has it..?

..already been almost two months?

As I look back on this trip, it feels like I just stepped off the plane and arrived here. It was on my walk to work this morning that I started to feel melancholy, and realized that I'm not going to be able to do every little thing before I go. I feel home sick for my family and friends, but I know I would've been happy if I stayed here longer. I feel like I've had a taste of this new place and I'm hungry for more. (Cheesy, but true). I can try to express everything I've learned about myself and the world around me this summer, but it probably won't come out right. It's more of a feeling and sense of self rather than something I could verbally express.

What I will say, however, is that I've completely lucked out with a fabulous internship and I couldn't have asked for nicer and more helpful colleagues. I will really miss all my co-workers who made me laugh every day! I feel much more confident in my skills that don't relate to singing or theatre. :)

I know this trip would've been completely different had I not been working 40+ hours per week, and I didn't have as much time as I wanted to explore. But it was such an amazing experience to be able to immerse myself so fully in such a new place. I wouldn't have traded this experience for the world. Thanks parents for supporting me and enabling me to go! :)

For now, I will try to get back to my last day of work and try not to miss the California sun so much!. :)

Fate?!?!

As luck would have it, my last weekend in Scotland marks the beginning of Edinburgh's Jazz Festival. I'm so excited! Sally and Anna will both be gone come Saturday :(, but I just found out there are a bunch of big bands playing near me so I will definitely keep myself busy.

I can't wait!

:)

mom?

Mom, remember the time when you went to mexico and downed a bunch of tequila, passed out in the hotel, and woke up to find susan dancing on the dancefloor with a one legged man??

well, the next day, did your LIVER throb on the left side?

Love
Annabo

hahaha

so 1 pound at the tron turned into overcharging us beer, sweaty nasty boys, and pouring rain...sally and i felt GREAT :) here are some snapshots of sally and i in the rain. hah.





it actually turned out to be a fun night, as usual!

...

i miss california produce...

SO MUCH.

scotland updates!

Hello,
I realize I haven't written in awhile. I can't believe I've been in this country over a month. And I can't believe I come home in nearly 18 days! Things have been steady, fun, sometimes difficult, and refreshing. I am really pleased with my internship, am blessed with amazing colleagues. We are all getting along swimmingly and it's nice to learn more about each individual I encounter. I was so ready to go on this trip back in May and now I'm not ready to leave. I felt really trapped/too comfortable in California and not motivated. It was so refreshing to get out of that comfort zone and just go somewhere completely different and foreign to me. I took the bus home from work through the whole city and was just thinking about how being here has been so good for my state of mind! I feel like I can conquer the world, and I feel so much more confident in my skills. Before I left, everyone was saying things like, "WOW anna, aren't you going to be so homesick? I can't believe you are going for two whole months!" And in my mind I knew this would be an easy experience for me. It seemed that I knew I had this strength that others never saw in me and desire to be on my own and I just needed an opportunity like this to prove it.

Some of the best moments I've had have been really simple, and maybe unimportant to some. I haven't really "DONE" anything wild or amazing, I haven't filled my weekends with fantastic or lavish events. Just walking to work in the morning has been so lovely. Just making time to read a good book in a new place means something more. The funny old drunk people that I see in pubs make each experience rich? I know that's really weird. Maybe everything is enhanced and more special because it is new to me. But Scotland is fantastic, I would come back here in a heartbeat. It's my kinda town, baby.

Okay, that may have been too deep for a traveler's blog. :) I'm not going to lie, I really miss my family. They are my best friends! I can't wait to visit my families in santa cruz and see the babies and how much they've grown. I am excited to come home and see my best friend Ercilia and lay out to tan with her and visit the good ole Blue Chalk Cafe in Palo Alto. I can't wait to catch up with Aaron, Ben, Krystin, Becca, Shelby, Melissa, Greg, Tracy, V-Ron, and hear all the funny things that happen in the theatre world.

For now, I'm going to The Tron pub because it's a pound per drink Wednesday!

Hope everyone is well! :)

cafe babblings

hellooo,
it's been awhile since I've written..things have been really fun...loving my internship, loving my sleep!

The Edinburgh film festival was going on this week, and lucky for me, I had a press pass. So Michael and I got to see a few films and review them. Later in the week I met up with Ben and Nick, friends from the Bay Area. They have an action packed Europe trip planned and it sounds great. This weekend we went out...last night we saw the other Anna's colleague play at a pub...they were AWESOME. Just a guitarist/singer with a violin and cello. So good. Here are pictures of us girls on a night out. :)




That's all I have. Anna and Sally's families are visiting next weekend which will be fun. A coastal Scotland trip as well as an Ireland trip are in the works.

love annabo

Edin-BRA

Today in the office we had a 30 minute tutorial of teaching american anna how to pronounce this CITY's name. Edinburgh is pronounced EDIN-BRA...CLEARLY.

I have a bad cold and today talking on the phone was embarrassing. A stuffed up American is not as eloquent as a woman from scotland. there is a cafe around the block that many of my colleagues go to, and the owner was born in Palo Alto at Stanford hospital, freakishly small world!?! it's nice to have someone close by who is from my hometown, comforting in some small way.

In other news, things have been a little uneventful in this pretty city. This weekend we may go to Glasgow and check out the shopes and nightlife. We definitely want to explore. The film festival starts tonight and lucky me, I get press passes so I can check out a lot of the films for free! We'll see what movies I get to see.

