The Last Few Days

The last few days have been quite good! I met up with my site supervisor at Dynamic Earth and she gave me a little introduction to the organization and a schedule outline of my first week. Looks like my hours will be pretty consistent: Monday through Friday, 9:30 - 5:30. Works for me! Today my flatmate and I went to a bunch of charity shops (think secondhand/thrift shops) for some retail therapy. I got a pair of jeans, a brown sweater (called a "jumper" here), a fun compilation CD, and some nice work trousers. All of that for about 15 quid (slang for pounds currency). I also got to go to a large Tesco (grocery store, kind of like Safeway) with my flatmate the other night. (Check out the videos at the end of the post.) Also, this morning, I had orientation at the BUNAC office which is only about a three minute walk from my flat on High Street on the Royal Mile. Most of the information was not relevant to me since I already have accomodation, a job, and insurance. I am really glad I went because they did give each of us a reference letter to open up a bank account at a local branch to avoid any hassle for being from out of the UK.

I believe I had my first real culture shock today. While taking a lunch break from our retail therapy, my flatmate and I were trying to name as many foods as we could to see if they were called something different in each other's countries. I asked him about s'mores and he didn't know what they were. Not only that, he had never heard of graham crackers either! After looking up s'mores on Wikipedia, I understand that it's mostly an American and Canadian concoction. And, apparently, graham crackers are also an American food. I never knew any of this so I was quite surprised! The one thing that I'd never heard of was called trifle cake. Wikipedia says that this is a British dessert, which makes me sad that I won't be able to get it in the states; it's very yummy! The small consolation, at least, is that I can make trifle once I return to the states.

Tomorrow I can look forward to going to a few of the local museums, including the Museum of Edinburgh, the Museum of Childhood, the Royal Museum and the Museum of Scotland. If I still have time after seeing all those then I'd like to see The People's Story, the Loch Ness Discovery Center, and the Surgeons' Hall Museums. Those last few will be saved for another day if I don't get to them right away. Can you believe how many museums there are here? The list above is just making a dent! There are even more galleries and historical buildings that I haven't even gotten a chance to think about yet. Wow, what a city.

Finally, here are videos from the trip to Tesco.





Go here to see the rest of the videos. Cheers!