First Full Days of Work

I am officially done with my "first week" of work! If I can find a way to only work two full days a week and live in a foreign city, that would not be a bad deal at all. 

Yesterday I woke up at the crack of dawn (aka 8:15) to get dressed and head down to the Parliament. Well up then down, Edinburgh's an unexpectedly hilly city. I got there before my MSP, which is making a good impression I suppose, but I didn't know what to do because I couldn't log into the computer so I just sat there. 

My MSP did eventually show up and I got logged in to the computer, set up my Outlook account and stared at the great view while trying to figure out what to do. 

My desk

The view of Arthur's Seat from my desk

My first task as an intern at the Scottish Parliament was to write a "motion". I thought it sounded pretty cool, but motions happen all the time. I'm not entirely clear on what they are, but they seem like something to just put on the public record. Sometimes they mention a group or a person or something in someone's constituency. I get an email every time an MSP writes a motion and I get maybe like ten to twenty a day. Most seem party neutral, but you need MSPs to vote on them for them to pass. Well anyway I got an email from my MSP, Stuart, and it said, "Can you write a motion on this?" And it had the name of an organization celebrating its 25th anniversary and some information about the organization. 

Having never written a motion before, I spent a lot of time reading previous motions to get a feel for the wording and the layout. I emailed the office manager a lot with questions about it, and he helped me out a lot. I wrote it, then he rewrote it and sent it back to me, then I sent it to Stuart, then he sent me amendments, then I rewrote it. It was quite the process for what was basically one long run on sentence. It was a very "learn by doing" experience. And now I (sort of) know how to write a motion. It's exciting and scary to be trusted almost immediately with doing something so large. While I feel like motions barely get skimmed and hardly ever remembered, it's scary knowing that over 500 people will read it and it will have your MSPs name on it, which gives me a feeling of great responsibility. 

The second task I was delegated was the creation of a four page newsletter that my MSP sends out to his constituents. He hadn't done one in awhile so it covered the last few months. He gave me a very short set of directions that were hard to decipher due to the whole accent thing. My MSP gave me a short list of some unspecific topics he would like included in the newsletter and then let me figure out the rest. I took the same approach I did with the motion. I looked up past newsletters and copied the format. I found photos of my MSP's summer tour and of him hosting events. I read press releases and his blog to learn about what I was writing about in the newsletter. It was very time consuming, but it was also a very effective and productive way to learn about what my MSP has been doing for the past four months. 

I started the newsletter yesterday, but I spent most of today working on it as well. Yesterday I was also able to talk to my MSP a lot. He would call me over just to talk to me which was cool, but I felt a little awkward just standing there trying to figure out what he was saying. 

He did mention, however, that he would take me and one of his other interns to see his constituency. He represents West Scotland and his main focus is tourism, so I'll get to see some cool sights in West Scotland. He also talked a lot about independence, which makes sense since he is a member of the Scottish National Party. But it's very different hearing about independence and the referendum than meeting someone who's actually working to make Scotland independent. It makes it very more real. 

After work on Thursday, I met up with several UC interns who work on my floor and we went out to dinner at a restaurant near the UC Center before class. I quickly ate my chicken curry while doing the reading homework on the House of Lords out of a borrowed textbook. We then went to class. My roommates and I presented on the House of Lords, and then two other groups presented on the other branches of government. The class is very discussion focused and very interesting. 

After class we had our traditional post class pub stop. I really like the tradition because we get to just hang out and relax and make political science jokes and the pub atmospheres are very social. Not in like a loud, obnoxious kind of social way, but a friendly towards groups of people talking kind of social way, if that makes sense.

The MSPs are only in their offices Tuesday through Thursday, but those days it's very busy. There are interviews in the "Garden Court Room" and people everywhere. Fridays (and Mondays I'm assuming too, but I haven't worked one yet) are very quiet. Some offices are completely empty and it's mostly just some interns in jeans. It was quiet today which was nice and I got a lot done, but it's also kind of...too quiet. But I guess I'll get used to it. We were told that sometimes it may seem like you have nothing to do on these days if we're not handed tasks and that we should create work, but I had plenty to do. 

 I was worried that I would not know what to do on my own without any guidance, but luckily so far that has not been the case. This morning I finished the newsletter. I spent a lot of time on the phone with the IT department about getting access to emails and stuff. It was confusing when I got four different calls from four different people from IT telling me four different things. 

It's also fun because all the interns gather up and go to lunch together. There's a really nice and relatively cheap cafeteria on the ground floor. Yesterday I got mac and cheese and today I got risotto and both days I got a Cadburry's chocolate bar. It's fun to talk to the other interns about what they've been doing that day and what projects they've been working on. 

Another thing I've noticed about the Parliament building is that it's a lot more personal than I expected and the MSPs are a lot more accessible. Going along with that, the offices, especially the intern's desks, are very open. There aren't many walls or doors and there's a lot of open space. All the offices open to the hallway. It's nice because people walking by will stop and talk to you, which is always nice. But I also have the problem that everyone on my floor can hear me when I talk to anyone. That's true for a lot of people, but especially me.

It's really fun and a little intimidating so far. It's tiring, too. I'm worried that I'll miss out on a lot of day to day Edinburgh stuff because I spend the majority of the day five days a week in an office, but I still have the weekends. And also, I'm learning a lot about Scotland. Just by being in the office and hearing about the issues and reading the motions and the bulletins, I've learned a lot about issues that I wouldn't have heard about otherwise. 

It should get interesting the next couple weeks as I learn how to do more parliamentary projects and learn more about the issues!

View from my floor

Another view from my floor

Hope you all have a great weekend!

