Flying into the sunrise, and separated by a common language

I am sorry in advance to those of you who are not adept at switching subjects easily. As many of you know, I type exactly as I speak, and those of you who do not know this are soon to find this out. I would be attaching pictures already as well, however, one of my current problems is that I cannot seem to get my laptop connected to the Uni's service, nor can I seem to get the same error message twice in a row to get help on it. So I am currently in a 24 hour computer lab that I all but was led to, typing on a UK keyboard that is just different enough to drive you crazy. (think shift key, return key, @ symbol etc) Lastly, those of you who are actually writers (Brandon).... I hope I don't make you cringe

The first strikingly odd thing about my trip here is that it was raining in Cheyenne, and Denver, and Philadelphia, and Glasgow, AND Stirling... which begs the question, is the sun shining anywhere in the world?

I have decided that any airline that does not offer at least a free pop if not a snack as well on flights should come with a disclaimer of such information prior to ticket price. Also, if said airline chooses not to serve anything on domestic flights, it should not expect similarly trained flight crew to be able to deliver meal service properly sight unseen. Lastly, any airline that charges for headphone purchase, AND makes personal headphones insufficient, must be gunning for passenger dissent, especially after 5 hours in the air without so much as a free glass of water, and over an hour spinning in circles for a holding pattern. (Can you tell my flight to Philly went well?) Flight company on that leg was rather pleasant though, this range nerd/daughter of an engineer can think of worse company than an engineer for Lockheed Martin, and his wife who is an environmental chemist for BOR/DOI contamination reclamation stuff.

However, as the flight from Philly to Glasgow proved, it is in fact possible to look at an entire boarding area full of people and have a premonition of who you will be spending quality time with for the next 6 hours.... this time it happened to be a lady who looked like one of the witches off of the movie Hocus Pocus, complete with funny hat and all (trust me i have a picture) who spent the entire preboarding time just being absolutely horridly cranky on the phone. Luckily for me at least she can sleep on the plane.

While i was awake and staring out the window as usual I saw something fairly amazing...due to the direction and timing of the flight... I got to see us flying into the sunrise... it went from pitch dark and stars to full sun up in like 20-30 minutes. It was beautiful.

Now on my arrival, customs was a breeze, i think Canada might be tougher to get into now... then the trip on the bus was fairly uneventful once we all found it. Now once we were dropped off that was another story, i still haven't figured out exactly what my 1/5/1 polwarth house all means but the 5... yeah means 5th floor... and the stairs are like bad horror movie stairs... and 1 key unlocks 3 doors that you have to lock and unlock each time you go through them. Lets just say it was not quite what I pictured on living arrangements. But once I got my self, the gentleman from Michigan, and the girl from Italy all squared away it was off to my next mission.

I was supposed to figure out how to catch the bus, to get to a set of off campus apartments, to meet a student from Kansas, so that we could go try and get a phone squared away. This resulted in me asking at least 10 people for help, finally getting to the place, not finding her there, and then wandering the streets of Stirling alone till i found a phone shop, and then sitting on the stoop trying to operate it ... this was about the point I really questioned what on earth I am doing here, and why I thought I could pull this off. Then on this random street in a random part of town, the person i was supposed to meet up with found me. So now we have phones, we have food, we can at least catch a bus, whether or not we end up in the right place or not. We thought we had Internet figured out, but obviously not.

On random notes... for people who speak supposedly the same language.... you would never guess it... I am doing better then my Kansas friend... and have been doing some translating... but everyone and a while you just have to say "come again?" in that way that you are certain that English was not the language coming out of their mouth. And it has happened more then once that i will ask a question and these folks give me that deer in the headlights look like i never said a word of what i asked in English.... It is odd that even among the Americans i have met,all I have to say is that I'm from Wyoming and I may as well be from another country... I have thus far met one "flat mate" and i must say HE seems and looks and sounds quite nice...
Language oddity of the day ... rather than "how's my driving? ####" you will see "wisely driven? ####" .... and going around corners in the left hand lane still terrifies me


So yeah that is a probably way to extensive update, but i would love to hear from you guys if you want my # just ask, its actually cheaper for me to make US calls right now than anything else... they apparently even when i get net working they don't "support" skype... but yeah here in one piece have a place to sleep, at least some food (thank you subway), a lot lost, and a lot overwhelmed but overall I am here. :)