Words cannot even describe...

Words cannot even describe what I am feeling right now. Less than 24 hours ago I was in the Highlands of Scotland, having one of the best times of my life and now I am just heartbroken. I don't even remember feeling this bad after breaking up with boyfriends! London has just completely lost its sparkle. If this keeps up, I think I am going to have to quit my jobs and go live in Scotland for a the rest of my time here. Ah, but before I get too emotional, I have a week to update you on.

Well, I guess the last time we left off I was just about to travel to Bath and Stonehenge. Both were lovely (but not as lovely as Scotland...). We got off to a bit of a rough start though. We were supposed to be leaving our flat to go meet up with tour at 7:30 to make sure we were on time for our 8:45 pick up. Well, at 7:30 I was the only one ready. Fortunately Ellen was only running a few minutes behind, but at 7:40 there was still no sign of Raquel or RJ. I went and knocked on Raquel's door, and she was not awake. Apparently Raquel and RJ and some other people in the TWC group decided to go out for some drinks on Saturday night and neither of them woke up to their alarms. Well, fortunately in the long run, we ended up making the bus just fine, no problems. So then we traveled on our little Anderson Coach up to Stonehenge. Stonehenge was really neat, and it was so interesting to hear how long it took for all of these stones to be put into place. Apparently the whole project from its little beginnings as a circular ditch, to placing the highest stones, took something like 1,500 years. And the whole thing was done without any significant tools, and with tribes of only 20 or so people. But the thing is, it would take something like 400 people to move one of these stones. So that was all very interesting. I took my little audioguide tour, and the required touristy pictures. After about an hour or so at Stonehenge, we moved on to Bath. Bath was also very interesting, seeing all of the ruins of the ancient Roman Baths that had been there. The actual city of Bath was also really beautiful. The architechure on all of the buildings was great. Every building, from the 18th Century all the way until now, is required to use the same cream-ish colored Bath Stone. It was a very quaint little town. The only problem was, we only had about 2 hours to see the Roman Bath Museum, eat and see the entire city of Bath. By the time we finished eating after our little audioguide tour of the museum, we only had about 40 minutes to see the city. So we were very rushed. Yuck. After seeing Bath we headed back to Londontown for a relaxed evening. Unfortunately I had to get a jump start on a paper I have due quite soon.

Monday I woke up to a nice little surprise, an email from Onkar saying he didn't really have anything for me to do, telling me to just stay home. Very exciting. So when I finally woke up around 9:45, a significant improvement from my usual 6:45, I had a spot of breakfast and got back to work on this paper. I am still in the middle of the writing process, but hopefully I should finish up within the next few days. I am looking at how air warfare affected Great Britain, making it more willing to appease Germany around the time of the Munich Crisis. Perhaps boring to some, but I think that it is interesting. So I pretty much spent most of the day dividing my attention between research for my paper, talking to Brett online, and doing laundry. A VERY exciting day, I know. In the evening I of course had my Monday class, the contents of with I won't bore you with. After class it was back to the apartment for some more reading and research.

Tuesday was also pretty uneventful (especially compared to the thrills of my past weekend). I got into work a bit early, knowing that I had some time to make up for leaving early a few days last week and realizing that I would have to leave work early on Thursday to leave for the airport. I posted the week's House Magazine online, like the before, but this time it was more exciting. It was more exciting because I posted my first article. My little 200 word article about elections in Turkey. Hey, you have got to start small. After finishing up with that, I started a little bit of work for a new magazine. This little number is called The Monitor Digest, looking at the progress of legislation, the composure of parliamentary committees, work by think tanks, all of that. While it was a bit dull, I got rewarded with a credit in the front page as an editor! Woo hoo. I also wrote a two more articles for the "Electionwatch" section of House Magazine again, this time looking at drug traffickers in Guatemala funding political campaigns, and corrupt local elections in China. So lots more to come from me in House. After work I ran a few errands, then headed back home to finally get a start on my paper. I wrote about 600 words of the 2,000 and lost motivation, saying I would work on it more Wednesday. Long story short, I didn't. But that is ok.

