Edinburgh

Holyrood Palace

Edinburgh castle

View from Edinburgh castle entrance

Close to the University of Edinburgh, Holyrood Palace, and the Parliament building.

Arthur's seat. I plan to hike up there tomorrow.

A locked door on The Royal Mile.

The Royal Mile.

Double decker on The Royal Mile

Absolutely stunning traditional Scottish gown--I LOVED it.

National Museum of Scotland. Too bad graduation's over--I could have worn this!

This is the street my bed and breakfast is on.

And again. This street has tons of great shops on it--mainly thrift stores and little food markets. A whole street of Value Villages! So much fun. Don't worry, all I bought was a cute little compact for 1.29.

Huge building with a hotel, shops, and offices on the Northbridge. Beautiful at night! (Which is about 4:30 here!)

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What I did today:

Got up at 8 for a full Scottish breakfast. It was delicious!

Left the Bed and Breakfast at around 9:45 and went exploring all the shops on Northbridge for a couple hours. I bought a sweater for 5 pounds and a little compact mirror (with a cute design on it) for 1.29.

Then I got a all day bus pass and we (my roommates and I) headed back to the B&B to lock up some of our purchases.

Then we took the bus to Holyrood street, and went into a bunch of the shops there. We also went to the National Museum of Scotland, which is where I tried on that old fashioned purple gown.

Then we went to Holyrood Palace and looked around the outside, but didn't go in.

We hung out in the park for a while, close to the university, parliament buildings, Arthur's Seat, and Holyrood Palace.

From there we went to the other end of the downtown area by bus and went to Edinburgh Castle. We didn't go in because it was closing in an hour, so we plan to go back there tomorrow.

Then we went to the National Art Museum and saw some AMAZING art--they had quite a few Van Gogh's and Raphael's.

Then we went across the city again by bus to a little underground restaurant called "The Basement". Great food!

From there we headed back to the B&B. We were planning to look at some more stores on Princes Street (which has a lot of very posh shopping), but most were already closed. We plan to go back to Princes Street tomorrow.

It was a very busy day, but it was a lot of fun!

Awesome tree in the fields of Capernwray Hall
Library windows.

Rainbow and a cottage on the Capernwray grounds

View from the putting green/croquet pitch

Back side of Capernwray Hall
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Hi! I am in Edinburgh, Scotland this weekend. I'm staying at this cute little bed and breakfast one mile from the city center. I LOVE this city--it's so beautiful and busy, and there's so much to do. We have a great internet connection at the B&B, so I'll be taking advantage of it to put some pictures up! Here are some more from the past couple weeks--hopefully I'll have some from Edinburgh up tomorrow or Sunday. Love you all!

Every Thursday, during our third morning lecture, we have a mission organization come in to do a presentation. Today, we were blessed with a man and his wife coming in to give us books. They gave each student two Oswald Chambers books ("Abandoned to God" and "My Utmost for His Highest") at no cost. I was really thankful for that; I wanted to bring my paperback version of "My Utmost for His Highest" with me, but had no room in my suitcase. Now I have a hardcover copy of it to study while I'm here.

I also handed in my second assignment today--"Managing Your Time and Yourself". Basically, it was about goal setting, scheduling, and prioritizing. Pretty straightforward. The first assignment was an essay/book review on "Alive in Christ", a book written by the former principal of Capernwray Hall, Charles Price. I'll probably start on my next assignment this afternoon. I have to reply to a letter written by a girl who has a lot of questions about the Holy Spirit and Scripture.

Lectures this week have been not as good as usual. We have one going on Personal Evangelism, which has been running for the past couple weeks, and that's been interesting. The principal, Mr. Whittaker (who is 60ish and has snow white hair, just like Adventures in Odyssey!) teaches that course, and he's a really great speaker. However, we have another session this week on Acts 1-12, and the speaker isn't as interesting. He has a really quiet voice and doesn't use a lot of expression, which can make it hard to pay attention at times. Plus, he ends up getting really sidetracked by telling stories for most of the lecture. Sometimes in a full hour he only ends up getting through 3 verses in a chapter. As my principal, Mr. Whittaker, would put it: "it makes you flipping lose the will to live". He says that often--he's quite a character. However, I've just been trying to take my own notes on what we're reading in Acts, so I've still learned things from him.

