How's It Going to Be

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Update

Hey all! Sorry it's been a while! Sadly enough...not really anything exciting has been going on...I had to do my first project for one of my history classes. Needless to say, 15 minutes on Labor party politics in Scotland at the turn of the century? NOT as interesting as I thought it might be. In fact? Never come across a more dull, harder to research topic in my four years of school so far...but it's alright. I managed to scrape a B3 (whatever the heck that means lol) and Mom and Dad: "lol" means laugh out loud...but in reference to you guys, it could only mean "lots of love"...I miss you guys like crazy!!
Anywho...had my first too-much-to-drink experience here and good lord I am not doing that again. Luckily I was with friends that took care of me...I was with my friend Becca and someone in her building tried to commit suicide and it got us to talking cause it was the five year anniversary of her two friends dying and I was telling her about Shane :( It got us both pretty down and of course drinking never helps that situation.
Well the drinking fiasco consequently TOTALLY threw off my sleep schedule cause I slept through the whole next day and woke up at 9pm so for about a week I was dragging through classes and sleeping during the day and staying up all night...and I finally just got it back in line. I have redoubled my efforts to getting back in shape so I can test for a fire department when I get home. It has cheered me up quite a bit and made me sleep a lot better. Haha I have to admit my dreams have been even more funky than usual...but I think it's because I watch a lot of crime shows like CSI and Castle and Criminal Minds before I go to sleep. It's familiar and it makes me think of home so it helps :)
Anyway I just got back from Pilates and I must have eaten something that disagreed with my stomach cause I'm not feeling too hot but I'm gonna try to get some sleep and just relax after class tomorrow.
Tried some new things...I made a pretty good salad with what dressing I could find. Lol they don't have ranch or blue cheese here. They don't have vinaigrette either...actually they have about 3 or 4 kinds of salad dressing and they are all caesar based-the food selection and flavor choice here is quite minimal. In fact: Mom you would love this!! Guess what they put on salad more than anything else? MAYONNAISE EWWWW it's disgusting. Sorry dad I know how you love the mayo :) :) haha just kidding...I have had an excellent excuse to put garlic in nearly everything though. I am becoming quite the garlic connoisseur.
Here is a picture of the salad I made!

Oh and I almost forgot! This is a really good chicken marinade I made; I just cut up chicken and pan seared it with onions and garlic and then I baked it in a casserole dish with tomato chunks and marinara and more garlic and cheese!

And last week I walked around down Perth Road and took some pretty cool pictures. If you follow Perth Road all the way down you get to the shopping centers.

This is probably my favorite old building here...

Haha! I just thought this was funny...for obvious reasons ;)

A lot of stoops look like this here...double entry

This is a little Thai place in btween two tall buildings...it looks so tiny

Ok this I could not resist snapping a photo-really dude (yep that's a boy) not only does your little prepubescent butt have to hang out...you must rub it in my face with LEOPARD PRINT UNDIES?! I thought I was going to escape this disgusting habit but at least it's comforting to know that kids in the United States aren't the only sad little boogers that do this lol.

I upsized my BigMac meal and this is what i got :( tiny drink and soggy fries...sigh...oh I can't wait to return home to the land of the real meal deal!

This is a really cool Turkish place I saw while walking!

So after my walk I hung out with some of my new friends! Two of them are from America and one is from Canada...and the other is from Ireland :)

And we went to the student union building for some dancing... this is the downstairs club called Mono:

So that was pretty fun!

Anyway...I am going to write some more tomorrow and post my videos of riding in a double decker bus!! Right now though I'm not really feeling so good so I'm going to go to bed and hopefully feel better! I miss you all so much and hope everyone is doing great! Be very thankful for Safeway...Haggen...Costco...Albertsons...IGA...oh man so many amazing grocery stores!! BE THANKFUL FOR PICKLES! I haven't had one since I got here :( xoxo

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Walk on the Riverside

Me and Tina walked down to the Tesco Extra today; it's the biggest store in Dundee and we both needed some major supplies that we couldn't get at Tesco Metro or Lidl so we decided to make the trek! It's a little weird because once you get down to Perth Road, you can see Tesco right there only a ways across from you but because the railroad track is there you have to walk all the way down the road and back around again. Really annoying! They should definitely just build a skybridge! But oh well it was a beautiful walk and it was good to get out and get some exercise...I stayed in most of the morning and watched tv on my computer haha-just felt good to be a lazy lump.
Here are some shots of our walk down!

This is the road leading down to Perth Road from campus

Me and Tina

And here was down Perth Road almost to Marketgaite where we walked all the way down and around to the bus station and past to the Tesco.

Outside the Tesco.
Haha and then when we were shopping I saw this!

After that we took a cab back home with all of our purchases and ran into Ben (my roommate) and Stefanie (his girlfriend) and they helped us carry everything up the stairs. After unloading we all sat down to some food and then me and Stefanie played a couple games of chess:) she beat me pretty easily the first time but after warming up my strategy I got better and beat her after taking all of her pieces:)
So that was the day today~miss everyone.

