Final Summer Days

In the hectic chaos of moving and everything, I hadn't been able to update, so here is another long catch-up update.

First - the move itself. Our new flat is AWESOME. Not only is our landlady way more awesome than the previous situation, but our flat is also way more cozy and warm and friendly than our old one.

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The outside of our lovely flat!

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My beautiful bedroom! (Before my stuff has cluttered it up!)

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Our AWESOME living room with a giant flat-screen tv

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Our kitchen!

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Now, before we actually got to move, we had already committed to touring Scotland with the Japanese students we'd visited last year. This was our turn to show them where we live.

I was very sick, so I didn't really do much of the local events, but I did manage to go to a tour of the Surgeon's Hall (a museum about medicine), and also a ceilidh which I dragged Andrew along to.

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Andrew dancing with the Japanese kids (I had gotten tired by this point due to being sick, so I became picture woman)

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We also went to the Highland Games up in Creiff, which was a lot of fun to watch, and I think a really fun experience for the Japanese students.

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Jen and I in Creiff

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After this we went to the zoo, and Vane Farm, which is sort of a nature preserve. There wasn't really a whole lot of interesting pictures from those places, so instead we'll move straight on to the trip to Firbush.

So apparently, Edinburgh University has this awesome outdoor centre up in the southern Highlands, which I had never known about. It was so much fun. We went canooing, orienteering and sailing.

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Canoeing on a beautiful day.

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We all went mountain biking, but I popped a tyre, and there was no spare for my size bike....

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So I went running behind the bikes. Here is me about halfway through, still going strong!

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And the second day we all went sailing! The guy on the left was our 'instructor' Simon, who was a university student as well.

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A storm on the horizon made for some awesome pictures!

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We then made a trip to Stirling to visit the Stirling Institute of Aquaculture to take a look at their research dealing with fish!

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Fish at the Stirling Institute of Aquaculture

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The Wallace Monument in Stirling

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The farewell dinner for the Japanese students at the Birds and the Bees Restaurant in Stirling

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Finally after all of the excitement of the Japanese visit was over, Anik and I rushed to move into our new flat. It was a massive massive pain to move out, particularly because our former landlord suddenly decided he needed to do all of the maintenance work that we'd been asking him to do since we moved in there, and it needed to be done BEFORE we moved out. Really nice, eh? ANYWAY, so we rushed and rushed to move out an extra 4 days early just so we didn't have to deal with them anymore. Fortunately our new landlady was so understanding and wonderful, and let us move in early.

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Anik & Me enjoying our new kitchen table with our super special microwave dinners!

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Pookish brought us a yummy bottle of port for a housewarming gift :P

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The weekend after we settled in to our new flat, I went with Andrew to Perth for the Park World Tour orienteering event, where some of the best orienteers in the world compete in a short sprint through the city. I was sort of an unofficial photographer for the event, and some of my pictures are up on the picture part of that site.

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The event stage, where Andrew worked his magic

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One of ESOC's members, Claire, starting the race!

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The 4th place finisher, coming into the final stretch.

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So then yesterday was Andrew's and my 1-year anniversary! I can't believe it's been a whole year since I met the big bum otherwise known as Andrew :P He took the day off work and we went exploring some nearby places, then had a relaxing evening watching a movie!

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First we went to Castle Doune. If it looks familiar, that's because most of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed in and around this castle!

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The wedding scene was filmed here!

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If you're wondering what film we watched upon getting home, it would of course have had to be Monty Python and the Holy Grail :P

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View from atop the ramparts!

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Then we headed to Linlithgow Palace, where we'd hoped to wander around a bit in the sunshine, but soon after we arrived it began to pour, so we quickly walked around the outside, explored the nearby cathedral, and then headed off. We'll save the palace and walk around the loch for another day!

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Central courtyard of Linlithgow Palace in the 2 seconds of sunshine.

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This afternoon Anik, Jen and I are going on a horse trek along the beach in Longniddry, which should be a lot of fun. Hopefully I'll come back with some pictures from that!

Next week classes begin, so it'll be back to the grindstone very shortly. I'm a little anxious over this coming year, because it's all farm animals, horses and exotics, which I am not at all interested in. I'm gonna go into it with an open mind though, maybe it'll change my mind about working with farm animals. Who knows!