A Picture Post

Hello everyone!

As promised, here are some pictures I took downtown. The city center is about a 2 minute walk from my dorm, which is awesome! I've counted about 5 different Starbucks locations, 3 Top Shops, 3 H&Ms, 1 Apple store....it's amazing. On top of the great shopping, there are some beautiful buildings.

This is the main street downtown, Buchanan Street.

Another shot of Buchanan Street. Sorry about the bluriness, shaky hands!

This is the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. The lights are hung on either side. Walking through there is beautiful.

Front view of Glasgow Museum of Modern Art.

This is George Square. From what I've gathered, is it's a giant pedestrian block with a bunch of statues.

Another statue and building in George Square.

This past Sunday, I went on a trip to Dumbarton Castle, which was organized by the international students office. We took a 20 minute train ride just outside of Glasgow and then walked up 500-something steps to get to the top of the site. This was the castle where William Wallace a.k.a Braveheart was taken captive. The castle is now in ruins, but part of the wall is still standing. It was a beautiful view of the River Clyde from the top.

Bottom of the hill.

Starting to head up the stairs.

View of a mountain (not sure which one) with snow!

View from the top of the hill

Yeah, expect more of these. I'm going to attempt to take one every site I go to. PS: Look at that vertical!

Some of the remaining structure.

This is apparently the house where William Wallace was held.

I've booked a spot on the international students trip to Caribisdale Castle from March 12th-14th. We will be staying in the castle and take walks around the grounds. The description, according to the brochure I was given:

"This unique, statue-filled castle hostel boasts a commanding position overlooking the Kyle of Sutherland. The castle has its own statue gallery, art collection and ghost!" (Hopefully not like Fort San).

Other than that, I plan on taking a weekend trip to Edinburgh soon. I have 3 essays due the same week Mike is coming, so I'm going to be devoting a lot of time to get those done before he gets here. However, I think the standard for writing essays here is very low compared to U of R. In my class today, my teacher said that she wanted us to "use journals as our references instead of wikipedia and google search results since we are now 3rd year business students". I've never used wikipedia as a reference and have been using journals for my entire university career. The papers are only 1500-2000 words each, which is nothing. Another criteria was to use headings and the students in the class flipped out because they didn't know how to use headings in a paper....I think I'll be fine.

Future trips: Going to London a few times to visit Uncle Chris and Aunt Karen, visiting family in Ireland, exploring the rest of the UK and hopefully France, Spain, Brussels, and possibly Italy? We'll see how far my money goes. I want to backpack during spring break (beginning of April) but I still have to plan out exactly where.

I'll try to post at least 3 times a week, but don't hold me to it! I'll probably post again tomorrow, since I started this a month into my trip. Hopefully I'll have more pictures soon!