Alrighty so as most of you know I spent the last week in Edinburgh, Scotland. I must say that the trip was overall fantastic! It started with my class meeting at the school early Saturday morning and taking a giant coach bus to the Milan airport. The plane ride was about 2 hours long and we were greeted in Edinburgh by the famous sound of bagpipes. I havent expiernced seeing men wearing the kilt and playing bagpipes before, only during the 4th of July parade. So when we were in the airport there were a round of giggle as we were greeted by a young man in full kilt uniform. It just so happened that the rest of the trip we would regularly see men of all ages wearing the kilt outfit and the streets were filled with the sound of the bagpipe.

Anyways after we landed we were taken to our host family. I stayed with two other girls from my class. We stayed in a house that had an extremly strong resemblance to the house in Harry Potter on Private Drive. Basicly where I was staying there would be long streets with all the houses attached to each other and looking exactly the same. At night it was really hard to know which house was mine! My host family was very kind and sweet to me and my two friends. They had hosted a lot of other exchange students in the past so they were very prepared and hospital. My Scottish host mom was a part time chef so I ate very well while I was there!!

On day two all the students met up in the center of Edinburgh were we went to the Museum of Scotland and had a picnic in the park. The gallery would have been a lot more enjoyable if we hadnt been giving a very think and long packet to fill out. The afternoon we were free to explore around a little and do a some shopping. This is when me and a group of friends discovered the conviently close Starbucks. We ended up going to the same Starbucks everyday at least twice a day for the entire week. = p

Day three we visited the famous Edinburgh castel. The castel sits on top of a very large hill and overlooks the entire city. I havent seen many castels in my life but this one was definatly the best one yet. It was extremly old and very medival, and not to metion HUGE! I think we spent 4 hours just touring around the castel becuase there was so many rooms and exhibitions! I did get to see the display of the Royal Jewels which were amazing! Then we had our first day of school for the rest of the afternoon. School for me was extremly boring because the classes were very slow and basic. So I tried to pick up a few new British English words and help the other students with translation. We were told before the trip that we would have internet access while at school, but when we got there we were told that we wouldnt. So the entire week I was computer less. I had also lost my cell phone the day before I left so I really felt technologicaly isolated while there. = (
That night we had an underground tour of the city. It was probably the scariest things Ive done in a long time! Our guide was a bit crazy and scary herself. She took us to the old and more run down part of the city, then we went underground and went into series of rooms. They were rooms where people and animals use to live in. They werent really homes but more of caves. She told us that families of 30 would live in one room, most of them being criminals and a lot of murders and bad things happened in those rooms. Some rooms next to the ones where people lived were rooms for cows and slaughter houses. There was no lights down there, and the guide told us that these underground rooms were often flooded because its always raining in Edinburgh. The rooms all had this incredibly eery feeling to them, and they were only lit up by one or two candels. The guide told us lots of dark and scary stories about these rooms, it was overall a very scary expierence that I probably wont be doing again.

Day four we went to the cities royal botanical gardens and spent the morning looking around are all sorts of rare and beautiful plants and flowers. And we all ate lunch at on the gardens cafes. The afternoon we had school-- not very fun. That night we had a choice of going to the cinema and seeing Alice in Wonderland or to go bowling. I chose the movie because I really wanted to see it and it was in English. Im also horrible at bowling!! The movie was great, and the cinema theater was amazing, it was about 3 normal size theaters made into one. The movie was in 3D so it was overall fun!

Day five we went to the National Gallery of Scotland. It was a small but really amazing art gallery. It was filled with painting from the 17th-19th century and had artist like Velazquez, Monet, Van Gogh and Raphael just to name a few. For me the paintings were stunning and amzing to look at while other students found the gallery boring and not very interesting. The paintings ranged from wall to wall seens of war to seens from the crucifiction of Jesus and portraits of royal family members. That afternoon we had another picnic lunch in the park. The park was a really nice place to relax. It was near the main shopping street and had a view of the river and the castel. The park was also in bloom of yellow, white and purple flowers, so overall it was a great place to be in. Since it was our last night in Scotland most of the students stayed in the city to do last minute shopping and to eat dinner at Burger King.

Our last day we unfortunetly had two hours of school before our plane ride back home. Luckily my teacher made the lessons go by some what quickly. At the end of the lesson we all piled our bags into the coach buses and headed home. The flight back was smooth and I was back in my little town in Castel Rozzone later that night.

Overall the trip was great! Everyday was sunny which we were told we really rare for Scotland in the spring. I noticed the Scottish people were a combo of Americans and British people. They had the strangest accent which sometimes I even had a hard time understanding the lingo. Almost all of my friends said that they had a really hard time understanding what their families were saying to them. I did notice that I was speaking a lot more Italian while I was in Scotland. I was constantly with my Italian friends from school so I was kind of forced to speak Italian while I was there.
It was great to finally hear people speaking English. Even small things like menus, signs, and tvs were all in English so it was really comforting for me. Another thing that was good about Scotland was the food, it was really similar to American food and it was nice not to eat pasta and pizza everyday. All the desserts and sweets there were so yummy! I was definatly a little piggy while there because Scotland is famous for its short bread cookies and fudge!
I noticed the people of Scotland were all very kind people. While I was there I had a strong sense of good energy. The sun was out, people were friendly, it was overall all a good place to visit!

The other day I got a new cell phone which is really crummy but being phoneless is almost impossible for me. This is my last week at school because on Sunday I leave for Sicily for a full week. Ill be gone with my exchange program to expierence how the other side of Italy lives. Should be interesting! Then when I come home Ill be on Easter break for a week and a half. So next week Ill write a very delayed but full blog post about my week in Sicily. So Until Next Time...

Arriverderci!