Scotland

We left for Crieff last Friday night right after school. It was 4 hours away but that was fine for me because all car rides are like that in Canada.  We stayed at a bed and breakfast call “Yans.” It was really nice. On the first night I was me Flora and Lachlan in on room and Christine and John I another. We then went over to Floras aunts house where we were planning on having dinner but then decided not to. We went to a restaurant called The Gallery. It was really nice, and we were the last ones to leave the restaurant. We went back to Yans and got ready for bed because we had to be up early the next day for breakfast. We woke up at 8 the next morning and got a huge full cooked breakfast. Then Flora and me went back upstairs to get ready for her grandpas birthday party while the others went to her grandmas so they could start making some food. Once Flora and I were ready we had to walk over to her grandmas. We made a few stops on the way to the grocery store and the sweet shop. After 30 minutes of walking we got to her grandmas house and helped with making more pre-starters. We also made 3 cakes. The party was at her aunt’s house so we transported all the food to her aunt’s house. They party started shortly after. We started with the thousands of pre-starters, and then we had a appetizer of soup and bread. The main was chicken or beef with veggies and potatoes. Then we had dessert of 2 of the 4 cakes. Then we waited a while then we had crackers and cheese, tablet (mostly sugar), chocolate and the 2 birthday cakes. Everyone was beyond full! Then later that night we went back to yans. The next morning we got up at the same time then at about 10:30 we went back to Floras aunts house and did some homework and went to see a football match (soccer game). It was between 2 Scottish teams. The one that we were cheering for won the game. Then we left for home. It was a wonderful and filling weekend.

Edinburgh,Scotland

On the weekend I went to Edinburgh, Scotland. We were supposed to go and visit the Lake District but the weather was constant rain. We left the house at 8:00 am and drove north for 2 and a half hours. When we got there we went to Holyrood castle. This is a castle in Scotland that is still used by the queen goes to visit Scotland. We took an audio tour of most of the castle, it was very interesting. The rooms were huge!! We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside of the castle so I only have them from outside. After that it was lunch so we went back to the car and ate. We then had extra time between lunch and our visit to the Scottish parliament so we went to Our Dynamic Earth. It is a scientific museum thing. You start the tour by getting on a “time machine”(elevator). The “time machine” took us back to the beginning of time; we saw a short movie clip about the Big Bang. You get to see how the whole solar system and stars were formed. Then you move on and they showed us a movie about how the earth was crated by volcanos. The room was filled with fake smoke and the floor shook under us when they made a fake earth quake. It was very cool.  Then we moved into a blue room were the showed a video about the ice age and when the whole earth was covered in ice. That was the end of the time traveling and we came out into a room will dinosaurs and fossils and stuff like that. We played a few of the games they had like this one about if dinosaurs had survived. It showed how the dinosaurs would have to change and adapted the different climates. It was quite funny to see what the computer said they would look like. Then we moved on to the oceans. They had many pictures of it. After the oceans we moved into the polar extremes. It talked about polar bears, penguins and the extreme cold weather in the artic and Antarctic. The room was quite cold and they had a huge ice chunk in the middle of the room. It was very cold to touch so Fraser and me came up with the brilliant idea of seeing who could hold their hand on the ice the longest. We are both very stubborn and neither of us would take our hand off.  At first it was terrible but after a little bit our hands went numb and it was fine until we got to the point were the ice felt hot. Just before this happened the rest of the family got bored and left to the next room. My hand felt like everything inside was being squeezed a lot. Our hand then started to turn white and red.  It hurt so much but neither of us gave up.  At this point there are hand prints on the ice from where I hand melted the ice a bit. Then we would move our wrist and elbow down and our hands would twitch like crazy. A little but after that a guy came in telling us that the adventure flight was leaving soon but the next one was not leaving for 10 minutes so we decided that we should go on the adventure flight because the rest of the family was waiting for us. We agreed to take out hand of at the same time. We went to the adventure flight, which is a 4D movie thing. We sat down and started the flight it was 3D plus we could smell things and when we went through the artic it snowed on us, it was actually just soapy water that landed on us. Then the movie was over and the whole time of the movie both Frasers and my hade hurt so much. A little bit after that we realized that the hand that we held on the ice as a little bit swollen. Then we got a bit to eat the Astronauts the dome movie started. We sat in a chair and the movie screen was on the curved celling of the dome. It was a very cool way of watching a movie. After the movie was done we left Our Dynamic Earth. The next thing that we did was go to the Scottish parliament. We got a tour and history of the whole building. She told us about the them of the relatively new building, it had to do with a tree coming out of the ground, boats in a harbor, and the Saltire cross(the cross on the Scottish flag).The tour took us about an hour and a half.  It was very interesting how the architect put all of these aspects in the building but you could not see them unless you were looking for them. After that we had a bit of extra time before our dinner reservation so we drove around a bit and did a bit of sight seeing.  We had dinner at some Italian place…although we were all stuffed! We ate so much anyway. After dinner we went across the street to se the play  “Legally Blonde.” Just as we were on our way to our seats the boys realized that they were going to see a chick flick, it was really funny. The play was good but didn’t end until 10:30. Since we all got up at 7:00 we were extremely tired. We got in the car to go to the hotel but we got lost on our way there so instead of it taking 10 or 15 minutes to get there it took more like 30 minutes. Then it took a long time to check in but finally at about 11:15 we got to our rooms. Flora and I stayed in one room and Lachlan and Fraser stayed in another and John and Christine stayed in another. Flora and I went to our room first and looked around it. It was all very fancy. We first looked at the shower and were confused. I was the most high tech shower I have ever seen neither of us knew how to work it. After a bit we went to bet and soon found out that our room was right beside a train track. I think 5 or more trains went by that night…they were so noisy. We got up at 8:00 the next morning so that we could be down at the lobby by 9:30. That morning we went for breakfast at tescos(a grocery store). It was okay but not crazy good either. After breakfast we went to Edinburgh castle. It was very cool. I found out that it was built on a dead volcano; the queen still visits that castle for the day but never stays over night. It had many cool and weird things like they had a war memorial were we found Floras great uncle in one of the memorial books from World War 2. They also had a chapel, which is the oldest building in Edinburgh, you can even have your wedding there if you wanted to but the chapel could only hold 25 people at maximum. They also had a dog cemetery for the soldier’s dead dogs.  After we finished our tour of the castle we went for lunch at an ice cream parlor called S. Luca. We had lunch then dessert, for dessert everyone chose a reasonable ice cream but Flora and I did not. We got “La Montaga.” It was a 8 scoop ice cram thing with whip cream, chocolate, caramel, and strawberry sauces, chocolate chips, hazelnuts, lots of banana. It came I a large goblet and was MASIVE!!!! We finally finished it after a while but near the end it got quit gross. It had a mixture of all the ice creams with the sauces and it was not a good combination. After this we started our long journey home. That is the end of our very long weekend in Scotland. Look out for the next blog about Crieff next weekend.

