The Sunburnt of Seville

I am leaving Seville today to go to Barcelona. It was a lovely visit. We took a tour of a beautiful castle and its gardens, as well as the Plaza d'espania where part of Star Wars Episode 2 was filmed. We were able to go to the beach at Cadiz where the three scotsman got incredibly burnt by the spanish sun. It was a very relaxing trip, especially after our tiring stay in London.
The men and women of Spain are probably the most beautiful people in the world. You can tell they take good care of themselves. The men are fit and thin up until their deaths, and the women stay beautiful long after their prime. I remember the Italians being just the same way. I would like to know their secret, maybe it's the Mediterranean blood. I adore Spain, and will miss it dearly when I leave.
Have a good day!
Steph

Memories of Peter and Shoe-biting Swans

Yesterday I spent the morning in Hyde Park, the home of Peter Pan, Diana's Memorial Fountain and thousands upon thousands of dogs. After stopping at a small cafe by the lake, I jaunted through the park to find the oh so famous, but brilliant statue of Peter Pan. This statue was featured in the movie Hook, as well as a memory of a trip through Hyde Park 15 years ago. I sat on a bench by the Lake, looking up at Peter while I wrote part of my essay. Every once in a while I would look towards the water and look at the swans gracefully gliding by.
It is so much more interesting to look at birds in London. It seems to me that in the lakes that I frequent in the states, the birds are the same. You have your mallards, Canada geese, and other non-distinguishable gray or brown birds. Here, you have several types of geese, several variations of ducks, and very strange looking birds indeed. On a walk through the park you can see a coot, which is a black bird with an odd white patch right in the middle, and you can see birds with splotches of red on them, plus there are swans everywhere. As mean as they can get, they are beautiful creatures. I just don't go sticking my feet near their mouths.
I'm leaving London today, and I am sad to go. I could happily spend another week here, walking through Hyde Park and experiencing life in a big city. I am glad to be in London right now, durnig the G20 Summit. Yesterday I stayed very clear of the financial district where all the rallies were going on, and I may or may not have seen Obama and all of the other State Officials driving by as I sat near Westminster.
If any of you want to know more about my specific experiences and the sites that I see, just ask. I am happy to talk. Otherwise, I will say good bye now. I will be in Seville in less than 12 hours!
Steph

London, England the home of the Globe theater, Dickens and the Tower of London

Hello everyone,
I am in London, staying at a very pleasant hostel at Earl's court. The last two full days that we've been here we have seen Trafalgar Square and a street performer risk his life to make money. We also toured the Tower of London, which, while it is expensive to get in, is worth the money. We toured the Globe Theater the third and the house of Charles Dickens. Tomorrow we will head down to Westminster, Hampton Palace and the British Museum.
However, as fun as it is to see these bits of history, part of the novelty of being in London is witnessing the daily life. Looking at architecture and shops is just as worth the time as the well-known places. We have been visiting a few of the pubs around Earl's Court, and they have a very nice atmosphere. Last night (Sunday), the bar closed at 11:30, but instead of heading home, we found this tiny little place that secretly stayed open after hours. We had a few glases of wine there, and discovered a part of London that you can never read about in the guidebooks. It was a very interesting evening.
This is probably the only time that I will get online in London, though I am not certain. But, when I am in Seville, I should have access to the Internet every day because I will be staying with Jenna.
I hope all is well in the States, and I hope to talk to you soon!
Steph

Leaving for vacation!

This morning I woke up at about 5:30 to get ready for my trip, and I cried out in shock!  I was woken up by a gust of wind, and when I looked out the window to see what had made the noise, the sky was completely bright.  I have never, let me repeat, never been up at 5:30 when the sun was completely risen.  It freaked me out!  

I'm leaving for London in about 10 minutes.  This will be a return trip for me, but it will be like visiting for the first time. Hopefully I will have a chance to write in each city I am in to tell you all about my journey!  

To let you guys know how nerdy I'm becoming, I bought a code-breaking puzzle book on amazon yesterday!  It should be here when I  return.  

Love you all,

   Steph

You know what they say about Aberdeen...

If you don't like the weather, just wait around 5 minutes.

The thing is my dears, it's actually true here (at least in the last two days)!

Let me just describe to you the weather I've been experiencing today:
I woke up at around 8:00 am to a beautiful, blue sky day with a little wind. I walked to Uni, and it was wonderful. I walk out of my second lecture, and it is now cloudy and grey :(. During lunch with Sarah it even started to rain. By the time lunch was over, it had stopped raining, but it was still pretty cold. When I left my Robotics lab, it had started to rain as well as be insanely windy and cold. Half way home, I swear it even started to snow a bit! Approximately two minutes after the slight snow, the sun started coming out and the blue sky shone through, and another 3 minutes and I couldn't tell it had even been an awful day. I had to close the blind in my room because the sun was so bright. I now look out my window, not ten minutes after I walked in, and it is cloudy and depressing again. Oh Aberdeen!

st patty's day plus weekend adventures

Today is St. Patrick's day.  I am sitting in the hub, looking around me, and no one is wearing green.  I know it's not nearly as big of a holiday here as in the U.S. but I don't get it. St. Patrick's Day is an excuse to wear crazy colors and get drunk.  Wait, maybe that's why, because the Scots wear crazy colors and get drunk every day.  

