Home Sweet Home :)

7 August 2012

Today is my first official day being home, and it’s great! I slept in until eleven this morning and enjoyed every minute of it! It’s a little weird to be home but not really. I’m surprised how fast I’ve already adjusted. And it’s been great to get back to things I’ve missed. I made a list while I was gone of things I missed about the States, and this is what I came up with:

• Unlimited free wifi
• Fast-moving elevators (or lifts, as the UK would say)
• Working toilets (you had to flush three times before it worked)
• Outlets in the bathroom (I never saw an outlet in the bathroom. Not once. How do they expect me to do my hair?)
• Light switches inside the bathroom (they were always outside)
• Free public toilets (should that be legal to charge for something like that? No wonder Paris is so gross.)
• Smoking laws (I added this one after waiting in line for Notre Dame behind a man who was smoking right into our faces. That would never be allowed here.)
• Cold milk!
• Street signs (the lack of these made it a lot easier to get lost…)

Anyway, it was an AMAZING experience, but I’m glad to be home. This concludes my posts on this blog. I hope you all have enjoyed reading it, and I appreciate the support you’ve all given me! And if anyone’s thinking about going on a study abroad, my advice is go for it! Do whatever it takes to get out there because you will never have another chance to do something like it. This is one decision that I am sure I will never regret. :)

I'm Coming Home! :)

5 August 2012

Today, we got to go to church in Edinburgh. That was a really cool ward. I liked them a lot. They actually had a young single adult class for Sunday School, which I didn’t expect to find over here. It was nice because it made me feel a little bit like I was back in my singles ward (but only a little bit…no one can compare to my ward!).

After church, we started driving to Glasgow. On the way, we stopped at Loch Lomond. We mostly just stopped since it’s one of the most famous lochs. It was cool, but I thought that Loch Ness was prettier. But maybe that’s just me.

Loch Lomond

After we got to Glasgow and checked into our hotel, Molly and I decided to try to find the property where Pollok Castle used to be (it was built by my ancestors). But it was harder than we thought it would be. We never did find it, which was a little disappointing. But then again, the only thing that’s left is part of a wall, and I did get to walk through the same area as my ancestors, so that’s got to count for something. Oh, and I found Pollokshaws Road, so that was pretty great!

When we got back to the hotel, we decided that we should probably start organizing our bags for our flight tomorrow. But instead, I Skyped my sister and brother-in-law. And then I got to Skype my five-day-old nephew, Matthew! He didn’t say much, but he is adorable. It was so cool to be able to see him moving around. I can’t wait to see him for real!

Later, Molly came to my room, and we ended up talking for a few hours, which was awesome. And we decided to just pull an all-nighter since we had to leave for the airport at 4:30 in the morning. When it got to be around 1:00, we were afraid that if we fell asleep, we wouldn’t wake back up! Also, if we stayed up all night, we would be able to sleep on our ten-hour flight and adjust better to Utah time. I did fall asleep for fifteen minutes and Molly fell asleep for twenty, but that was all. The rest of the time, we made sure to stay awake.

6 August 2012

At 4:30 this morning, we said goodbye to one of our directors and then loaded onto the bus and headed to the airport. It was sad to say goodbye to so many of the people in my group, including the director. We had done and learned so much together, and it’s weird to think about not seeing them every day.

Anyway, I got onto my first flight with no problems. That was a short flight because we were just going to London. When we got there, we ran into some new missionaries on their way to the Provo MTC, so that was fun to talk to them for a little while.

My next flight was the ten-hour one. It was SO long! But the thing is, I could NOT fall asleep to save my life. I was ridiculously tired (remember how I pulled an all-nighter?), but that didn’t matter. Luckily, I had a personal tv, so instead of sleeping, I watched The Hunger Games, The Avengers, The Lucky One, and an episode of Friends. That’s a lot of television, but I didn’t know what else to do.

When I finally got to Dallas, I had to go through customs. That wasn’t too bad, just annoying. But then I got to my gate, pulled out my cell phone, and called my mom. It was a little weird using a phone again, but it wasn’t too hard to adjust. ;)

While I was waiting for my last flight, the gate changed three times. That was really irritating. And then we left two hours later than we were supposed to! So instead of getting to Salt Lake at 8:45 PM, I got there at 10:45 PM. Not so fun. And the whole flight, I was just super antsy. I was sick of being on a plane, and I just wanted to be home already.

Finally, we got to the airport and I walked to the baggage claim, where almost my ENTIRE family was waiting for me. It was awesome! The only ones who weren’t there were my sister who just had a baby and her husband (and their baby, obviously). It was so great to see them all. My oldest nephew seemed a little confused at first (probably because I was wearing a hat), but he warmed up pretty quickly.

By the time I got home, it was about midnight, and I had been awake for almost exactly 48 hours since I had slept. So I went to bed. In my own room. :)

Edinburgh

3 August 2012

This morning, the girls and I went to a kilt store and walked through an exhibit there. We got to see the kilt that Mel Gibson wore in Braveheart and the kilt that Liam Neeson wore in Rob Roy, so that was pretty great. We also watched this super awesome video about…well, I’m not really sure what it was about. It was pretty strange. We were laughing the entire time. I recorded part of it on my camera, but my blog doesn’t like it enough to let me post it.

Later, the group drove to Edinburgh. The rest of the night, we just walked down the street where the Fringe was going on. So we got to see a lot of street performers, and that was a lot of fun! I also tried to look for Pollock souvenirs, but I couldn’t find anything. Sad day.

