documenting edinburgh

well the days seem to be flying by - hard to believe that we've been here two weeks already. this week, dustin has been very busy at work and i have been focusing on my study abroad documentation. lots of wandering, sketching, and photographing. also, i have met a couple of american women who live here in edinburgh - and i've learned a ridiculous amount of information/survival tips over coffee and lunch this past week. we are joining a local gym, called bannatyne's, this weekend...the most exciting part: they have a huge spa/sauna area for keeping texas kids warm. we also tried a new pub called hector's in stockbridge on monday evening where we finally sampled 'sausage rolls' with a couple of IPAs. yummy. oh! AND you can bring dogs into the pub! and they had the coolest bathrooms ever. alright, that is enough about the pub.

scottish parliament building with arthur's seat beyond ladies bathroom in hector's...told you it was posh. we are still waiting to get our information back from the hard drive recovery place...for those of you that don't know what happened, we had been backing up everything for the past two years on a backup hard drive. just before the move, we 'cleaned up' our ailing laptops and reformatted both. we were going to put files and data back onto our computers when we got to scotland, thinking we'd have more time to do a proper job. well...god had other plans. :) we are keeping our fingers crossed that the shop here is going to find the imporant things: pictures, architecture files, portfolio data, etc. but who knows... it has been a bummer but we are staying busy and the sunshine has helped us to stay optimistic...that and the excitement of the eurocup nearly every night! last night, we were out and about and saw lots of soccer hooligans heading into the bars to watch spain v russia. we were cheering for russia at home and were very bummed that they got spanked so hard by the spanish. i could only imagine what the scene must have been like at my friend yelena's house back in houston - she and her husband are russian and i am sure the vodka was flowing in defeat! now we have to see the german giants and the spanish egos go head to head sunday. tomorrow, we are headed to glasgow for the day...it should be an adventure! it will also be our first encounter with the scotrail train system and edinburgh's waverly station. i have mapped out all of our sights in a booklet (thanks to the kacmars) and hopefully the weather will be kind to us. glasgow is the second portion of my scotland study abroad documentation so we'll be doing lots of nerdy architecture/tourist things (poor dustin!) and hopefully sampling some of their local ales. i'll be sure to post pictures when we return. in the meantime, you can see our latest pictures here. love and miss you all. p.s.- dustin's mom found this website which shows live camera feed from the royal mile. we made an appearance last night: http://www.camvista.com/scotland/edinburgh/royalmile.php