This weekend was a blast.  On Saturday I went to a charity event, a duck race!  I bought a duck for 2 pounds and watched it race down the river Dee.  They took 500 ducks up to the bridge and threw them into the river. The wind was mighty and the current swept those ducks down the river at a raging speed.  My duck didn't win... But, I got to race on some bouncy balls with my friend Andreas (I lost horribly), and win candy by scooping up a duck in a small pool, and jump in a bouncy castle!  So, all in all it was a very fun day.  

That evening I went to my first Ceidleh!  It's a traditional Scottish dance, similar to square dancing, but much cooler because all the guys wear kilts!  I danced about 3 dances and watched even more.  It's amazing how good some of these guys are at dancing, and none of them have any shame, being in skirts and all.  

Hopefully this evening or tomorrow I will upload some photos from my duck race.  If you look really closely you can even see my duck, number 407 in the very middle of the pack!  

Have a good day all!  I miss you.

Steph

I'm back!

Hey Yo!

   I have recovered from my awful cold, although I still have a bit of a cough.  The last week and a half has been a trial.  I got sick right after I got back from Manchester, England which caused me to be feverish and sneezy and coughy and gross.  I had to miss some classes and take the bus to uni because I couldn't really walk any where.  I think this contributed a lot to my bout of home-sickness that came.  I should maybe phrase it to say that it was more like school-sickness.  I started missing olaf horribly.  I missed the classes and the professors because they are just not the same here.  However, as the cold dissipates, I am also getting over my other sickness.  

More about Manchester.  I played in the Mixed National Indoor Frisbee tournament, and the team got third place.  I played enough, it was nice that the team trusted me to come in and play with them.  This team has been playing and practicing together all year, and they allowed me to come into their group and play with them in Nationals!  I played around 3 points per game, and I felt very privileged to be a part of it.  We beat edinburgh in the fight to finish third, which is a huge deal.  For people that know Northfield frisbee, it's like a game between the bella donnas and syzegy, in which syzegy wins.  In the last seven years, I like aberdeen had beaten Edinburgh maybe once.  

We stayed in army barracks for the two nights that we were there.  There was a bar in the barracks, and I had a nice conversation with the English bartender who thought that America would have been better off had they never sought independence from England.  He had some interesting ideas.  He gave me my English perspective for the United Kingdom.  It is very clear when you are over here that Scotland is not excited about being under the authority of England, and England loves it.  Scotland sees England as their bullying older brother, and would probably prefer to be a separate entity.  It's really cool to see these attitudes coming out and seeing the politics that have been around for so long.  

I leave in less than a month for spring break.  A three week vacation where I will travel in Spain, France, and Germany, and quite possibly Norway as well! It's going to be an amazing trip.  We will also be stopping by London for a few days which should be amazing.  I haven't been to London for 16 years, so this is going to be a time to remember.  

Send me mail!  I would love to get some letters from you all because I miss you!  

This is DreamMakers, the final version.  We were given Audience award and Best Acting!

Enjoy!

Too sick to post.  Will discuss my adventures in Manchester when I am not sneezing into my computer anymore.  

I like coffee!

So the first day that I was here I had a cappuccino at a sandwich place.  The coffee was horrible! They pre-made both the steamed milk and the espresso, and then roughly fused them together. It was not pretty :(.  But, this week I bit the bullet and decided to try a cappuccino again at a different place, a place where they were trained to make a good cup of joe.  

I like coffee again!  

Inverness, Loch Ness, and the Castle

Dunatar Castle and inverness

Dunatar Castle and inverness

Gosh guys,

  I am updating finally, it has only been a week... 

This week I went to Inverness. But before I get into my adventures there, I will tell you about Castle Fridays.  Every Friday, Karen, Domestic and myself are planning on going to castles around Aberdeen.  This Friday we went to the castle that is about 14 miles outside near a town called Stone Haven.  The castle, Donatar, is in the most beautiful place imaginable.  It's on a cliff overlooking the North Sea.  Unfortunately, because of the ice, we were not allowed inside the ruins.  We were able to get amazing photos from every angle though, because the cliffs lead down to a beautiful pebble beach, and there are pathways to land that towers over the ruins.  I could spend hours at this site, and I probably will in the future.  

