The Calm Before the Storm

Photocreds: Nikki

I can't believe it's week 10 already! This week is the last week of lectures for the semester, and then I'll have exams! People told me the year would fly by, but I didn't realize the first semester would go by so quickly. Last week I had my last anthropology lectures, and this week I have a class test in Chinese, which is the last big thing for the semester. It's truly bizarre.

On account of the test and exams coming up, I studied quite a bit this week. On Tuesday I spent the entire afternoon and evening at my desk studying Chinese. But, luckily for my sanity, I did do some fun things this week.

On Thursday we had our last LangSoc social of the year. We played Linguistics Jeopardy! It was so fun, even though my team was entirely first years and we didn't actually know many of the answers. The highlight was when I rang the bell to answer at the same time as the member from the other team and we went into a tie-breaker round, wherein each team had to translate a sentence into as many languages as possible in two minutes. Our team happened to be quite multilingual and we used 7 languages. Had there been more time, however, we would have also been able to translate into German, Hebrew, Italian, and possibly Latin. We were proud of ourselves nonetheless!

On Saturday morning, I woke up bright and early to climb Arthur's Seat for the first time since my mom and I did in September. It was a lovely day for it! It wasn't too cold, but the weather was pretty ominous. Luckily it didn't rain on me while I was in the park.

The picture doesn't quite show it, but the clouds opened up only to shine light on the castle. It was pretty magical

On Saturday afternoon I went to Tandem and then went to the Irish Pub, Malone's, where I watched my first rugby match. I'm not very interested in sports, but rugby is almost exactly half American football and half soccer/football. I pretty much understood what was going on and I had a really nice time. Also, Ireland won against Australia, which is apparently not that common, so everyone in the pub was really excited.

On Sunday Nikki, Chloe, and I went down to George Street to experience Christmas! Edinburgh has finally caught up and is now in full Christmas mode.

Nikki was so excited when she realized the Dome was blowing fake snow off the roof!

Photocreds: Nikki

This is perhaps the most entertaining/impressive street performer I've seen yet (sorry, guy in Glasgow who played the violin while walking on a tightrope!)

Also, just had to include a picture of the castle. 

After walking around George Street and Princes Street, we went up to Calton Hill to watch the sunset and then watch the fireworks!

Photocreds: Nikki

After waiting in the cold for over half an hour, we were a little disappointed that the fireworks lasted less than a minute. It was okay, though, because by then we just wanted to go home and have some hot tea!

As the title might suggest, this is a rather calm week leading up to a very crazy one. This coming week should be loads of fun, but I have got so much to do! Hopefully next week I will have lots of stories to tell.

Thanks for reading!