Wednesday was another relatively unexciting day. I got into work early again, and did some more work on the Digest. When this finally comes out a few days before I leave, it will pretty much be my little baby. I did all of the editing work on the entire magazine (its only about 25 pages long) and I picked out all of the photos that go along with everything. After finishing that all up, I also did a bit of transcribing for the reporters. Some of the people that we interview are some real pieces of work. I tell you! When I finally went home, I did a few more errands, mostly corresponding to the errands run on Tuesday, then headed home for a bit of dinner with Ellen. After dinner I sat down to work on my paper a bit more, but then decided it would probably be a better idea to pack for my Scotland adventures. After finally getting all packed up, I sat down again to work on it. But, I decided that I was too tired, so I put back on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (which I had originally put on when I was packing to keep me entertained), intending to fall asleep. Well I didn't fall asleep, instead I just watched Harry Potter instead of doing work. If I knew all of the exciting and beautiful things that I would be seeing in the next few days I wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway...

Thursday I woke up extra early to make sure that I had plenty of time to make sure I had all of my things in order for my trip. And its a good thing I did! I left intending to get into work early again, but London public transportation decided otherwise. Instead of taking my new usual 30 minute walk to0 Highbury, I decided to take the ridiculously crowded bus to King's Cross, mostly because I had all of my stuff for Scotland with me, and it was raining a bit. It's very fortunate that I made this decision. The line that I would normally take to work, and the only line that goes through Highbury & Islington was suspended because of signalling problems. So I was forced to take the much slower, and much older Circle line into Westminster tube station, about a 10 minute farther walk than my usual Vauxhall. But, like I said, it all worked out nicely because I just randomly decided to take the bus, and I had left plenty early. My work load was pretty light on Thursday, scrapping the bottom of the barrel for tasks at times. I put the finishing touches on the Digest, finally finishing everything up, wrote the "Backtracks" article for House, talking about things that happened during that week in British political history (I chose Churchill losing the election to Attlee in 1945), and alphabetized all of the cds of photographs that we had in our cupboard. After all of that excitement I headed to the Tube, to catch my train, to catch my plane to what I now know to be pretty much the most beautiful country in the world. Apparently I have bad luck with flights around here though. Apparently only about 25% of flights are delayed (I mean we are talking budget airlines, so you can't really complain). But I seem to be catching all the wrong flights, because all of my flights are delayed. haha. My flight to Edinburgh was delayed by about 45 minutes, so not too bad. Fortunately I had made the impulse buy of a book at the bookshop in the airport. After a few chapters of my book I was in Edinburgh and about to have the most fabulous experience ever. I took the bus from the airport into the center of Edinburgh and slowly but surely found my way to my hostel. One of the great things about Scotland is everyone is just so friendly. As I was standing at a corner trying to figure out my crossroads, someone just came up and offered me help. Heck, in London you would be run over by about a million people pushing past you, and the only time you would get help was if you asked. So I checked into my hostel right around 10pm, dropped off my bag, grabbed my camera and went exploring around Edinburgh. For such a small town there is so much to see! The architecture in Edinburgh was also amazing, and all of the monuments and buildings were lit up at night, and just looked breathtaking. I took lots of pictures and walked all around the city, doing a little window shopping too. After seeing Edinburgh Castle, the medieval Old Town, Georgian New Town, Scottish Parliament, the Scott Memorial, and the Palace of Hollyroodhouse, I headed back to my hostel for a wee bit of shut eye before an early morning start.

