Hills! Hills everywhere!

Why hello there everyone! I assume you long to hear about my great adventures in the UK for the past month?

Well then, let me treat you with a few stories from Scotland and lake district!

We visited Edinburgh with the Interlink (community for international students) group at the end of October. It was a fun, walk filled and surprisingly expensive trip to the heart of Scotland. We stayed there for two days and walked around the city for hours while not visiting any paid tourist attractions.

 I took a few photos of architecture I thought I could use in my school work. Needless to say I haven't utilized them at all. ;)

 The buildings are pretty old in Edinburgh and our hostel's window was ridicilous. Even when closed you could get a cable under it.

 

Paid Edinburgh Castle, "Totally not worth it!" said the guy with the camera to the left. As such we only had a peek to its front yard.

The view from the yard was nice though.

 

Ditto

 

 

A park we crossed. There was some weird yoga (?) session in front of the museum at the end of that road where people laid on the street without shoes or socks while somebody was yelling at them with a megaphone. There was also a group of orange shirted jolly guys who spontaneously singed "Hakuna matata"!

 

The Edinburgh castle surroundings was probably the most real and authentic area of Scotland! We saw many real medieval plastic tools and even William Wallace wanted to take pictures with people. Apparently he had been doing that at least for a year according to my friend who visited Edinburgh a year back so I guess William gets paid decently. After walking around the town for a day we had a small halloween party at the hostel where people continued to a club. I almost went with them but turned back at the last minute after hearing that I needed to both pay and have a partner to get in. Afterwards I heard there was a real golden shower in the club at some point which made me smirk and feel better about not going there.

 

Someone is determined to not let old trees fall. <3

 

On the day after we went hiking on hills next to Edinburgh. Climbing hills for several kilometers is all fun and dandy but I hate the fact that you sweat buckets. Note to self: always wear a tank top and shorts when hiking. No matter what time of the year it is. I wore my normal shoes which caused a nasty strain to my legs but the view from the hill was worth it. 

 

 

 

 

What you can see: me standing on a hillside. What you can't see: 3 litres of sweat covering my T shirt.

After getting back down we went to eat some delicious but not so healthy food at the local pub and bought some damn expensive fudge. We left back to Middlesbrough at sunset.

 

 Part of our group after conquering the Edinburgh's largest (I think?) hill.

Next week I participated in horror society's halloween pub crawl where we were supposed to dress as zombies. I tried to use my fake scar only to discover that "self adhesive" means two small pieces of very, very weak tape that couldn't hold a piece of paper on the wall let alone much heavier piece of plastic on my neck. Luckily the face paints worked as intended and to better fit in I ripped my shirt to look more like a zombie. Others had bought cheap white T's but that didn't cross my mind so I just destroyed my perfectly good T-shirt.

Trip to lake district is the most recent trip I've been to. The name was misleading. It wasn't about lakes but large hills and hiking! The hill range we walked on was shaped like a horseshoe and the highest point was about 800 meters. The views were pretty spectacular.

 I'm not fat! I just happened to have ton of stuff in my pockets!

 It wasn't too windy at the top. I can imagine myself staying there. ;)

 Seeing your shadow cast on a cloud with a rainbow around it is pretty awesome. :)

 

 

 This is like from Lord of the Rings!

Everybody was high.

 We didn't manage to get back before the sunset. Let me tell you, descenting a high hill in the dark is actually pretty scary. There was some difficult terrain and high drops here and there. This particular picture was taken after we got down the actual hill and was lighted by my camera's flash. We had only one small flashlight with us.

Our trip back home was delayed by good 2 hours because our tyre broke on our way back.

 

Apart from these few events I haven't been doing much. I've generally just worked my ass off (while still lagging behind). The deadline for our huge assignments is closing in quickly and I still have so much work to do that it's not even funny. After October I decided not to do any school work at home since it was driving me insane. I had only like 1 or 2 hours of free time each day with the old "work at school & work at home"- setup and the work was very inefficient. Now on my average weekday I drag my lazy ass to school around 10:30 and leave about 21:00. This way I get much more work done and I have about 6 hours of free time every night.

I am disappointed in myself for reverting back to the same behavior I had in Finland, which is to work when you need to and sit quietly in your room in your free time. I am way more active than in Finland but I still get pissed when I hear how active and super duper extra fun student life is because I feel like I'm missing out, but if I participate in things I rarely enjoy them. I am currently thinking about changing apartment. I feel like an outsider in my current flat with 4 Chinese flatmates. :(

I also turned 22 a few weeks ago. I feel so old... they don't even ask my ID in the pubs anymore. Not every time at least. One time the barkeeper didn't accept my Finnish ID and asked me to leave. He said I looked like 19 which was probably just an educated guess instead of honest opinion. Improvement! Guys in Finland say I look like 14. :3

I guess that is all. This "quick blog update" turned into a three hour monster update and I want to get going now. Cya later ya'll!