#betterintheuk

Julianne and I want to trend #betterintheuk on twitter, but neither of us have a twitter... so we turned it into a ongoing game.

For instance:
Walking to work in a windstorm #betterintheuk
The view from the grocery store #betterintheuk
Pubs #betterintheuk
Scarf and glove shopping #betterintheuk
Mochas #betterintheuk

However,
Baking brownies #notbetterintheuk
Conversion rate #notbetterintheuk
Guacamole #notbetterintheuk

And so it goes. The reason the view from the grocery store is better in the UK is because our Sainsbury's has a huge, practically unobstructed view of Arthur's Seat. And as far as baking brownies goes, I had my first attempt this afternoon and it turned out better than I expected, which is not saying much at all. I can hardly count my thin unsweetened brown pancake of a dessert as a brownie. I ate them anyway.

Well in more interesting news, I had my "second" day of work today. My "first" day was yesterday. They have not been real full days, I've only been there for about an hour each day, but I love it so far! I should start my full day tomorrow, I believe. Just in time for the parliamentary recess!

It felt simultaneously surreal and real as I walked to the parliament early yesterday afternoon. I had my rain jacket and thick grey H&M scarf covering my business clothes as I walked down the busy and windy streets to the Parliament. It's one thing to walk around Edinburgh in my typical uniform of jeans and a sweater. But when I got dressed up it felt like I was really living here and really belonged in the city. I don't know if it was the fact that I was going to work or the fact that dressy clothes make me feel more confident though. But it felt very real when I was walking down London Road passing Fish and Chips shops and pubs and other Edinburghy buildings.

I went through security and waited in the lobby until my MSP's Office Manager came down to bring me up to the office. His name is Iain and he's very nice and has been helping me by giving me tours of the Parliament building and giving me useful lists of numbers and stuff like that. Each MSP has a narrow cubicle office. They're all very similar looking. The architect designed it so that each office has a "thinking module" or something like that so at the end of each office behind the MSP's desk is a pop out window with a seat. I have a desk along the hallway. The view from my desk is unreal. As soon as I am left unattended long enough I will attempt to take a picture of this. I can see half of the interesting looking Parliament building and almost all of Arthur's Seat.

I had a quick conversation with my MSP. He did most of the talking about his constituency and his political interests. I hope I made a good first impression. He asked me if I knew what committees he was on and luckily I had read his website and luckily I have a strange capacity for retaining seemingly useless information and I was able to rattle off most of his committees. He had a meeting to go to or something, so I left after that.

Today I spent a little more time there. I got my security pass! It's very official looking. It's a very thick plastic  card with my picture on it that I wear on a thin silver chain around my neck and I have to scan it to open doors and use the elevators (or "lifts"). I can now also enter the Parliament building through the employee entrances instead of the public entrances! I also was delegated a task today, which was to go collect someone from the lobby. I thought about leaving breadcrumbs as I worked my way through various narrow corridors and took counter intuitive turns to get to the lobby. There was a lady who was interviewing my MSP or something. She was very nice and I talked to her as I signed her in and brought her to my MSP's office. Because I don't have an account to sign in to the computer yet, I was able to leave after that.

It's scary though because the internship liaison was supposed to explain to us how to do different internshipy things like case work and press releases and briefings and he didn't. So I'm worried when I start my first real day of work I'm going to be sitting at the computer screen for hours going... "well now what?" Luckily my MSP and my office manager are very nice so I'm sure they'll explain it to me. I would rather be self sufficient from the get go, but I guess I'll learn a whole new skill set. Currently my internship skill set only includes things like making coffee and copies and getting people from the lobby. An MSP only needs so many copies though, so I suppose I'll have to learn how to do real work eventually, which is scary, but exciting.

It's also cool because I feel like I'm starting to absorb a lot of UK culture through osmosis I suppose. For instance, this morning for breakfast I had beans on toast. I also have starting saying "mobile" for "cell phone", if only out of necessity since no one knows what I'm talking about otherwise.

Other than that I am currently planning my two week recess from the Parliament. I believe I'm going to Istanbul for a few days. I'm also taking a trip to London with the other UC interns. I would like to go elsewhere, too. I think my roommates are going to Paris, so I may join them for that. I would like to go to Copenhagen and Cardiff as well, so it would be great if I could find people to go with me. I also would like to go to some concerts while I'm here! Maybe concerts will be #betterintheuk as well, we'll have to see.

Sending lots of love from windy Scotland!

Gale Force Winds and Hot Chocolate

We are currently under a severe weather alert. The wind is ripping through the trees across the way making them dance and sway. It's whistling through our wrinkled glass windows and echoing against our flat and sounding like thunder. 

Instead of being worried at the 70mph winds going on outside right now, we used it as an excuse to go shopping for gloves and scarves and socks and to drink copious amounts of pumpkin spice hot chocolate. 

We also stopped by the castle today. We didn't go inside, but we enjoyed getting a feel for the very cool very ancient looking castle and the surrounding shops and 'closes'. 

 Last night I went to a North American Association thing with Erik and Helle. It was near the university. They played American football on all the TVs. I met a lot of Americans who were studying at the university as well, which was cool. The past few days have been pretty laid back, though. Current hobbies include attempting to stay warm and just hanging out in the apartment.

Things are going to start picking up as tomorrow is my first day of work at the parliament! As excited as I am to start the internship, I'm going to miss what's basically just been vacation. However it will be nice to start working and learning a lot about Scotland and Scottish politics. Maybe just not in weather as windy as this though.

I Have an Internship!