That was basically the entire day. It was fun; there’s just not a lot to say about it.

This guy was playing on a saw!

I loved this group!

Here's an idea of what it looked like

4 August 2012

Today, we got to sleep in! I’m pretty sure that’s the only time I’ve done that on this trip. So of course, it was really loud outside our hostel, making it extremely difficult for me to actually sleep. But that’s okay.

We did basically the same thing that we did yesterday. We walked along the street and enjoyed the Fringe. And it was awesome because we could walk down one way and then turn right back around to find completely new entertainment since the people are constantly changing! We also went to a comedy show, and that was great! Plus, it was free, so that’s always nice.

Later that night, we got to go to the Military Tattoo. It was AMAZING! I absolutely loved it! It was so fun to see all of the different bands come out and represent their countries. I especially liked Australia’s performance. They had the entire audience join them in a dance party. It was so awesome!

There were a lot of other cool things, but I’ll just show you the pictures since that will explain it better than I can:

In front of Edinburgh Castle

This was the Australian dance party :)

They used a projector to put things on the castle, and this was
one they used for the US Navy (they played a bunch of superhero
theme songs to show that soldiers are superheroes too).

And, of course, they topped it all off with some
fireworks above the castle at the end!

We got back to our hostel pretty late, but it was definitely worth losing sleep over. Such a good night! :)

Inverness

1 August 2012

Well today, I don’t have a whole lot to write about. Most of my day was spent in a bus. We left Stirling today and drove for nine hours to get to Inverness. On our way out, we were supposed to stop at the William Wallace monument (which I was extremely excited for, by the way), but for some reason we didn’t. I was not very happy about that. I came all the way to Scotland and didn’t go see the monument built for arguably the most influential man in Scottish history. No big deal.

We did stop at the Commando Memorial, which pays tribute to all the Commandos who lost their lives during World War II. So that was neat but still not as cool as William Wallace. We also stopped at what’s called the Neptune Staircase. It’s a waterway that boats take to get out to the ocean. They enter into one step of the “staircase,” letting the water rise around them until they enter into the next step.

Commando Memorial

Neptune Staircase

The best stop we made was at Loch Ness. We got pictures with Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, and we got to touch the water where she lives (don’t worry, she didn’t get me!).

That took up the bulk of my day. I had a headache through most of it because of the long drive (the winding highland roads didn’t help). But we finally made it to Inverness and checked into our hotel.

As soon as we had checked into our rooms, my friends and I left again to go get dinner. We found a great place that had good food for less than five pounds. Not bad! After dinner, we just walked around town looking at shops. Then we hung out on the bridge until we went in for the night. This city is beautiful, especially at night. I loved being on the bridge! I got some good pictures out of it:

2 August 2012

We’re still in Inverness today, but our group had a few scheduled things. First, we went to the Culloden Battlefield Visitor Centre. Culloden Battle was a critical turning point for the Scottish. It’s a battle that they lost to the English, but if they had won, the Scottish people today probably wouldn’t be speaking English; they’d be speaking something more similar to their ancient Celtic language. It was similar to visiting the site of the Battle of Hastings in England.

We went through a museum first and watched a video. The video was projected onto four walls so that it felt like you were in the middle of everything. And it was a little graphic, so it was kind of intense. For example, it actually showed one guy being shot in the eye. So it shook me up a bit, but it was also really cool the way they set it all up.

After the museum part of it, we got to go outside and walk through the actual battlefield and learn more about the battle itself. Unfortunately, we were running out of time so we had to rush a little, but it was still really neat.

When we left the battlefield, we went higher into the mountains and got to hike the Cairngorms. It was such a cool hike! It was absolutely beautiful. And it was really cloudy, so we were walking through fog. The scenery was wonderful. There was stone everywhere and a river randomly in the middle of our trail. It was awesome.

After our hike, we went to a sheep farm. We got to watch the sheep herder explain and demonstrate how every one of his dogs has his own set of commands so that he always knows when he’s being spoken to. It was incredible to see how well trained they were! He would yell a certain word or do a certain whistle, and one dog would stop mid-stride and lie down. It was so cool. The sheep were funny to watch too because they would try to escape the herd or try to get in the middle to get away from the dogs.

After the demonstration, the sheep herder pulled out a bunch of bottles so people could feed the lambs. There were too many people and too few bottles, so I didn’t actually get to feed one. But here's a picture of a sheep trying to escape into this barn:

But I got distracted as soon as I saw the puppies. They were SO adorable! I wish I could bring one of them home as a souvenir. I don’t think that customs would approve though. But I have officially decided that I want a black and white border collie when I’m older.

The rest of the day was free time, and we spent it going through more shops and hanging out in town. We ate dinner at the same place we ate last night (and again, it was delicious!). Then we decided we better get our last interview for class done. So we approached a man and three women. They turned out to be from New Zealand, so not Scottish like we had hoped, but they were still awesome. They were hilarious! I’m really glad we talked to them.

After that, we just hung out on the bridge again until it was time to go back to the hotel. It’s weird, though, because at ten o’clock at night, it’s still light out. It’s kind of weird.

When I got back to my hotel tonight, I checked Facebook and found out that I have a new nephew! Benjamin Matthew Stutz was born yesterday on his dad's birthday at 3:05 PM. I told my sister so many times to wait until I got home to have her baby, but I guess little Matthew had other plans. I can't wait to meet him when I get home!

Tomorrow we’ll be going to Edinburgh, and I’m excited for that. They’re in the middle of some huge annual festival right now, so that will be awesome! I’ll let you know how it goes.