I made it!!

YAAAY!!! Finally, I am back in Bonnie Scotland!

For those of you who don't know what's going on, here's a quick run down: I went to Scotland on vacation in May with my best friend Liz. My cousin Beth lives here with her Scottish husband Keith, and she showed Liz and I around. We immediately fell in love with the country and knew we had to come back long-term! Well, the only options for that were to either get married or go to grad school, so we said "Sign us up!" Fast-forward three months, and Liz and I have been accepted into Stirling University to get our Master's degrees in Strategic Public Relations and Communication Management (whew, it's a mouthful), and we get to live in this gorgeous place for 18 months!!

I decided to create a blog so that everyone back home can keep up with my adventures while I'm here. Hopefully I will post stuff pretty regularly, but seeings how it has already taken me 5 days to post a simple "I'm alive" blog, it might not be very consistent. I'll try my best, but I'm not making any promises!

The flights over were relatively uneventful. We landed in Glasgow last Wednesday at 7am-ish, hauled all six of our 50 lb. suitcases (don't judge me!! YOU try packing for 2 years!! besides, I thought my own body weight in luggage was an acceptable stopping point in packing for such a lenghty amount of time) through the airport and met our chauffer Michael outside. He was waiting for us with a sign with our names on it, which made me stupidly excited!! Unfortunately I didn't get to take a picture of him with the sign, but the point is, it happened. I'm not gonna lie, I definitely felt important (like, celebrity status important) for 2.5 seconds.

So we got dropped off Beth's flat (apartment), where we immediately changed into our pajamas and passed out for a few hours. Quick side note: Beth and Keith are currently running a hotel out of their flat. There's another American girl named Amy who has been sleeping in the spare bedroom for three months because she's in between housing arrangements. Liz and I can't move into our flat until September 10th, so Beth graciously offered to let us stay with her until then - only catch is, we have to sleep on a mattress in the living room until Amy moves out. To add to all of that, one of Beth's friends Andy is visiting now too!! It's like one big pajama party in the living room! I'm sure Beth and Keith are ready to kill us all in our sleep, but we're trying to be good houseguests and be quiet, do dishes, etc. So it's a rather long side note. Sue me.

Anyhow, after we woke up from our nap, Liz and I checked our email and discovered that we had both been awarded £1,000 bursaries ($1,500 scholarships)!! We were pretty stoked since they were awarded based on the academic merit of papers we had written a few months ago. This meant that we were just a tad more comfortable with our level of intelligence, as that may be required to successfully complete our Master's program. Liz whipped up a fantastic dinner of chicken pasta pesto, so we feasted on that and then passed out for another 10 hours. All in all, I would say it was a pretty great first day in my new home!!