British! They talk so quickly and just kind of mumble a little bit, I feel so stupid asking them to repeat themselves over and over. The other accents are not as bad but it is still a little difficult to understand people.
After classes I went grocery shopping and found that a store called Lidl sells strawberries for only one pound! That's about $1.50. I was so excited because I was upset that grapes are 2.50 pounds, which is about $3.75. I guess this means lots of strawberry smoothies for me!
After my flatmate and I had finished dinner, the fire alarm went off...great. So out into the cold we went. Turns out a friend of ours set off alarm, a different friend from last time but for some reason apparently our friends are jinxed. Of course the firemen came to check the building and everything, but after a little while we were allowed to go back into the building.

Post Office

I found the post office today, I thought it would be necessary to find it since I will eventually need to send letters. It's actually right across from my flat, very convenient. Nothing else really exciting to report about today...pretty normal and boring, I only had one class. I have finally figured out my timetable (love how they call it tutorial) though. I have one class Monday, two on Tuesday, a class and a tutorial on Wednesday, three classes on Thursday and an occasional tutorial on Fridays. Sounds pretty good to me...looks like I'll have plenty of time for a job, guess I better find one quick.

Yummm

The dinner turned out to be amazing. She was cooking from about 6 till 8. I ended up making my French Chocolate Cake again for desert and I bought a baguette. The sauce for the pasta was made of onions, garlic, tomatoes, eggplants, fresh basil (from our own basil plant in our flat) and mozzarella. I am now in a food coma, I'm going to fall asleep very very soon...
Oh, here's a picture of the pasta dish, looks good doesn't it?

Burning Eggplants

I woke up around 11 today and my flatmate said she wanted to go to this chinese restaurant that was buffet style. She said she had been there with her family and they thought it was great. So at around 1:30 three of us went to Jimmy Chungs Bar and Chinese Buffet http://www.jimmychungs.com/. It was surprisingly good. Whenever I think of buffets I think of Golden Coral or Chinese 35, which are really not like a restaurant at all, just a load of fried food. This was not like an American buffet, the food was really good and it was a good price. The funny thing was that they played American rap/hip-hop music throughout the restaurant. It certainly wasn't a chinese atmosphere....
At about 3:30 I got a cab to go to my tennis tryouts, that were about 15 minutes (by car) away. The tennis tryouts went pretty well, I don't know when I'll find out whether I made it or not.
Now one of my flatmates is skyping her dad in our kitchen and he is telling her how to make his famous pasta dish (I'm really not sure what it is but I guess I'll find out). All I know is that I walked into the kitchen to the smell of burnt eggplants...but my flatmate does tend to burn everything, hopefully she wont burn the rest of the dish. I'm sure it is going to be very good. A few of our friends are coming for the dinner, so she is cooking for about six of us.

So Much to Do So Little Time

My list of things to do today consisted of this:
1. Find this store called Real Foods, so that I can buy poppy seeds
2. Make the cake for my flat swap tonight
3. Go to the bank, activate my card and find out how to wire money from the US
4. Go to the stores I thought about getting a job at
5. Get my books for school
6. Get groceries
Good thing I only got about half of that stuff done, I even woke up early and still didn't finish. It took me a little while to find the Real Foods place, but it was worth it. I got my poppy seeds and found that the store is a lot like whole foods, which makes me happy. The only problem is that it's a little expensive and it's pretty far from my flat.
The visit to the bank was, as always, a fiasco. It took forever waiting in line, and I had forgotten my passport. But in the end I got all of the information I needed, even if it did take most of my day.
Getting groceries was simple, at least one of the things was today.
I got one of my books for class, apparently I have to go somewhere else to get the others though, and I have no idea where...
I didn't get to look for a job but hopefully I can do that tomorrow, or maybe next Friday since I don't have any classes on Friday.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

I need some Wellies! I woke up to pouring rain this morning and it still has not stopped, actually I think it's raining even harder. I wore just my rain coat to class because it didn't look too bad, but on my way back I realized I really needed my umbrella. This is the first real hard rain I've experienced since I got here. Quite enjoyable. Of course today I'm on a mission to find poppy seeds, walking down the street in pouring rain isn't so fun. I need poppy seeds because my flatmates and I are doing this thing in our building called flat swap. This means that we are paired up with another flat and then assigned to cook either dinner or dessert. Our flat was assigned to dessert, so I suggested we make my favorite French Chocolate Cake, and the recipe calls for poppy seeds. I still haven't found them, but I'm not giving up yet! Two more classes today...lots more of walking in the rain.