Just a quick post to let you all know that I finally got the name of the MSP who I'll be working for this Fall. His name is Stuart McMillan from the Scottish National Party. According to the Scottish Parliament website, he is a member of groups for racial equality, nuclear disarmament, housing, and more. If you'd like to read more about him, this is his profile on the Scottish Parliament website:  http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/msps/currentmsps/Stuart-McMillan-MSP.aspx

Other than that, we had a brief orientation on Friday, in which we got a quick tour of the maze like modern looking Parliament building. We met some of the other interns, four of which are from Utah, one from the East Coast. 

Most of us went out for dinner on the Royal Mile afterwards and it was fun to get to know everyone better and complain about our dress shoe induced blisters. 

Yesterday we had a UC intern potluck at three of the other girls' apartment. I made bruschetta. We watched Dr. Who and sat around talking about the internship and plans for travel. While we were hanging out and talking, one of the interns happened to check his email on his phone and saw he had an email from the internship coordinator. We then all went and checked our emails and we shared who all our MSPs were. 

I emailed my MSP to ask him about my start date, which should be sometime this week. Until then I'll be sleeping in, hanging out, and hopefully taking a day trip to Stirling (maybe). I'm also currently trying to plan my two week break in October, when the Scottish Parliament is in recess.

Other than that, I'm still in awe at how pretty this city is. We've been lucky to have some very sunny (but brisk!) past few days, but even in the torrential downpour when I'm forced to use a thin scarf as a hood while walking to class due to my lack of weather appropriate clothing, it's a gorgeous city. I love it here!

Happy belated first day of Fall! I hope your weeks have all been lovely. Also, special shout out to Shannon, who moved in to Santa Barbara yesterday!

Belfast, Dublin, and Edinburgh Part Two

This is a continuation of the previous blog post, sorry for it being out of order!

Day two started with a very early alarm clock. People at the hostel left at different times and some had left before us, so I was already semi-awake when it came time to roll out of bed. I noticed that because people get back at such different times and people leave at such different times, there's only like a four hour window when everyone's asleep. We were planning on catching a nine am bus to Dublin, so we got out of bed at seven so we could dress, eat, and get to the bus station. 

We grabbed our stuff, changed in the bathroom, and went downstairs for the breakfast that was included. It was actually a really good breakfast. They had sweet baked beans, warm sourdough toast drenched in butter and jam, scrambled eggs, and coffee. We then had to wait for someone to come to reception so that we could check out and exchange the noisy lock for the lock deposit. We searched the whole hostel for someone and eventually someone came down to help us. We kept checking our watches and determined that we probably wouldn't make the nine am bus, so we would just catch whichever one came after that. 

We found the bus station pretty easily. It was only a twenty minute walk from our hostel. We went inside and talked to the lady at the information booth. We got there at like 8:50 and we were asking her stuff like when the next bus was, where could we catch it, and how much it would cost. It was a very difficult conversation because as friendly as she was, we had to keep asking her to repeat what she was saying and she kept disregarding our questions about buses and talking about trains. "You can catch the train here that will take you to the other train station in Belfast and then you can take the 10:00 train from there to Dublin." She kept saying. "Can we take a bus?" we asked her. "Oh, yes, but for buses you need to go over there." She pointed at the other end of the station. We thanked her and then walked aimlessly until we figured out where she was pointing.

"Hi, when's the next bus to Dublin?" I asked the guy behind the glass. "Two minutes." He replied. "Can we make it?" I asked him. "Of course!" he said and we quickly paid for our round trip tickets to Dublin and back. Thus we learned that traveling is a lot about luck. 

We did indeed make it on the nine am bus. It was nice to watch the Irish countryside go by and look at all the little towns. I wanted to take the opportunity to see as much of Ireland as I could, even if it was from the window of a double decker coach bus. I figured you can't just judge an island only by two cities. I figured that would be like judging California solely on LA and San Francisco. While you could see a lot of great things in California just by seeing those two cities (both of which I love) you'd still miss out on San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, and more. There's still a lot I'd like to see in Ireland, but at least I got to see some countryside and two great cities! 

 Irish countryside

I like this picture because this is kind of how I pictured Ireland. With bright green, rolling hills. There was a lot more to the countryside than that, but it was definitely mostly green!

Two hours later we arrived at Dublin Airport. Because of all the confusion with the train/bus information we received, we went down to ask the driver if the bus went to the city center. Unfortunately there was a miscommunication and we ended up getting off the bus which would actually end up going to the city center. We didn't know this at the time, and figured it out later, but we figured our luck was back in balance for the day. We ended up having to take a city bus to the city center from the airport which took another two hours. It was a bummer to double the amount of travel time it took to get to a city with the time it took us to get from the airport to the city, but once we got there it was all worth it. 

I worried on the bus that Dublin in a day would be too ambitious. It was, but I was worried that we wouldn't get to see anything, we wouldn't have enough time to do anything, and that coming all that way just to see Dublin for less than twenty four hours was a waste. 

Luckily, that worrying was for nothing. Dublin was worth it right when we got off the crowded city bus. It was a very pretty city. I know I keep saying that about all the cities I see, but they're all so pretty. Dublin was a lot more city than Belfast. It had a lot more commercial areas and newer sections. But it was great in its own way. 

Hungry for a snack, we stopped by and got "chips" aka fries with vinegar and salt from a small shop. We then walked to the hostel. It was a huge hostel. We stayed in a room with fourteen other people. While not all rooms were as big as ours, there were over sixty rooms. Our last hostel had only eight or so rooms. It was a little dirtier and more impersonal than the last hostel, but being in a bigger hostel had some benefits such as computers and electronic lockers. 

