Hiya

It's October!!!!!! Oh happy month. Crunchy leaves on my way to class, cold wind blowing through my thin, not-so-flannely shirt. I love it. Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I knew this would happen. Once again, I have many stories that will never make it here and maybe no one will ever hear. Oh well. I have successfully(?) completed my first week of lectures! That's right, I have nothing scheduled on Fridays. Three day weekends every weekend. Which is good because then I have more time to travel. Annnnd there was a conflict with my King Arthur class tutorial (all the classes here have a lecture and then a separate tutorial in a smaller group) but I figured everything out, by dropping my Lexis/Semantics class and picking up History, Literature and Thought: 1848-9/11. Also, Jess and Julie are both in my new class. Yay.

Last weekend Jess, Julie, John, Hannah and I went to the Isle of Skye! It was gorgeous, and many exciting things happened. My favorite part of the trip was going to the Faerie Glen. Rounded green hills with ferns and trickling streams and sheep (magic sheep?) and rock circles and coins and marbles and little trails. It was amazing. I wished I could play fairy princesses there with Nicole. It would've been the ideal location. There were even the stone ruins of an old house there, all covered in green moss and overgrown with trees. I also saw lots of hairy highland cows during our trip. I even got to pet one, named Hamish. He is a bit of a celebrity, standing around, getting his picture taken all day and eating fresh veggies from doting fans. Apparently those kinds of cows are usually butchered at 3 or 4 years old, but Hamish was saved from mouth and hoof disease years back, and now he is just a pet cow really, and 16 years old. I think. I also bought myself a "Teach yourself Gaelic" book during the trip. When spoken, Gaelic is quite gutteral, not unlike Dutch, but the way its spelled is just gorgeous. All the signs on the roads and in the towns on Skye and in the Highlands were in Gaelic and then English. It was amazing. So someday when I'm not trying to teach myself ancient Greek, I will tackle Gaelic.

Soon I will be meeting up with my friends and three other Americans for dinner. Funny how we Americans seem to stick together, and I always thought it was odd when the foreign students at Hope are always hanging around each other. It's just easier I guess. I did spend some time with my flatmates last night. Kim, Rebekah, and ____ (I feel really bad but I still don't know how to say/spell the Bulgarian girl's name. eeek!) and I all went to the Aberdeen Sports center together last night. I bought a month long membership (18 pounds! inspiration for working out) and we spent 45 minutes in the "Engergy Zone" (cheesy, i know). It's pretty amazing there. The weight/cardio room is ten times bigger than the Dow's, and it was all just built. So you can bike/run on the treadmills, etc, and you get your own personal t.v. screen attached to the machine. I hadn't realized you could hear without headphones (i hadn't brought mine) so I watched some silent soccer.

Until later, cheers,
Ella