Okay, let's see if this works. It's possible that you're looking at the view out the window of my room towards Arthur's Seat, which will be the bump on the left. I go 'running' up there (provided you interpret the term broadly). In the foreground you can see another of the Pollock Halls buildings, which looks essentially the same as the one I'm in (Baird).
My room--a view of the sink and a bit of the guitar that the nice SUISS lady loaned to me. The photo gives the impression that the room is much larger than it is.
Paul and Alex are/pretend to be my friends. The photo gives the impression that Alex is much less sassy than she actually is and that Paul is much more murderous. Their sizes come across pretty well, though.
Here we are on top of Arthur's Seat. You can see the Meadows over Paul's head and the Castle in the top right.
Another Arthur's Seat view. This is as cloudy as the weather has gotten so far.
Alex captured this image of Paul and me in a state of pacific contemplation.

We're having a pretty solid time so far. Weekend highlights:

Friday. After a hard day's studenting, we headed for the Grassmarket and a cheesemonger I remembered from being here in 2002. Luckily, it was still there, since for some reason we were all very excited for cheese at that point. We made a picnic of it in the Meadows and then headed for Bennett's Bar, a very old-school place where I enjoyed a Scotch and a pint of Deuchar's IPA which was most tasty. We got back to Pollock Halls a bit later than we meant to, and so missed the first dance of the Ceilidh (KAY-lay, or KAYEE-layee if you want to sound Scottish). We danced around like idiots to the music of fiddle, guitar, and accordion. You could tell the accordion player was bored because he played The Godfather theme between every song while the fiddle player was showing us the dances. We all liked 'stripping the willow' the best, but everyone had a great time. Especially Paul, who showed his enthusiasm through both kickin' dance moves and extremely prodigious sweating.

Saturday. We went to Glamis castle by way of Dundee. Paul tried gallantly to plan a route but was foiled by the widening gyre that is the Scottish bus system. Alex took charge and, with remarkable enthusiasm, got us there. The castle had shockingly thick walls and nothing at all to do with Shakespeare.


We got to see fuzzy Highland cows.
And Scottish thistle.We picked up some pizza and beer on the way home from the bus station and sat around in the common room. I taught them to play euchre and they picked it up quickly. Robert and Troy played together and mumbled back and forth to each other constantly--they called themselves the 'hive brain.'

Sunday. A nice lazy day--we spent most of the afternoon in the Meadows playing a pickup soccer game and then frisbee. The Scots are (apparently) new to the frisbee thing and it was cute to watch them. The soccer was extremely fun. I got a picture of one particular showoff Scot in action:I am thinking of all of you and missing you. It's been a solid first week and I'm psyched to be here--but I'm very excited to see you all soon, too. I hope you'll leave comments or otherwise stay in touch.