We took a train to Inverness at 5:18, me, Sarah, Hege, Callie, and Karen.  We arrived around 8:30, checked into the hostel, and looked around for some food.  Inverness is moderately dead at night.  While there are people in the bars and clubs, there are hardly no people in the streets, except for a few sketchy guys.  Also, most food places in Scotland close at 8, so we ate take out Indian food at this little place.  Very good, and cheap!  We went to a few bars, before going to sleep at around 1:30.  The night was awful!  People were in the streets until around 4:00 in the morning, and the beds were made of springs and sheets.  None of us got a good night's sleep.  

The next morning we hopped a taxi to go to our pick up point for our Loch Ness Tour.  The tour was great, and guess what!  We saw the monster! Nessie!  No, I'm joking.  But the lake was stunning, especially with the mountains coated in Snow. It was valentines day, so there were a lot of really cute couples on the tour with us.  The castle was brilliant.  It looks over the lake, and there are a lot of different parts of the castle to explore.  There is one tower that is three stories high, so you get to climb down and up some pretty creepy steps, very narrow, but fun to climb.  I saw a cool video on the history of the castle as well, with reenactments and beautiful photography.  

The posts coming contain photographs of Loch Ness/Inverness, and Dunatar Castle.  Enjoy!  

Aberdeen shutdown

Yesterday there came a snow that filled the streets.  We had about 1.5 inches of snow earlier in the week without the road system having a problem. At about 1:00 yesterday the snow started to come down in massive flakes.  I would say there was a total of 4 inches that fell from the sky, and then it turned into an icy slush shortly after.  Aberdeen could not deal.  Buses that usually take 15 minutes to arrive would be stuck in traffic and not get to Hillhead for about an hour.  The traffic was crazy, and people panicked.  Undergrads who like to party most nights of the week were considering staying in because the roads were so bad.  My frisbee practice was cancelled because of lack of transportation!  

   However, Hillheadians had fun.  I have seen about 5 snowmen hanging around the flats.  They are huge men and women made of snow, much bigger than any the Minnesotans dare to build. Snow falls like this are such an event usually, except when there was a snow just a few days before.  Aberdonians are now sick of snow, after just a week.  I kept telling them to go to Minnesota and spend 3 weeks in the same snow.  

     Yesterday morning I woke up at the god-awful hour of 6:50 to walk downtown with my friend Karen.  I don't have class on fridays so I am planning on doing something cool around Aberdeen every week.  Next week we may bike to a castle about 14 miles away, depending on the terrain of Scotland. These pictures are from that walk, taken at Uni.  The ornate building is Kings College, the oldest building on campus. It's beautiful.  And the street is High Street, all of cobble stone.  It's a very long road that runs through campus and nick-named the spital.  

     I have realized that I must be a tourist and take more pictures so that I can remember this wonderful experience through images!  I hope to have more to say today or tomorrow.  

Frisbee in the snow

Hello everyone! 

  Today I played frisbee with the ultimate team here, Positive Mojo, or as they called themselves today, Positive Snow-jo.  It was a blast.  I started out in my tennis shoes, which turned out to be a dreadful mistake. I couldn't stay on my feet!  Whenever I tried to cut, I would slip and fall on my arse.  About 45 minutes in, I decided I had had enough and ran up to my flat to get my cleats.  

The team is like an intramural team at Olaf.  It is not super serious, and it is just a lot of fun.  You screw up and they tell you it's fine, or they apologize when they mess up.  About every 5 discs are dropped, it's a different game.  It's a co-ed team for most of the year, although sometimes the women will play in their own tournaments.  I love the people already and I've only met about 10 of them.  

  So there you have it, my first experience playing frisbee in the snow.  And what a lot of fun it was! 

The Address of Stephanie Tanner

Hey everyone,

  Here is my address for the semester:  

Stephanie Tanner

282D Hector Boece Court

Hillhead Halls of Residence

Don Street

Old Aberdeen

AB24 1WU

Scotland

(This post is as much for my benefit as for yours, since I do not know my address yet)  

Cheers! 

First day of classes

Hello all!

 Welcome to my blog.  This will be used to communicate my note-worthy experiences to all my friends and family.  Enjoy.  

   Today was my first day of class.  I attended two classes, Film Studies and Human-Computer interaction.  This was my very last day of film studies, however, because I decided to learn a little bit about Scotland and take a Scottish history course instead.  The Computer Science course was really interesting because not only are there level 2 undergrads there, but the class is also home to many students getting their masters in IT and other types of computer degrees. We had a lecture today on Usability which is one of the things I think that I want to go into after college.  If you want to know anymore about the classes you can email me or talk to me online.  

    As part of my blog I will do a play on the hilarious 'Overheard at Olaf' and have my own version, 'Overheard in Aberdeen'.  Today's victim is a scottish girl I heard on my way back to Hillhead. 

Overheard in Aberdeen

" 'e was a li'l pig' " 

You will see this feature on the right hand of the window.  I hope you enjoy!