Is It October Already?

The first blog post of October! I didn't take any of the photos included in today's post but wanted you to get a feel for the places I mentioned. 

Quite impressively I spent Sunday working in the library with Shannon from 12-8 pm. I’d like to say I was very productive during that time but I’m not sure I’d be telling the truth! The only accomplishment I did manage was to finish reading The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. We went for dinner at The Potting Shed part way through the day as a reward/pick-me-up. I really like it there and immediately thought it would be somewhere I’d like to take my sister. It is designed like a giant garden shed with bicycles, old books and plant pots as décor. I had leek and cheese macaroni with crusty bread. (Soon this blog will just be me telling you what food I eat every day!) 

On Monday Amelia, Puck, Joe, Thomas and I went to The Golf Tavern which is the pub nearest to us and is so named because it’s right beside the small, public golf course/park that our house backs onto. They have a selection of board games which was our reason for going that night. We played monopoly and it was a lot of fun, especially when we hadn’t finished at 10 minutes to closing and we invented new rules to speed the game up. The pub has a student discount card that allows you to get drinks for 2 pounds and 25% off food. They also have a weekly pub quiz on Wednesday nights which I went to this week with Amelia, Puck, Emma, Shannon, Ross, Joe, Thomas and Juraj. Needless to say, it’s become our new ‘local’!

On Tuesday I went on a miniature pub crawl with my friend Aidan. We wanted to try out the Jekyll and Hyde pub since we’d just finished reading the book for Scottish Literature but instead we ended up at a Frankenstein themed pub. They were playing the movie on a loop without sound and the pub was spookily decorated. We thought it was a bit weird that they chose to play current pop music but then again, we agreed it would be strange to play spooky music all the time. After the Frankenstein pub we went to The Three Sisters which I’ve mentioned before – the one with the large courtyard and ping pong tables.

Today I worked on my statistics assignment at the library with Debra and then spent a few hours working on the rough outline for my essay for Scottish Literature. I haven’t written an essay since my first year so I’m quite nervous about it but am interested in what I’m writing about which helps. I really enjoyed reading The Driver’s Seat and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. I especially enjoyed her descriptions of Edinburgh which were so incredibly accurate I immediately wrote them down. At the risk of sounding like a major nerd I will post them here, both from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie:

“Now they were in a great square, the grassmarket, with the castle which was in any case everywhere, rearing between a big gap in the houses where the aristocracy used to live.”

“It was then that Miss Brodie looked beautiful and fragile, just as dark heavy Edinburgh itself could suddenly be changed into a floating city when the light was a special pearly white and fell upon one of the gracefully fashioned streets.”

Scottish Literature is fast becoming my favourite class, a slight problem since I'm majoring in Psychology!

This is the first weekend since Fresher's Week that I'm not going on a trip with the International Student Centre. I've got plans to explore some more of Edinburgh and I'll let you know what I get up to.