I'm horrible...I know!

Well, I have been absolutely horrible about keeping you all updated on my life abroad. I AM ALIVE! I have just been enjoying my time here in Glasgow, traveling around Scotland with friends, taking small day trips, continuing with my art classes at the Glasgow School of Art and practicing bagpiping. Spring break was amazing with my parents...we traveled all around Ireland, Scotland, and we even made it to London after my parents missed their flight home due to the volcanic ash cloud. I will be sure to update you all on everything I have been up to over the past two months, I'll start writing it down and post the highlights ASAP. I just wanted to share a photo album with all of you of my past couple of weeks in Scotland.

I went to the Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh with my friend Morgan. I ended up missing the train back to Glasgow so I stayed in her flat for the night and returned to Glasgow in the morning (after a little shopping).

On Friday, I took a trip with 5 of my friends to the Isle of Skye which is a beautiful island in the north of Scotland. We took a train (5 hours) from Glasgow to Mallaig. On the way up there, we went over the bridge they used for the Hogwarts Express in Harry Potter. When we got to Mallaig, we hopped on the ferry to Skye where we were welcomed by the owner of our hostel. He came to pick us up in his car, and dropped us off for lunch. He returned an hour or two later and drove us to the hostel. We realized then that we should've brought food to cook in the hostel, so we had to call a taxi to take us to the only food store in the area. We bought pasta and tomato sauce and decided to pick fresh mussels down at the water. After dropping the food off in our kitchen, we walked down to the water, soaked up the sun, and picked a bunch of mussels off the rocks that the boys (Liam and Ted) cooked for us.

After dinner we enjoyed just hanging out, looking at the beautiful view from our hostel, and learning more about each other. When we were about to go to bed, I told Laura to look out the window because the stars were so bright. We then decided to get out of bed, knock on the boys' door and go stargazing outside. We were outside for an hour just looking up at the stars and seeing about 5 magnificent shooting stars and a bunch of constellations. Nobody had ever seen so many shooting stars in their life.

The next morning we left the hostel at 10am after the boys made us a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast (what would we do without them?). We walked around for a while just looking at the scenery and enjoying the sunny day. We really lucked out with weather, and even got some color. We are all so pale from cold, gray Glasgow that it was even nice to be red. We walked back to the ferry, went to Mallaig, had an amazing lunch, and then took the train back to Glasgow.

On Sunday we went to the Gourock Highland Games. What we didn't realize when we planned the trip was that there was also a bagpiping championship that my instructor was competing in. When we got there, we enjoyed listening to all of the piping, eating Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties, and watching the heavyweight competitions. These men did everything from shot put to caber toss. It was so much fun to watch. After the piping championships (that my instructor's pipe band WON) we were talking to him and he offered to give us a ride home on the pipe band's bus. So, we left the games at 6:30 (after being there for 6 hours) and took the bus home with the whole band. It was a very good, Scottish adventure-filled weekend and I absolutely loved every part of it.

CLICK HERE for the photo album.

Love and miss you all!

Cheers,

Jess