Vicki Arrives & A Day in the Park

I had to leave the zoo early after the reception to head to the airport to pick up my friend Vicki, who was arriving that evening from Canada. Her flight was delayed, so I ended up spending some time entertaining myself with a magazine and some tea, but eventually she got there!

Vicki was in Scotland for around a month, and thus did a lot of things on her own, though she stayed with me for most of her visit (aside from a weekend in London and a week in Ireland). The weather was really gorgeous a lot of the time while she was here though, so one of her first days in town (after a little shopping excursion to primark) we went out to the meadows with my friends.

We grabbed some bubble tea first and headed out to soak up some of the sunshine. 

... there may also have been some wine involved. While its not legal to drink in public areas such as the meadows in Scotland in general, it is allowed in Edinburgh (someone told me it was because of the Fringe - the city gets so crazy during the Fringe they couldn't enforce it, so they just stopped enforcing it the rest of the year as well). I don't know how true that is or not, but all summer there is a lot of barbeques and drinking going on in the meadows. 

After we left the meadows, we went to Clerk's bar for some dinner and drinks. Just a really lovely day in Edinburgh :) 

Sun & A Surprise Park

The week between London and Majorca was largely spent doing school work, interspersed with going to see Captain America The Winter Soldier for a second time with Keira (seriously, its so good), hanging out with Maya and Jordan having scrambled eggs and sparkling wine (a winning combination), getting bubble tea with some other pub people, reading in the sunshine outside Starbucks, and going for a wonderful walk.

(As I said to Shanni, my baristas know my name. They may not know how to spell my name, but they know my name).

I knew there was a rather large park about 10-15 min walk from my house, but the last time I was up there it was freezing and I didn't get far (the walk there was brisk enough, much less going up the hill). However, I really wanted to participate in the Art Assignment's fifth assignment, the quietest space, which challenged viewers to take a walk from their place of residence and find the quietest place. I figured that park would be my best bet, and headed up there. It was absolutely gorgeous out.

It was kind of amazing, because there were so many song birds around, and bees, and all these flowers blossoming… but there were also a ton of people out enjoying the sunshine as well, but there wasn’t any real people noise. Like me, everyone who was out seemed to be content to just wander along silently, soaking up the sunlight and the sounds of nature.

I took a bunch of videos on my phone, which I may edit into something at some point, and which you can really hear all the birds on. It was really funny, because I just kind of spontaneously decided to do this, I was up there in my jeans and nice shirt, converse, big purse... and I passed so many people wearing like, proper hiking clothes with water bottles and stuff. Which was mostly funny because I was like dude, if you think this is an actual hike and not just a nice walk up a hill, you really shouldn't ever go to Canada.

I also discovered a massive community garden that I didn't know existed, that looked rather like some strange shanty town. When I was up here in the winter I thought it was maybe some sort of science station, as there was no one there, but on this day there were loads of people in there working on their gardens.

Arthur's seat looks really intimidating in the distance... I still haven't gotten around to walking up there, but now that its nicer out, I will hopefully do that soon.

In other news, I did my nails for the beach yesterday, and had some trauma over the latest episode of game of thrones (don't scroll past the nail picture if you want to avoid spoilers). 

Connie was not helpful.

French Club

French Club is still going strong - besides one day the other weekend when 90% of the group had skipped town, we've been meeting once a week for over two months now. I have used my French language app 47 days in a row now. While my progress has slowed down somewhat now that I've hit things that I have never learned before in my previous attempts to learn the language, I'm still chugging away at it (and occasionally sending Alix incredulous messages questioning the validity of the entire language). Last Sunday we decided to meet at The Elephant House instead of our usual location of Waterstones, because we hadn't been there for a while, but we decided we probably wouldn't be doing that again, because The Elephant House is so popular, we felt really pressured to leave and give up our table, while at Waterstones we will sit for two hours no problem. After that we headed downtown as Alix and Melissa both wanted to try and find some nicer clothes for interviews, and I wanted some more button up shirts (I currently own three, one white one that has a grease stain on the chest, one plaid one with a rip in the armpit, and another plaid one that doesn't fit well... so I could really use some more). Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find any that really tickled my fancy, but I did get my very first pair of leggings, and Alix managed to get a super cute pair of heels from Office (Leanne was working... it was hilarious to see her standing behind the counters, which are designed for normal height people to stand behind, with her shoulders just peeking out). After that, we headed back up the mound, stopping at a drugstore where I finally managed to find the kind of floss I need for my permanent retainer (I may have bought three boxes... they were on sale too). Then we went to Subway for dinner, the only one in the city that actually has plain yellow mustard and thus my favourite one, before going next door to Frisky for bubble tea :) 

Awesome Sunday with the gurls :)