University of Edin-buuuurrrraaah

So I've officially moved in and become a student at the University of Edinburgh (which they say Edinburah. Apparently they get really offended if you say it wrong). We don't start classes for another week so this entire week is all the new students - international and incoming (which they call "freshers" not freshman) - and is basically dedicated to partying. Seriously, I'm not kidding. Not only are there about 1,000 activities for freshers to do - about half of which involve drinking - but these people do not get tired of going out and doing stuff! It was so funny because I went to my hall meeting tonight and our only options for refreshments were orange juice, red wine, or white wine. I will say I opted for the red wine though it wasn't very good.

We must pause from the debriefing of freshers week thus far to talk about the outrageous amount of walking we have to do on a daily basis. Firstly, no matter where a student lives, that accommodation is ridiculously far away from any of the events/academic buildings/student-union areas. I have one of the shorter walks and I'm still a good 30 minutes from the "center" of campus. Campus, by the way, is not one general space or even in one general area of the city. No, "campus" is basically the entire city of Edinburgh. What this all sums up to is that I am walking well over 2 miles a day which will be really nice (because that will be my exercise while I'm here) once my feet stop hurting and my blisters have calloused.

I still have yet to make a non-American friend. But I have only lived here for about 2 and a half days and I have met some British people but I just haven't really made a friend... does that even make sense? Oh, and this is random but it is essential that I address this: Britain may have the worst weather of any place in the world aside from Antarctica (and no one lives there - Britain's actually populated!). It rains a lot and is quite cold; I think my room temperature is just above freezing. I asked a British guy who was behind me in the queue (they don't say "line"): doesn't having little/no sun mean everyone's really depressed? He replied, "Why do you think we drink so much?" Clearly, I'm going to have to "get my drink on" quite a lot if I a) want to stay warm and b) want to survive. That's all for now and I'll leave you with a few pictures from the past few days.

Map of "campus." Notice that the place I live isn't even on the map; there's just an arrow pointing off into the corner where the map ends.

Pretty view of New Town Edinburgh at sunset.

The hall where they had the welcome for the international students (that includes me -weird I know). Its actually really huge.