Eating chips outside the hostel in Dublin

We thought about biking to our first tourist destination, The Guinness Storehouse. When in Dublin... Dublin has these great city bikes that you can pick up from a set location and then drop them off at another. It was very cheap, too, but it was a very complicated system to register a bike card and at this point it was raining and we were worried about biking on the left side of the road and making turns the wrong way. Speaking of how people drive on the left side of the road, it makes jaywalking (which we do very frequently) much more difficult when you can't remember which way to look first because you can't remember which side of the road they drive on. We had a couple near misses, but all in all our jaywalking in left side of the road countries has been successful. We ended up walking to the Guinness Storehouse, which was a lot easier to get to than we thought. Cumulatively it only rained for about five minutes the whole trip, which made the visit that much more enjoyable because we were in sunshine almost the whole time. 

The walk to the Guinness Storehouse was probably one of my favorite parts. For the first part of the walk, we walked along the river and we could see the buildings on both sides and it was very pretty. 

Main road, spire for something in the middle

Along the river

We thought this was the Parliament building for half the day. It's not.

Pretty church on the way to the Storehouse

Almost all the signs in Ireland are in English and in Gaelic

Another pretty church

Outside the Guinness building

The Guinness Storehouse was a very packed, very touristy attraction. While it was on the outskirts of the city, it clearly attracted a lot of tourists. It was a big, expensive looking building located on the spot of the original brewery. Guinness drinking is almost seemed like a religion in Dublin, with Arthur Guinness, the founder and the first one to roast the hops or something like that, as kind of like their god. We took a tour of the storehouse, where it walked you through all the steps of making beer. People have tried to explain how you make beer to me before and I didn't get it. But you literally walked through all the steps of making beer and it explained what the different machines do and now I sort of get how you make beer. If nothing else, it was very interesting to be in a culture that celebrates alcohol consumption so much. 

View from the top of the Guinness Storehouse. The buildings in the foreground are the brewery, I think. After the tour, we went and got lunch at the Storehouse. I got a bunch of pasta salad, which came with Guinness bread. We then went to the top, which is what they call the Gravity Bar. It had views of Dublin. I got a few pictures, but there were a lot of people up there, so we didn't stay long and instead decided to walk back to the hostel. 

On our way back to the hostel, we stopped by St. Patrick's Cathedral. We didn't go inside, but we took pictures and walked around the park. According to an engraved stone in the park, the church is located on the spot where it is believed that St. Patrick performed his first baptism in the 5th century.

We also stopped quickly by the Dublin Castle. 

It's interesting how the parking lot is built right up to the edge of the other part of the castle. Across the street from the castle was an apartment complex. The old blends right into the new. 

 Exhausted, we continued back to the hostel. Julianne wanted to rest, but I wanted to see a little more of the city still, so while she went back to the hostel, I walked up past the hostel to the Writer's Museum. It was closed, which I expected for a Sunday evening, but it was nice just to walk around some more and see more of the city. The fact that it was Sunday meant that most things closed early, if they were open at all. Also in Dublin, the sights catered more towards tourists than in Belfast, which meant that you had to pay to go in to see everything. I really did like Dublin, but I think I would definitely need more time and more money if I was to visit again. Belfast seemed to have a lot more young people, it seemed to be smaller which made it easier to walk around, and there were less tourists so most sights were free and less crowded. 

Anyone see the big reverse Irish flag in this picture? 

After that, I walked back to the hostel where I was able to shower finally. I forgot shower shoes, so I bought plastic grocery store bags and tied them around my feet because the shower was so gross that I didn't want to put my feet in it. Because Ireland has a plastic bag tax to reduce the use of plastic bags (which I think is a really great idea), I had to buy the bags for eleven cents each. 

We rested at the hostel for a bit. The lack of sleep and high amount of walking we had done was starting to catch up with us. We did want to see more of Dublin, though, so we asked the guy at the reception of the hostel where we could go on a Sunday night. He recommended a place with live music. 

We started walking that direction, but since we just wanted to listen to any live music and we weren't too particular, we stopped at the first pub we saw that had live music. While the pub was not packed, it was a lot more crowded than I would have expected it to be for a Sunday night. We sat down and were listening to the guitarist when two very drunk Irishmen struck up a conversation with us. They ended up buying us drinks and asking us a lot of questions about politics and linguistics. We learned how to say "cheers!" in Gaelic, which is "Sláinte!" They were very funny. We didn't stay out too late because we were headed back to Belfast the next morning. 

A very Irish pub!

We went back to the hostel and went to bed. Or tried, at least. There was one guy who was snoring and one person who was trying to drown out the snoring by playing music on their iPod so loudly that everyone could hear it. Eventually though the snoring stopped and the music was turned off. We decided to wake up at seven again to catch the nine am bus back to Belfast. Breakfast was provided again, but it wasn't nearly as good as the breakfast in Belfast. 

Sustained on toast, we walked to the bus station, which was only five minutes away from our hostel. Luckily this time we realized that we could take the bus from the city center. I tried to stay awake on the bus to Belfast to appreciate the countryside, but I was so tired. So, using my coat as a blanket, I slept the whole way back. 

We walked back to the hostel we had stayed at and talked to a very cute boy from Dublin who was working at the reception. He let us leave our backpacks there. 

Julianne and I had the goal to do two, possibly three, things in Belfast before we flew back to Edinburgh. We wanted to go to Belfast Castle, we wanted to see the parliament, and time permitting we wanted to see the Titanic quarter. While we were reading about Belfast, one website said something along the lines of Belfast likes to advertise the one ship they built that sunk, choosing to ignore the hundreds of ships they built that did not. And it was very true. There were Titanic tours, Titanic merchandise, Titanic signs everywhere. 