I woke up bright an early Friday morning, after getting back almost at 12:45 from my walks around Edinburgh. I was so paranoid that I was going to oversleep my 6:45 alarm that I woke up about every hour all night. It also didn't help that I had to creakiest mattress in the world. After waiting outside the bathroom for about 40 minutes, I was forced to forgo my shower in order to be sure that I would be on time for my 8:15 bus. So after finally getting ready, I rushed from Old Town to New Town to grab some breakfast, but nothing was open until 8. Finally I just decided to wait until 8, grabbed some Burger King (because it was the closest thing to me, don't judge) and rushed back down to Old Town checked out (not even my hostel was open before 8) and rushed back up to the Royal Mile to check in. Phew. After a few minutes the big yellow coach bus that I would come to love pulled up and we all loaded in. The tour was great, telling us all kinds of fascinating things about Scottish history, places, important Scots, various things that Scottish people invented, etc. (you would be very surprised how many things Scottish people actually invented, or at least inspired). There were always lots of interesting stories or funny little jokes throughout the whole day, and plenty of music... traditional Scottish music, modern Scottish music, regular popular music, just tons and tons of cool stuff. I have to include one of my favorite stories from the first day though. Apparently the Edinburgh Zoo is famous for it's specialization in penguins. I was told that they allow their penguins out once a day, around 1 or 2 pm and they are allowed to just sort of wander around the zoo. They are right there with all the people, and they can go see the lions or whatever (so cool, I know. Just one of the many reasons that I need to go back ASAP). Well apparently this one time, some guy decided that he wanted a penguin as a pet and STOLE penguin from the zoo when they were out on their little penguin walk one day. Well then he got the penguin home and realized that he knew absolutely nothing about penguins and didn't know how to take care of it. So the next day he took it back to the zoo. They hadn't even noticed it was missing when he returned it!!! And they didn't even do anything to prosecute him or anything. haha. See, I told you Scottish people were very nice! So I am going to have to go to Edinburgh Zoo and steal me a penguin. Although, it might be hard getting a penguin through security at the airport. After leaving Edinburgh, we headed first to Sterling, a really important city for Scotland because it is sort of a bottleneck from the Lowlands to the Highlands. Basically, in terms of Scottish history, whoever held Sterling was in control of Scotland. This is the city where the big battle with William Wallace leading the Scottish armies during the wars for independence. So in Sterling we climbed up (literally climbed, most of the way up the path was at about a 35-40 degree angle) to see the William Wallace monument. I have been told that it is the largest monument to a single person in all of the UK, and something like the 4th largest in the world (but I seriously question that fact). After Sterling we headed into the Highlands. When we stopped for lunch I tried my first Scottish foods, cullin skink, a sort of fish chowder, and IrnBru, an orange colored soda that has more sugar than Coke, with an indescribable taste (the best I can come up with is bubble gum?), and enough crap to rot straight through your stomach. But overall it was quite good. We slowly wound our way through the Highlands to Loch Ness, stopping pretty frequently to take in some amazing views and take a few hikes down the mountains and around to some beautiful little rivers and lakes. Gorgeous. Like I said, our ultimate destination was a little town called Fort Augustus along the banks of Loch Ness. When we got in to Fort Augustus we went to see a little show by this guy Ken inside of a little house that was similar to what Highland families would have used. He showed us all of the weapons that Highlanders used, and gave us quite a bit of insight into Highland life. A very interesting show. Ken is an amazingly interesting guy, but I can get into more of that later. After the show we went and checked into our hostel, grabbed some dinner, and then headed out to a little boat trip around Loch Ness. It was amazing how much information there is. I was completely a Loch Ness Monster skeptic, but after seeing all of the sort of videos and pictures and sonar information that the captain of this boat had, it is hard not to believe it. This guy had a picture of the back of one of the "creatures," which they think is basically a dinosaur, about 10 feet away from him. You can even see the sort of bone structure and stuff, so you know that it is definitely not a fish. Another interesting little fact, although Loch Ness in not the widest, or longest or deepest lake in Scotland (it ranks number 2 in all of these categories) if it were to empty, all of the water from all of the lakes and rivers and streams in all of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland could not fill it back up. Ok, keep it short Jess, no one has all day to read this. After the boat trip a few of us went back to the hostel into the little bar there. My new friend Pam, from New Zealand, one of the Australian girls, our guide Russell, and I played a bit of Jenga, until this guy Davy came and played a little mini concert of all sorts of Scottish Music and regular music on the guitar. When he stopped to take a break, we moved a couple of the tables out of the way and spent the rest of the night dancing away to all of these fabulous songs. A bunch of the locals came up to the hostel to hear Davy play, including Ken, the guy from earlier, and this guy Rorie. Rorie is a bit of a character. He wears his kilt and all, and lives in a wigwam down the road from the hostel. The only thing is, the wigwam is not on his property. He just sort of sets up in someone's front yard. It's great. Actually, a bunch of the Scottish guys in the bar (there weren't many)were wearing kilts and all. Ken, he is the guy from the show, he is pretty awesome too. Not quite so weird, but just a really fascinating guy. He has climbed all 284 mountains over 3,000 ft in Scotland. He hasn't done it just once, he has done it 5 times, once with each of his dogs. This guy even brought his dog out to the bar both nights. Great dog, by the way. Sorry. Straying away again. Ok, so we were dancing and drinking the night away, and then I had a bit of bonding time with one of our guides, Russell, after Davy stopped playing. We chatted for a really long time about random shit, mostly politics. Before we knew it, it was already 2:15 am, so we both hit the sheets. We had to be ready and on the bus at 8:30 again. Which meant that I only got a little over 4 hours of sleep before I had to be up again. Noticing a pattern? I don't sleep on my "vacations." haha.