First day of British school!!

Today was the first day unlike people from Canada who started yesterday. I had to wake up at 7 o’clock, which kind of sucked. But Flora made us pancakes, which were very good!! I then had to get dressed in my uniform. It is a pair of black dress pants a white blouse with some sort of logo thing, a black blazer (suit jacket) and black socks with a pair of black loafers. I don’t like the uniform because I feel so dressed up for school. We then had to walk to school and it took like 15 or 20 minutes. When we got to school we stayed outside for a bit then we went inside to our home form. I have the same one as Flora we are in 9JW. We took a seat and waited for a bit until Flora told the teacher that I was a new student and he asked if I was Karen so i told him no. Then the head of all year nines came in and asked who I was. I told her that I was Emily and that I was doing and exchange, she asked me how I got to the home form and I said Flora. She left for a bit to get my timetable. When she came back she didn’t have a timetable and said that I wasn’t registered because they had forgotten to add me in the system. I just had to use Flora’s timetable and tell the teachers who I was. Then we went to an assembly, they are very different! When you walk in you are expected to be completely silent. It was so quiet in there that you could hear all of the high heels on the floor. They then went on for along time about manners and the assembly was done. There was no cheering or anything. We then exited in a very organized way starting with the first row standing then leaving and so on all the way up the rows. It was so proper feeling like a meeting almost not like a assembly I am use to. We showed up to our first class (math) and the teacher put everyone into their seat except for me because there are only supposed to be 30 kids in the class but I was the 31^st student. He then was all confused and got me a desk. He was kind of crazy because he put the desk down for me and then said that his seating plan was no longer symmetrical one side had a ‘L’ and the other side had a ‘S’. It was funny. Then we went to French and basically the same thing happened again. I was the 31^st student so I had to share a desk with someone. He never went crazy about his seating plan being uneven though. Then for lunch Flora had to buy me lunch because they don’t use cash instead they use a fingerprint. Your fingerprint links you to your account that you put money into, and then at lunch all you have to do is put your finger on a scanner and you have paid for your lunch. It is so cool. Then we had foods; there was no problem with getting a seat because there were enough. After food school was done so we got to go home. It was another long walk and by the time that we got home my feet were killing me! I was so glad to be able to take them off and change out of my uniform. That was my day and I have to go through it again tomorrow except with different classes.

My flights and the first day in England!

I took of on Tuesday night 7:40 (Ontario time) and flew to Exetor. I was sitting on an aisles seat, which was really nice and was beside a young couple and there baby. My fist thoughts were that it was going to be a loud flight because the baby is going to cry the whole time! But it didn’t except for when it had to go to sleep. Once she fell asleep it was quite for the rest of the ride. I think I only got 1 maybe 2 hours of sleep that night! The flight felt like forever!!!!! When I arrived in Exetor I was considered a YP(young person) so I had to wait for everyone to get off the plane before I did. I then was escorted to a spot with all the old people who needed extra help and sat there for a bit. We were then all put on this bus to drive us like 100m to the plane. I almost got to ride this lift thing up onto the plane but then I had to walk up the stairs. We then had a short flight to Newcastle. I was sitting next to the same people. When we arrived to new castle I went through immigrations pretty fast and it was pretty easy.  At this point it was around 11am(England time, 6 Ontario time). Then I was brought home and shown around the house and had lunch.  We didn’t do much yesterday because I was extremely tired. I went to bed at 6:30(England time, 1:30 Ontario time) and slept till 10(England time) I then slept on and off till about 1 in the morning then slept again till 6:30(England time). Unfortunately I don’t think that we are going to Scotland any more this week, which I thought we were going to do.  Well I guess that’s all I have to say. Sorry it wasn’t very exciting. sorry there were no photos there was nothing to take photos of.