We decided to do the castle first because we figured we'd have the most energy first, and we would probably need the most energy for that. We had to take a bus because it was outside the city.

On our way to the bus stop we got much needed food and cappuccinos at a local restaurant. The people working there continued the pattern we had seen so far of being very friendly and talkative. I got a very delicious chicken panini. Julianne got pancakes and poured what she assumed was syrup all over her pancakes. It turned out to be vinegar. She tried to eat the pancakes anyway. 

We found the bus near City Hall pretty easily after our lunch, luckily mentioned to the driver that we were going to the castle, and sat down. As we still haven't figured out how to tell which stop to get off on when traveling by bus, we kept peeking out the window trying to read the bus stop signs or look for the castle. 

Fifteen minutes later as the bus was about ready to leave a stop, the driver stuck his head out and called to us. "Belfast castle?" he asked. "Yes!" we shouted and jumped up and rushed off the bus. We followed the signs to the castle. We had to walk through a very pretty residential area and then through these very pretty gardens to get to the castle. 

Cute suburban Belfast

Cave Hill, where the castle is located. It's nicknamed Napoleon's Nose. It's also where a lot of people took refuge while Belfast was being attacked during World War II.

View of the ocean from the gardens

The second we saw the castle we decided to forgo the rest of the stuff on our itinerary and spend our time exploring this area instead. The castle was so pretty. There was a cat themed garden, which Julianne loved. The flowers were very pretty. The castle over looked the city of Belfast and the ocean. Behind it was the very green Cave Hill. The castle itself was also very cool. It had turrets and was made of rectangular stones and had orange trim. There was almost no one there, so we took our time exploring the castle. No one told us where we were/weren't allowed to go, so we just explored whatever rooms we wanted. It was fun because it felt like we were exploring the castle and not just touring it. There was a very small spiral staircase, rooms set up for real dinners, and rooms with information about the history of the castle, which was cool to read about. We eventually took an elevator down to the cellar, where they had a restaurant. We decided to have afternoon tea there. They gave us so much food and tea. We tried to finish all the food, but we couldn't. It was very delicious. We kept repeating the whole time we were there "We're having tea in a castle in Northern Ireland!" hoping that if we said it enough times it would sink in. 

There were egg salad, tuna, and ham finger sandwiches, scones with thick cream and jam, various chocolate, berry, and cream desserts, and tea with sugar and cream. 

We then walked back to the bus stop, took the bus back to the city, walked to the hostel, picked up our backpacks, and called a taxi to take us to the airport. We couldn't understand a word the poor guy who was driving our taxi was saying to us. He kept having to repeat himself, and when we'd continue to stare wide eyed and uncomprehending at him, he'd just give up. Eventually he dropped us off at the airport, and tried again. The only thing we understood the whole time, and we really were trying, was, "You can't understand a word I'm saying, can you." "No, sorry," we replied. 

We made it through security, and shopped for a bit because our flight was delayed. We boarded the flight, flew home in less time than it took us to get there, got on the express bus, and made it back to Waverly by a little after 10:00. I was immediately reminded of how lovely Edinburgh is. The castle was all lit up and the buildings were still grey and detailed and beautiful. Edinburgh just feels like an ancient city.

As fun and cool as the trip was, we were happy to sit and shower and eat the shortbread cookies Frances made after we made the short walk back to our apartment. 

There's so much more that I want to see in Ireland and Northern Ireland, so I definitely want to go back. There were all the sights we didn't get to in Belfast and Dublin. Also, I'd like to see the Giant's Causeway, Cork, and more of the Irish countryside, as it is a very cool and very pretty country. There are a lot of other places I'd like to visit as well in other parts of Europe. I'm hoping to get a lot of depth and breadth when I travel to wherever I go next!

I've spent the last two days catching up on sleep and relaxing. Today is my turn to cook again so I'm making chicken fajitas and banana bread. Before I go grocery shopping, I'll leave you with a short story from yesterday and a quick internship update. 

The perks of living in an old apartment: my door gets stuck sometimes when I shut it, so I have to use my whole body weight to lean back on the handle to yank it open. Well yesterday when I tried to open my door, I pulled really hard, the handle came loose, and I went flying across my bedroom, pulling the handle off the door, effectively trapping me inside. I had to knock on the inside of my door until Frances finally came to my rescue, opening the door for me. I found it very funny, even at the time, but I'm still worried I'm going to forget, shut my door, and get stuck in my room again. I emailed the landlord and hopefully he'll come over soon to fix that and show us how to turn on the radiators, because it is getting very cold here. 

Also, internship update. We have our internship orientation with our very distant internship liaison and we should start work either Monday or Tuesday. We still don't know who we're working for, but hopefully we'll find out soon!

Hope your weeks are all going well!

Belfast, Dublin, and Edinburgh

With sore feet, a full memory card, and a wallet significantly lighter, Julianne and I returned from our trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland last night. It was incredible and exhausting and informative and I'm so glad we went. 

Since we knew we had some free time before our internship started, we wanted to take advantage of what may be one of the few times we have a long enough weekend to make a big trip. We knew we wanted to go somewhere, but we didn't know where. We kept putting off planning it too because there was so much to do in Edinburgh. Not that I'm complaining at all, I'm loving every crazy minute of it. 

Last Thursday I hiked part of Arthur's Seat with some of the other interns. We didn't make it entirely to the top, but we hiked to the top of one grassy wind blown peak and were able to get a good view of the lovely overcast city. It was really fun, but it was exhausting and I ended up sleeping until we left for our first class. 

