First day in Scotland!

Hello from the beautiful town of St. Andrews!

After a nightmarish day of travel, I arrived in St. Andrews this morning around 9:30am and proceeded to check into my room, unpack, and promptly get lost in my dorm as I tried to find Jen's room. Getting lost seemed to be a theme today...hopefully it doesn't continue! The dorm is nice overall, and I'm randomly in a handicap-accessible room, so I have tons of extra space. Plus I have my own bathroom, so I really can't complain. :) Quite a change from Colgate dorms!

We had planned to meet up as a group around noon, but unfortunately, Jen and I got lost a second time. When we finally ran into our group, we decided to eat lunch and then deal with cell phones. Lunch ended up being gourmet pizza--not exactly Scottish, but we were so hungry we didn't care! And the salesmen at the cell phone store had us all laughing hysterically within a few minutes of walking in. There's just something about a joke delivered in a Scottish brogue that makes it that much funnier...

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the town, mostly shopping for the necessities we couldn't bring from home, but we also managed a detour to the ruins of a castle on the beach. It was stunning--massive, crumbling walls surrounded by bright green grass dotted with tombstones of all ages. The sun happened to be at just the right height, so it was that warm afternoon light that makes for great photos (and artistically placed sunspots...). I've included a link to the facebook album with some photos from today.

I'm off to Paris tomorrow...a bientot!

~L

Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=180306&id=579896063&l=b7015fe99b