Last Sunday we had a speaker come in who said that only 20% of people in churches were real Christians--that was quite an experience!

I'm leaving for Edinburgh tomorrow, and hopefully while I'm there I'll be able to put some pictures up. We have free wireless internet at the B&B, and it will be a lot faster than the internet at Capernwray.

Also, next week is the electronics fast--so I won't have internet access until the 7th or 8th of November, in case you think I disappeared off the face of the earth.

I finished 1 Samuel earlier this week and I will be reading up to chapter 19 of 2 Samuel today.

The food has been really good today--chocolate pastries and fruit for breakfast, and fish and chips with lemon pound cake and custard for dessert! Mm!

Well, I'm off to hit the books! Talk to you soon.

Wall's love ice cream--so true!
Shops in Ambleside

Ambleside

The Lake District

Hot air balloon just outside Liverpool
Morecambe Bay

"Stage of Eric Morecambe"--Morecambe Bay Promenade

Christie Park--home pitch of Morecambe FC

"Venus and Cupid", Morecambe Bay Promenade

Weekends

I have a love-hate relationship with Saturdays here. It's great because we get to sleep in and have the day to do whatever we want--which often involves an excursion of some sort for me. It's terrible because they barely feed us on Saturdays! We normally have a "full English breakfast" at 11. This includes hashbrowns, bacon (which is a lot different--it's kind of like ham), sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, toast, cereal, and tea! I'm usually not very hungry at breakfast, so I don't end up eating a lot. Our next meal is at 5:45, and on Saturdays we just get a baked potato for supper. It's kind of gross! A baked potato and butter.

Anyway, Saturdays are great because of the travelling! So far I've been to the Lake District (Ambleside and Grasmere), Kendal, Liverpool, and today I went to Morecambe to watch a soccer game. It was quite an experience--the fans are rowdy here! Haha! And, the main concession item is chicken pot pie! I found that interesting. Morecambe is a beautiful city--there are some great statues and art, and the bay/promenade area are really nice as well!

I'm having trouble putting pictures up tonight, but hopefully I'll have some for you to look at by tomorrow.

The past couple weeks have been fairly busy for me. First of all, I've completely read through the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers so far. I'm about half way through Deuteronomy at the moment, and then I'm going to skip over to 1 & 2 Samuel, because I have a paper to write on those books. My first paper is due a week from today, and it's on a book called "Alive in Christ", written by the former principal of Capernwray Hall.

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There are a lot of slugs here! They're quite big and are always sliding around on the pavement. They're certainly funny looking things!

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I experienced my first netball game last night! It was fun, and quite an experience. No one on the Capernwray team had ever played before. We lost by quite a bit, but we didn't do too terribly, apparently, because we lost by less than the team that played our opponents last week. In case you aren't familiar with the game, here's a quick idea of what it's about: it's like basketball, except:

-you can't dribble

-you play with this ball that's kind of a cross between a dodge ball and a volleyball

-you shoot the ball into a net that's slightly higher than a basketball net and has no backboard

-only two people from your team can shoot the ball

-everyone has specific areas of the court in which they must stay

-and you have to stay one meter away from the person you're defending

For these reasons and more, my coach tells us to "leave basketball at the door" when we walk into the gym. Haha! It's quite a game.

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Anyway. I'll try to continue to post some pictures on here. It seems to load faster here than on facebook, and when the internet time is limited I need to find the most efficient way to do things. Here's a description of the pictures:

1: Stairs down to the sunken rose garden and conference hall (where we have lectures/chapel).

2: Wall on the back side of Capernwray Hall

3: The front of Capernwray Hall

4: Flower and a view of the courtyard and clock tower within the castle.

5: Front door