Awkward photo of me trying not to get blown off the edge by the strong wind. You can see Edinburgh Castle behind me on the left side

Baby Nessie sighting

Along with the internship, we (the nine interns from the UC system) are taking two classes. The classes are taken simultaneously as a once a week two hour seminar type class led by a very friendly professor. We had our first one Thursday night. They're basically supplements to our internship. They seem pretty straightforward, but very challenging. I'm excited and nervous and I'm looking forward to learning a lot about the Scottish Parliament. We do a lot of reading about Scottish politics and devolution in one of the classes and we do a lot of writing weekly journals and reading responses in the other. We will also write a fifteen page research paper on the topic of our choice under the category of the Scottish Parliament. Any suggestions for a topic? 

After class all the interns went out to a pub together for dinner. I ordered the Mac and Cheese which was described as "A Scottish Classic" so I didn't feel guilty about indulging in what I would consider American comfort food. I sat in a booth with three other interns. It was really fun and I really like all the other interns. It was cool because we could tell funny stories and joke around with each other and then switch to a serious discussion about Scottish independence. While we were eating, they were having a trivia night at the pub. We weren't officially participating, which was probably a good thing since the only two answers we knew were to one question about Congress and one about President Obama. After the pub, since we were really close to where all the University of Edinburgh students live, Julianne and I stopped by Helle's to say hi to her and Erik and their friends before heading home. 

Friday, after sleeping in, my two roommates and I decided to go shopping on Princes Street. We ended up meeting up with two other interns. We bought sandwiches from a European franchise called Pate Manger or something and macaroons from a very classy bakery and ate them in the park (which I found out used to be a loch!) underneath Edinburgh castle. It was very sunny and very lovely and we ended up sitting there for a while taking it all in and talking about how we were bummed we haven't received much information about when we're starting or who we're working for yet. 

By the time we headed home it was four o'clock. "Do you still want to go somewhere this weekend?" Julianne asked me on the walk home. "Absolutely!" I replied. So when we got back to our apartments we pulled out our laptops and started researching The Isle of Skye. It's a very pretty island off the east coast of Scotland that was on our travel bucket list. By the time we finished the chicken curry that Frances made us for dinner, we each had fifteen tabs open in Google Chrome, nothing booked, and were severely confused. While Isle of Skye would be extremely easy to get to and navigate around with a car, we only had public transportation as our only option as we are too young to rent a car (or "hire a car" as the British say). The public transportation was complicated and slow. We would end up spending almost two whole days using various expensive trains, buses, and ferries to get to the island and back, leaving us only one day to explore and hike the beautiful island. 

So our plan did a complete 180. We decided to go to Belfast, Northern Ireland. Our reasons were the flight was cheap and short and that we both wanted to go to Ireland and Dublin was only a short bus ride away from Belfast. So at 9 o'clock pm Friday night after playing around with different flight combinations and permutations I booked us a flight leaving from Edinburgh at 7 am the next morning. It was kind of thrilling booking something so spontaneously, but also very exciting. Luckily we didn't have too much time to worry about it because we were leaving in ten hours. We very quickly looked up Dublin and Belfast on WikiTravel, wrote down some sights we thought we might like to see, and came up with a very tentative plan for the almost three days we were going to spend over on our neighboring island. 

The extent of our curry stained planning

We checked the weather forecast (rainy for all three days) and booked our last hostel at one in the morning. I scribbled down our hostel addresses on our planning paper and I took a picture of our flight confirmation with my phone, because we don't have a printer. I threw a few shirts in my bright blue Jansport backpack and fell asleep, only to be woken up all too soon at 4:40 in the morning by my phone alarm. I threw on some clothes, grabbed my backpack, and we walked with a purpose to Waverly Train Station near Princes Street in the brisk predawn Edinburgh. We caught an Airlink Airport Express bus from there and arrived at Edinburgh Airport at six in the morning. We made it through security, where they sadly confiscated my toothpaste, and went to get breakfast. We got "toasties" which are sort of like paninis and very delicious. After buying some more toothpaste, we almost immediately boarded our tiny Flybe plane and flew over the cloud cover and across a strip of the Atlantic Ocean to land less than an hour later in Belfast. 

Exhausted and disoriented, we grabbed maps at the airport and decided to splurge on a taxi on the grounds that we were running on a little more than three hours of sleep in a city we've never been to. The taxi driver was very friendly and chatted the whole way to our hostel in his thick Irish accent. He laughed when I said, "That's awesome!" in response to his bit of commentary that informed us that the name Belfast came from a slight Gaelic variation that meant "the mouth of the river". He then proceeded to inform me that instead of awesome people say "that's great!" and instead of saying "that was so much fun" or "that was a laugh" people say "that was a great craic!" He was very funny and cracked jokes the whole way to the hostel. 

Neither of us had ever stayed in a hostel before so we had no idea what to expect. Our hostel was located near Queen's University. We got buzzed in and the hostel manager let us leave our backpacks there until we could check in later that day. He gave us a photocopied map and very quickly gave us what sounded like a rehearsed spiel about what sites we should see, circling them on the map. We thanked him, grabbed our cameras and purses, and dove right in to exploring the city. 

We were immediately impressed by Belfast. It was very pretty and looked so different from Edinburgh. We both burned through our camera batteries very quickly because we wanted to take pictures of everything. There were huge churches on every block, and each one looked so different from the last. There were little shops and cafes lining the street and most of the buildings were made of brick, which gave the city a very distinct and very cool look. It became apparent almost immediately where the inspiration for the Irish flag came from as all the buildings were that orange brick and you could catch glimpses of the green mountains in the distance at some of the intersections. 