First Friday TGIF :)

The last of the week went a lot better! I got a gym pass and worked out some of my frustrations :) Also, I watched a ton of tv and relaxed lol so that was good too. I went to my bio lectures-I'm taking a class called Drugs and Drug Targets. It's fairly interesting; we are studying the effects of different drugs on the different systems of the body. The first lecture was an hour, the second two hours, and our Friday class was a three hour lab day at the local hospital. It's called Ninewells, and it's a teaching hospital too.

It was pretty cool I took the bus from the road adjacent to the school called Perth Road. Perth Road has a TON of restaurants and stuff so it's much more exciting that the other parts of Dundee so far! It's also a lot better for the view because it's on the side of Dundee facing the loche. I forgot my camera this time but we go to Ninewells every Friday so I will take pics then. I was waiting for the bus and met a big group of people going to the hospital too; it turned out they were in my class. So we all got to talking a lot and I partnered with two of them for my experiments. The others were in the other half of the class that went to the computer lab.
The lab experiment itself was really cool! We are studying the effects of agonist and antagonist drugs in combination with other drugs. We were using a little piece of pig ileum (which is in the small intestine) that was in a water bath, hooked to a ink reader. Basically the reader measured the contractions of the ileum after we gave it drugs...all the while being infused with oxygen to keep it alive. It was cool cause we got to use drugs like atropine and mepyramine and histamine. We established our control contractions to Acetylcholine and Histamine, which are agonists (which caused reactions) and then incubated the ileum in solutions of mepyramine and atropine first before using ACh and histamine. The second two blocked the contractions because they act as muscle relaxants. All the while we would flush the water that the ileum was sitting in and this little machine drew out the actual contractions. Pretty sweet actually really interesting! This is a version of what the organ bath aerator looked like.

Anyways after that we took the bus back to Perth Road and I rode on the top of the double decker:) !! It was really cool lol the view is awesome! I'll take major pictures next week.
So the night before I had gone to the pub quiz at a place called Braes (pronounced Breeze) and the pub quiz was kinda lame but the pub was really cool. I didn't eat anything there that night and wanted to go back so I suggested to Fiona and Alanah two of the girls I partnered with if they wanted to go. They said yes but we had to wait for the others so we walked from the bus stop to Alanah's flat and we just hung out for a while. Lol I showed them how to figure out their espresso machine and they let me try some of the Nestle chocolates over here that had come in a big tin. We had a good time just sitting and talking...then another of her roommates came home. She is really nice too is from Switzerland.
So after everyone got home we walked to Braes but couldn't find a table so we went to this place called Tonic. It was really good I got cajun chicken nachos. It was the first place I have seen here that calls fries fries haha so that was kinda cool too. They had a big burger selection but I didn't really feel like a burger. Some of them sounded pretty awesome though!

I emailed the restaurant manager for a menu and better pictures cause it would be cool to show you guys what it was like for real:)
So other than that things are going well; I made a lot of friends yesterday and they invited me out tonight! I might even be able to travel with some of them and it was really nice to just get out and get outta my doldrums and homesick mood...ha it's kind of a struggle occasionally and seeing new things and people definitely helps.
After I got back last night me and Ben and Hanah hung out and me and Ben played chess. That was pretty fun too! He has a really nice board. I was really mad though because I have been playing my whole life under the misconception that queens can move like knights and last night I found out they can't:(
Damn. lol. Anyway, love and miss everyone-more to come!

Monday, January 17, 2011

End of the Day

Well, the second lecture of the day went alright...the professor was much better, though I can't say the air in the room was. Sheesh the air ventilation sucked-felt like I was breathing in other people's BO and exhaled air for an hour. After that I walked down to two grocery stores to find coffee filters-I got nothin. What the hell is the world coming to when a store doesn't even sell coffee filters?!
Anyway...the one good part of the day was hanging with my flatmates and watching tv. Hannah is making tacos later so that should be good. And she said that she is going to pick up some coffee filters for me. Hal o freakin lejuh.
I'm gonna post my pictures on here cause they are cool...they are just of around the town. Quite pretty-there's one nice thing...at least the buildings are pretty. Grr I'm just gonna drown my sorrows and crabbiness in endless hours of tv since I can't seem to shake this shitty mood.

The view outside my window

Downtown Dundee

The Church of Scotland by the Overgate Centre

Then I found this really beautiful building and I found out that it was a museum!

After that I was walking around the shopping areas and passed a homeless man...it's interesting here they have a newspaper company that employs only homeless people and they get money for the papers they sell. It's kind of a neat way to help the people that need it most. I walked by him at first and then I stopped and figured it would be a cool opportunity...I gave him 5 pound for a picture:) he said I looked sad and I told him that I was far from home and kinda lonely and he gave me a hug! He was really nice!

That finished up my day of exploration...anyways I feel a bit better now; me and my roommates had taco night and it was pretty cool. I took some pictures and I am considerably cheered up:)
Here are the pics from tonight!