On Saturday we went to the Isle of Skye, one of the islands off the western coast of Scotland. Skye was fabulous. It had rained on Friday night, so all of these amazing waterfalls just sort of appeared on the sides of all of these mountains. It was so peaceful and beautiful. I took lots and lots of pictures. Skye is very small, like most of the Highlands, population wise. The whole island is basically houses scattered about every few miles with just tons and tons of open land (with lots of cute little sheep running around). The scenery was quite picturesque. Skye is said to be the land of the faeries, basically the Scottish equivalent of a leprechaun. In the early afternoon we went down to this little river, which legend has it has healing powers and will make you beautiful and all held our heads in the river for 7 seconds. The water was really cold, but heck, it is part of the experience. Then we went to the largest town on the Isle of Skye, Portree, has about 5 streets on it. We stopped there for lunch and we were able to see the whole town in about 20 minutes. haha. After lunch we went to this amazing little waterfall, said to be in the heart of faerie land. Well this must be true, because I think a faerie stole my brand new toe ring! I had climbed all the way to the top of this little hill so get my picture at the top of the waterfall. Because it was next to a river and it had rained the night before, like I said, and the area was very boggy because of all of the peat. So I struggled to get up in all of the mud (realizing after the fact that Graham, our other guide had said to make sure to go up the left side because the right side was very boggy, and of course I was on the right). On the way back down I was going very slowly, determined not to fall because Graham had put money on me falling on the way down. Well I was almost to the bottom when I slipped in the mud a bit. Because the ground was so soft, I couldn't really stop myself from slipping more, because the slope of the hill was pretty steep. So I just started running down, hoping to make it to the bottom without falling. Well I almost made it. Fortunately for the one and only pair of jeans brought with me to Scotland, I didn't fall until I was out of the mud and on solid grass. Quite miraculously, I only had a few speckles of mud on my legs, and that was it. Unfortunately, it was went I was distracted by my muddy run down the hill (I was barefoot because it was so muddy) that a faerie stole my toe ring. Bastard. Didn't even have it for 24 hours yet. Oh well I suppose. After that we went to some an amazing cliff, Ramasaig Cliff, along the side of the island closest to Ireland. They were beautiful. Graham got a bit of karma thrown at him for betting that I would fall, because it was at this cliff that his favorite rugby ball, which some of the guys were playing around with, got punted off the side of the cliff. Poor Graham. After Ramasaig Cliff, we headed back to Fort Augustus for a bit of dinner, before heading down to a pub in town. This was the beginning of a fabulous evening. I know that whatever I write cannot fully encompass it. It's just one of those things that you had to be there. Down at the pub we had a few drinks, and a little bit into the night, one of the bartenders just busted out a set of bagpipes and started playing a few songs. Fabulous. A little while later I attempted to play pool for the first time, Russell and I versus Pam and Graham. Fortunately Pam and I were both first timers, and both a bit too drunk to be successful at this game. Russell and I ended up winning, and two of the other girls from the trip, one from Spain and one from New Zealand, both of which were not as drunk as me and were both at least decent playing pool, took us on. Needless to say, it didn't end well. Basically every time it was my turn, I ended up sinking the cue ball into a pocket. Ops. After pool the pub was closing, but we were all ready to keep the night going. So Russell, Graham, Pam and I took a walk along the locks leading into Loch Ness. It was a very quiet night, so Graham showed us all this really cool thing that when you laid on the dock and hung your head over the edge and looked at the reflections, everything was an absolute perfect reflection, but when you looked at the water without your head upside down, it wasn't. Difficult to describe, but soooo cool. Then we realized as we were lying there on the docks that we could mess with people passing by, because it was too dark for anyone to really see us lying there on the dock. So we would lie very quietly as they passed by, and Graham would make animal noises at these people. The reactions were hilarious. One kid started yelling stop that, stop making noises, and threatened to fight whatever it was. For all he knew it was a bird. I guess a typical Highlander reaction, wanting to fight anything. haha. It doesn't sound funny now, but at the time we were all laughing so hard that my sides were cramping and my eyes were watering. Russell, trying to hold in a laugh ended up ripping a HUGE fart. That's when it all broke loose. I don't exactly remember how, but somehow we got onto the topic of spooning (in typical Jessica Harbin fashion). I guess I should probably note here that Graham is about 6'7. A big guy. For whatever reason, I said that he was too big to be the little spoon, and then he got all sad. So, to comfort him as he was lying there on the dock, I went up and let him be the little spoon. So as not to leave out Pam and Russell, we all started spooning, hence inventing the quadraspoon, to go down in history. We lied there all spooning and talking for a long time, and of course, I was in heaven. Finally it got too cold, so we walked back to the hostel and talked a bit more before turning in. I couldn't believe it, but it was already 3:30 when I finally made it to bed.