Street near our hostel

Green mountains in the background

City Hall

The main street that we walked up and down a lot

Europa Hotel, more city

As Julianne had never traveled outside of California before ten days ago, I became designated map and time table reader. Luckily Belfast's grid like streets were significantly easier to navigate than in Edinburgh. While we had a list of sights we wanted to see, we weren't hell bent on sticking strict to a schedule in order to see everything, instead opting for a flexible "let's see what happens" kind of walking tour. Which turned out to be amazing. And as we learned multiple times this trip 1. walking is the best way to see/get a feel for a city and 2. some of the best experiences you have traveling sometimes just happen to you. 

We walked from sight to sight that the hostel manager had circled for us on the map in what we hoped was a logical direction, stopping whenever we felt like it to peek in a store or stop by a cafe for a mocha. It was a very fun way to see the city, we got to appreciate a lot of brick buildings and get much needed intakes of caffeine from local coffee shops. 

Our walking tour took us to multiple cool sights. Each sight had a little sign in front of it with information about it. For several of the sights, we just walked by and took a picture. They were cool to see, but we did not have enough time to tour them all. We said that the trip was a Travel Snack. Only enough to satiate our appetite for travel, not enough to see everything we wanted to see, but still enough to get to see some cool stuff in cool cities. We did, however, pick a few sights to tour very thoroughly, and it seems like we made a good decision as to which ones we did, because it was really cool to learn so much about the sights we saw. 

Stop 1: A mall in the center of Belfast with incredible views of the city from the top dome of the mall. When a security guard heard us talking he stopped us and asked where we were from. Several articles we read online during our brief research told us that it is safer to not advertise your Americaness, your political views, and your religious views. We were wary about questions at first. Even if I wanted to hide my Americaness, I doubt I could, and it's also hard to not talk about politics when people find out you're interning at the Scottish Parliament. However, we had absolutely no problem with this anywhere we went. When we told people we were from California, they made jokes about the differences in weather, asked about LA, talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger, or even about the school system. Everyone we talked to was extraordinarily friendly and talkative and interested in where we were from and what we were doing in Europe and what we were doing living in Scotland. We had a very pleasant conversation with the security guard who told us about the time he visited California and how he loved Scotland. Everyone we met while over there was very outgoing, although a lot of the time they were also very hard to understand. That was one of our favorite things to do actually, was to have conversations with the locals. Their friendliness contributed to the impression I got of the Irish and the North Irish being a very fun and open group of people. 

Stop 2: The Statue of Thanksgiving along the Lagan River in Belfast

In front of the Lagan River, next to the statue

View of Cliff Hill, which we sort of went up on Monday

Stop 3: The Big Fish (they didn't strain any brain muscles when they named this)

The big fish is made up of mosaic pieces of art

Stop 4: the Belfast Food Festival. Like mentioned before, some of the best things that you do traveling just happen to you. We stumbled upon this food festival while we were going on our self guided walking tour and decided to stop and check it out. There was a huge tent packed with people and a bunch of booths giving out free samples. This was essentially a free lunch. We sample bread and cheese and more. We stopped to talk to a boy about our age wearing a white wig and working at the Guinness booth. Even though it was only 11:30 in the morning, he kept trying to get us to sample the beer. We passed on the sample, but ended up talking to him about a big holiday coming up called Arthur's Day on September 27th. It is a holiday used to celebrate Arthur Guinness and his creation of Guinness beer. We later would see signs everywhere advertising this holiday. In Belfast and Dublin at bus stops, on billboards, all over the place, there were big black advertisements that said "Paint the Town Black: Arthur's Day, September 27th, 2012". 

Right outside the food festival, a guy stopped us and asked us if we'd like to climb the rock wall for free. Julianne didn't want to, but I really like rock climbing so I did. 

Gravity sucks

Handstands outside the circus school near the Cathedral

Stop 5: St. Anne's Cathedral. It was very pretty and full of stained glass and memorials. 

One of the many really cool stained glass windows in the cathedral that Julianne took a picture of

More lovely brick

The cathedral from the outside

Stop 6: St. Patrick's Church. This was our last stop on our self guided walking tour, so we headed back to the hostel. 

Standard chocolate break on the way back

We also stopped to hear these very talented Australians play some songs for a large crowd in the shopping center. It was very cool, and fun to listen to the live music! 

When we got back to the hostel we checked in. We decided that we wanted to learn more about the Protestant and Catholic conflicts that occurred in Belfast not too long ago, so we went on the slightly expensive but very informative Black Taxi Tour, which turned out to be a misleading name because our taxi was red. The driver picked us up at the hostel and drove us over to West Belfast. The tour was very interesting, very informative, and to use the adjective that Julianne used: sobering. 

Even though this conflict didn't happen to long ago, I knew very little about it. The tour taught me a lot and also inspired me to learn more about it. The taxi tour took us to various murals along different streets in West Belfast. We knew we wanted to see the murals and were originally going to just walk over there and look at them ourselves, but I'm glad we didn't because without the taxi it would have been a very long, cold walk and we wouldn't have known what we were looking at. 

The tour started on the Protestant side. There were murals on the ends of most residential buildings. We got out and walked around and took pictures. It was very chilling. A lot of the murals were about killing and it was very unsettling. There were also Union Jacks on every house and flying from every flag pole. I don't think I've ever seen that many Union Jacks in one place. There weren't very many people out and about which made it feel very desolate. We did see some kids playing in a front yard, but that effect made it almost more chilling. 

