First day of "Classes" and Walmart Withdrawl

You ever have those days when you say to yourself "I need (insert any item here) and then you head to Walmart and get said item? Well, you can't do that here. Here, you say "I need (insert item here). In what store could I find (item)???"

This does occasionally happen where people start speaking to themselves and it still looks crazy here...

It started with tape. I wanted a roll to hang things in my room. It took several store visiting in one of the shopping malls to find "Sellotape" which does not come on a handy little plastic container that allows easy tearing off of strips but a large round loop (much like masking or painters tape).

After this was alarm clock. I finally found one in a home store when I was searching for plates.

And speaking of plates, I have my very first casserole dish!! :) I can't exactly explain why I am so excited over dishes but I am. I also splurged a little for a square plate and bowl (just one of each because I am hoping I will be good and wash them after I finish using it). Also, unknown to my mother, I plan on trying to mail these things back to the states in 4 years....

I had rushed around buying groceries, then dumping them back at my flat (a 15 min bus ride) then back to the same store for my dishes. I'm not entirely certain that that is weird for them or not... And with some of my newly bought food items (not frozen meals yay!!) I cooked a beef, potato, tomato pasta dish in the little kitchen and my flat mates seemed shocked that I was cooking REAL food. (During this time one came in and microwaved a "quesadilla")

This after I thought for certain that I was setting the fire alarm off when something I was heating in the microwave started smoking... Que the panic and crazy dancing about the flat as I opened windows and fanned furiously in front of the smoke detector.

I am also editing a video of my flat and all it's oddities.... This will come in the near future (hopefully).

So about first two days to Easter Bush (also known as The Bush like its cooler that way.... Okay, it is really cool...).

The Easter Bush campus is outside of Edinburgh and we are taking a direct bus route there for the first week (which takes about a half hour to get there). I haven't officially had a class yet but I have registered and matriculated (well, I filled out the paperwork and the University is putting into the system) and had many many many talks of health, safety and what they offer. When they say this thing is state of the art, they mean State of the Art. I got the official tour today (on day two...) of the teaching building, animal hospital, and equine/farm animal facilities. Rooms include and enormous dissection lab, autopsy theater, 2 giant lecture halls (and several large classrooms) a library (that had these cool self checkout counters that I can't wait to give it a try), multiple computer rooms and study rooms, and two lab rooms designed to fit a hundred people. All of these rooms have multiple TV/computer monitors (on of the labs had one at every desk so you could see what the professor has on the front board) or outlets for everyone in the room to plug in a laptop. And because we are the first class in here, everything is shiny and new. I'll get pictures or video of it soon to post.

Today we had a talk on keeping yourself safe. And it sounds boring, but it wasn't. The man who gave it was a very funny policeman (He had another title but I don't remember what) and he was great. One of the best parts was when he talked about drinking over here. According to him, you could see someone lying in the gutter, who had vomited on himself and back in the states (did I mention that the majority of people in my class are from the states?) we would assume they guy is probably homeless or a drug addict. Here, they are your dad's accountant, the prime minister, whatever. In Scotland, you are measured by how much alcohol you can hold and make it home safely, and the making it home part is optional...

I feel like that lines up with when I was reading online "Important measures: Scotland uses miles, kilograms and beer comes in pints."