Another early morning yesterday, as we had to be on the bus with all of our stuff packed up by 8:30. After such a wonderful night, I spent the whole day dreading having to leave. We drove around the far side of Loch Ness, and started heading back towards Edinburgh. We drove through Inverness, a little town (actually dubbed the ugliest city in the UK, and not talking about the buildings). Inverness is famous for having dolphins and seals in the little salt water river that runs through the town. We stopped at this battlefield, famous during the Jacobite Wars where the British and Jacobite forces met. It was really interesting learning all weekend about Scottish History, and what a huge role these Jacobite Wars had, potentially changing world history. After that, we stopped in another cute little town for a bit of pub grub, but unfortunately we had to spend most of the day just driving straight through. One interesting place we did stop was Dunkeld Cathedral, right along this beautiful river. Inside of the cathedral is where the "Wolf of Badenoch" is buried. The Wolf of Badenoch was Alexander Stewart, the illegitimate son of King Robert II, and was pretty much a crazy mother f-er. He would go around killing people for no reason and burning down churches. When he died no churches would take his body because he was such a horrible person, but at the same time he was royalty. Dunkeld Cathedral finally took his body because it was one of the only churches he didn't burn down, and the royal family paid the church a ton of money. After Dunkeld Cathedral we headed straight back into Edinburgh. Since I stepped off the bus I have felt incomplete. I dreaded coming back to London, and I gave some serious thought to calling in sick to work and staying in Edinburgh one more night. But alas, I came home.

Hopefully this DSL (deep Scottish love) will wear off a bit soon, and I can feel whole again. That or I will just have to go back to the Highlands immediately.

Things to look forward to this week:

Nothing. I am not in Scotland.
Just kidding.

Tomorrow: drinks with Pam and Cat from the tour
Wednesday or Thursday: Drinks with Gaby and Sam
Friday-Sunday: Rome