Murals

Union Jacks

"Remember", "Respect", and "Resolution"

This is the Peace Wall. The quote on the top silver arc says "Your neighbour is your other self dwelling behind a wall - Kahill Gibran". I didn't even know this Peace Wall existed. According to our taxi driver, they built it in 1970 to split up the Catholic side from the Protestant side. They had to keep adding to the height of the wall because people would throw things over. The wall has gates that you drive through. To this day, some are only open five days a week, and some seven. However all of them close after a certain time, so at seven the day we were driving through, all the gates would close for the night, cutting off access to the other side. Our taxi driver told us the statistic that when they voted about what to do with the wall, 85% of the people voted that it should come down, just not yet. The wounds from the fighting were still very present and not quite fully healed. 

The taxi driver gave us markers and told us that it was a tradition to write something on the wall. I didn't write anything. I don't know why, but it just didn't seem right I guess. Some people had written nice things about peace and quotes about coming together, but people also wrote not so nice things or just signed their name. I didn't want to write anything because it almost felt like it was diminishing the meaning of the wall. Like when bus loads of tourists come just to write their name, it feel like the wall is just a tourist attraction. Something fun to leave your mark on and be a part of. But I felt like if I wrote something it took away some of the meaning of why the wall was up or the suffering that the people there went through. Maybe I made signing it a bigger deal than it was, but the horror felt so real and so recent that I didn't think it was very tasteful to sign it. 

We then went through the gate to the Catholic side. The stories the taxi driver told us about the kind of actions taken during this time were very sad. People felt so passionately about their side that they fought their literal neighbors. There was so much violence and tragedy and it was very hard to see some of it. People of all ages died defending their beliefs. And people resorted to violence because people believed something different from them. I'm not taking sides in this issue at all, but it's very hard to know something like this happened not so long ago. 

Memorial on the Catholic side. You can see the wall to the left.

Mural on the Catholic side. 

There were a lot of Irish flags on the Catholic side as well. My favorite part of the tour/the Catholic side were the huge wall of murals that had to do with other issues. There were several for the Palestine/Israeli conflict, there were some for political prisoners, two for the environment. The taxi driver explained each of the murals to us, and there was a lot I didn't know about other conflicts in the world. It made me want to research more about all the different issues. I recommend seeing it if you take a trip to Belfast. 

Political murals

Gate for the wall

Mural for the environment

After that the taxi driver took us back to the hostel, which we proceeded to leave from and walk to find some food. We wanted to eat at a pub, so we stopped by a couple pubs that were recommended, but they were all packed. We ended up walking over to the other side of Belfast. 

We found a pub called Kelly's, but it didn't serve food. We eventually found a restaurant above a pub, which was close enough. The food wasn't very good, we were rushed through our meal, and I got charged for chips that were supposed to be free. While none of this was actually a big deal, for someone who's very frugal, was running off three hours of sleep, and who had spent the whole day walking, it made me cranky. So after we ate we shuffled back to our hostel to rest. It's amazing how mood changes perspective. While I still liked the city, I wasn't really taking any of it in and just wanted to get back to the hostel. Traveling's very tough and very tiring, but very worth it.

We laid on our beds at the hostel and talked about the murals and checked our Facebooks on my iPhone because the hostel had free wifi. When you're traveling and you're tired you start to appreciate the little things. Like clean clothes, warm food, and definitely free wifi. It's amazing what just an hour break from walking will do. It was nice to recharge and gave us energy to keep going.

We shared a room with nine other people. We liked this hostel better than the other one because it was more personal, everyone was really friendly, and it was smaller. We got free souvenirs and had a nice conversation with one of the American workers at the hostel who left Oklahoma six years ago to volunteer abroad for one year and loved it so much, she stayed. She ended up making sugar cookies later, which was a nice treat for everyone in the hostel when everyone came back later that night. 

We decided we wanted to go check out the nightlife in Belfast. We were entirely not dressed to the standard of going out, but we had to work with what we had in our backpacks. We walked around for a bit and then some guys came up to us and asked us for directions to a club where he was working. I told him what street we were on, then pulled out my map to show him, because I happened to know what he was looking for. "You have a map?" he laughed. "Well, it's my first day here, I've never been here before, and I'm giving you directions," I replied. That shut him up. He then told us to check out the club later, which we did. I've never been clubbing before, but it turns out it was probably the lamest club in all of Belfast. We wanted to get to bed early because we were leaving early to go to Dublin, so we didn't stay long anyway. While it wasn't the dance club we had envisioned, it was still fun to be in what was basically a bar with flashing lights. We met some drunk locals in the bathroom who obsessed over our tans and California culture when they heard our accents and asked where we were from. We walked back to the hostel and tried to be quiet as we got ready for bed because some people were already asleep. 

We wanted to lock our valuables in a locker because it was our first time in a hostel and we weren't sure how trustworthy the people there were. Also, we really didn't want our passports stolen, and even more so, our cameras with our pictures. So we locked them up. Unfortunately the lockers were the creakiest, noisiest lockers I've ever encountered and the locks were the clangiest, clickyest locks I've ever tried to open. I felt horribly obnoxious trying to open it. Eventually I got it open, put my stuff away, and climbed into the top bunk. I fell almost immediately asleep. 

So I was going to try and do this in one post, but it turns out I'm incredibly verbose. Which is useful when trying to write long papers, but not so useful when you're trying to be concise. I do really appreciate you guys reading this, it makes me happy that people take the time to read about what I'm doing, but I'll give you a break and I'll write about the second part of my trip in another post! 

Thanks for reading, I hope you guys all had a good weekend and I'll post the second part soon!