Busy Days

These past few weeks have been crazy and busy, but so much fun. We are starting to realize that we only have a few more weeks left and we are trying to make the most of the time we have left here in Edinburgh.

Last Monday Julianne and I went over to the other intern girls's house to order a pizza. We were a little nervous after our burnt cracker Pizza Hut travesty, however we ended up getting a really good veggie pizza from Dominoes that was almost like American pizza. It even came with fake ranch. We ended up hanging out and talking for awhile. It's really fun because we all get along really well and we can talk for hours about Scottish politics.

For instance, during a debate last week, the presiding officer was trying to get everyone to settle down and she was saying, "Order, order" and it got really quiet and then one of the Labour MSPs shouted "You're out of order!" and then ended up getting suspended from the debating chamber for a day.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, but it was easy to forget because we did not have the day off and no one mentioned anything about it. I'm bummed I missed the Turkey Trot, but we had a pretty good Thanksgiving anyway! On Thursday during work we went to FMQs. After work, we went to Nando's and then to class. 

After class, some of us went out to our typical pub, the Green Mantle.

Friday my research paper for class was due at 5, so I spent the whole day at work writing a ten page paper about wind energy in Scotland. I'm a big fan of renewable energy, especially when politics overlaps with the environment. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, I had emailed myself the one page I had done before Friday from my email into a temporary folder on the computer, so when I was saving it periodically, I was saving it to the temporary folder. Unfortunately, that meant that at 4:40 when I exited out of my ten page paper to email it to my professor, the file disappeared. I spent the next two hours on the phone with IT trying to recover the file and googleing how to recover temporary files, but it was gone. Luckily our professor is really nice and when I emailed her to tell her what happened, she gave me an extension until Sunday.

On Saturday Julianne spent the whole day cooking for the Thanksgiving party that we were hosting. Everyone chipped in and we had the groceries delivered to our flat. To get out of her way, Frances and I went to Starbucks near Princes Street to get seasonal coffees, watch the city life, and I restarted my long paper. We walked home a different way than we usually do so that we could stop by a Tesco's for ingredients Julianne was missing and to get pastries for a late lunch and I was reminded that I live in a foreign country. It's easy to forget when you stick to one area.

Saturday evening everyone came over for Thanksgiving dinner at our place. I like hosting events at our apartment because it's nice to have people over and also we got to keep all the leftovers and have been eating them for lunch for the past few days. The dress code was onesies, but only about half of us wore them. My room is the dining room, so that's where we ate our stuffing, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, turkey, and green beans. There were eleven of us. I invited Erik and his roommate who were sympathetic to the American's abroad during Thanksgiving dilemma. It was a lot of fun, but we are still cleaning up from it. 

Monday was one of the interns birthdays. Work on Monday was fun because we can take extended lunch breaks since there is usually less work to do and there are hardly MSPs in Parliament. So we got coffee and sat around talking before going back to work. After work, Julianne, Chantelle, and I went shopping. We went to a cute boutique that sold pins and necklaces made out of antique maps of Edinburgh. I bought two button pins that I really like. The lady kept getting confused because I kept calling them buttons, but to her they're badges. For Lori's birthday, we went to Amicus Apple, a really classy restaurant in Edinburgh. 

Tuesday was a long day as well. Some of the local councils in Scotland charge for music lessons. My MSP was speaking in a debate about that on Wednesday and needed me to write a brief and a speech for him. That was probably the most exciting thing I've done so far. It was difficult for several reasons. One being that the Scottish call music lessons 'music tuition' which confused me for a bit. Also, my MSP wanted to talk about two areas that he represented and one charged for music lessons and one did not, so I was unsure which way he wanted to argue. I ended up just including both. I also worked in a music joke. My MSP really like to play the bag pipes, so after work he showed Josh and I all the different parts of the bag pipe and then played us a few songs, which was really cool. After that, we went over to the other intern girls's house for pizza. They're names are Lori, Laurel, and Oriel so collectively we call them Loriel. We discovered that Domino's does a Two for One Tuesday deal, so we devoured two pizzas.

This Friday we have a day off for St. Andrew's Day, the patron saint of Scotland. Also the Christmas Market in Edinburgh opens up this weekend, so we are going to go check out the light show and the slides and the ice skating rink and go shopping! It should be a really fun weekend. Next week, Julianne and I are leaving work early on Wednesday to go to Glasgow for the Mumford & Sons concert. We are then flying from Glasgow to Barcelona on Thursday and we will be there until Saturday! I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully it will be sunny so we can get a little bit of Vitamin D. I saw the sun today for like a minute and a half and I couldn't tell if it was just super bright or my eyes were not used to sunshine, but it was a little painful. The sun rose at 8:15 this morning and set at 3:47. It was actually pretty sunny today, however, since I leave for work at 9 when the sun's not really up and leave work at 5. I don't see the sun much. However, I do really like walking around Edinburgh when it's dark out and all the buildings and the castle is lit up and I'm listening to my iPod. It's really a great city.

I miss you and hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!