I miss the sun! :)

fun saturday

Saturday has been fun...skyped with my parents and bethina and walked around downtown princes street with sally. The weather has had light rain off and on, and later tonight we are going out with my fun colleague, Michael.

The city is fantastic. The people are great, and the sights are beautiful. The only real problem I have is what I would have with any other city, and that is modernization. Parts of Edinburgh are super trendy and too technological for my taste. If it's an old town, I want it to stay that way. It's just weird.

My job has been really awesome, even though every night I want to pass out by 9 pm. I'm looking forward to another work week, as we are starting the Edinburgh Festivals Magazine, which is insanely extensive.

More updates tomorrow when I try to describe Edinburgh nightlife.

CHEERS

-annabo

lower back pain

is great...remind me not to have a desk job...i need movement, dance AND flirtation..maybe I should've taken a pole dancing internship!? Aye..

Work has been pretty good. Lots of deadlines, and we are trying to pick a cover for the Edinburgh Festivals Magazine. Today I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival press release, and SEAN connery was SUPPOSED to be there, but he wasn't, he was in a little video instead. The book festival is after I get back to the states, but it looked so great.

People love to make fun of my American accent, and they think craigslist is weird.!!!?!!!?? They use gumtree.com? instead.

Plans for the weekend:
- sleep in until noon
- scottish whisky tasting experience (www.whisky-heritage.co.uk). did you know that Irish whiskEy and scottish whisky are spelled differently?
- going with a colleague to a friend's art exhibition
- finding loch ness monster

-annabo

Aye lad, AYE.

Top o' the morning...(that's irish, I think). It's 11:43 and Sally and I are blogging it up at the local internet cafe. Yesterday was fabulous. We woke up at 7 am and walked over to Old Town where we met up with "Wild and Sexy Haggis Adventures"

, our tour group for the highlands. It was the most beautiful day for a trip up to the mountains. Our first stop was Dunkeld, a small town about 40 minutes from Edinburgh (slightly famous for being the town that Beatrix Potter visited and her inspiration for her books). There was a pond and a chapel and some nice flowers. We stayed for a bit then drove to Fort Augustus, where we ate lunch and had a boat tour of the LOCH ness monster. I found it! :




Hahaha....after the boat tour we got back on the bus and drove to Glencoe....it was unreal and breathtaking. The pictures I took couldn't even capture the beauty or how I felt when I was there. Glencoe is gorgeous....Next we kind of drove by the Stirling Castle, and went on home. Our tour guide Carol was amazing, and we learned that she had just started her job. The historical stories we heard were so enchanting and mystical. Cheesy, but true.

Last night Sally and I had our first night-life experience in Edinburgh. oh my my. We stayed up until the sun rose, it was beautiful and fun and the crazy characters we encountered were fun. We went to a dance club/bar called Espionage...it was intense. There were many bachelor/bachelorette parties going on, and great dancing and drinks.

Today we are relaxing, possibly watching "Braveheart" and getting some groceries. Looking FORWARD to my 45 hour work week. :) :) :)

Hope there is sun in California!

check my pictures page http://www.flickr.com/photos/annabokristine/ because I have added more pictures!

Working 9-6 baby

It's almost 2:30 (tooth hurty, obv), and I just finished my lunch...

My superviser, Caroline, and her brother, Michael, are the main people in the office with me. They LOVE showtunes and musical theatre and know a lot about it....they are really nice and helpful. I learned basic things today, like their phone system and how to input new subscribers for their magazines into their database. They said the beginning will be some admin stuff but later I will learn about PDF and write reviews and articles (in spanish, too!) for their mags and do desktop publishing....ooh la la. I like the fact that I'll be doing different things every day.

Sally and I scheduled a trip to the high lands tomorrow so that should be really fun. It's a bus tour and goes to Glencoe and stirling castle. It's from 8 am to 8 pm and after we get back to town we are probably going to the...TOWN DANCE. It's a family dance that has ice cream, celtic and scottish dancing, and a live bagpipe band. Ha ha, should be great!!

The internet situation is a bit shady but we bought a wireless modem/router thing and have to get the previous tenant's info to get it working, which wouldn't be a problem. I don't mind life without internet so it's not too big of a deal.

Will possibly write more tonight or tomorrow after the highlands trip! :)

Naughty Scotties

are very nice indeed.

Today the gals and I took a bus tour of Old Town. We saw Robert Louis Stevenson's (writer of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) house:


The buildings are beautiful and the cobble stone streets are amazing. We stopped off at the castle and took a look around, learned about Mary Queen of Scot and the stolen destiny stone....it was great....

We looked at the castle's prison quarters and the beautiful crown jewels.....so perty...


The rest of the day was spent walking around and relaxing.

Tomorrow is my first day of the internship and I am mainly excited.

I also have a flickr account, so I can post all my pictures there and only a few on the blog (I would post every one on here but blogger takes a long time uploading). So please please check out my photo account...there may be some repeat pictures but I'm trying to figure it all out:

http://flickr.com/photos/annabokristine



goodbye

love from mrs. scotland

10,000,000,000 steps later! :)

Hello...

Today has been very fun. At ten am Sally and I met with Jenny (Anna C. had some stuff to do at her internship so she couldn't join us) and we went on a tour of New Town. Edinburgh is essentially split by Old and New Town. New Town was built by famous Scottish architect James Craig. Old town was overpopulated and filled with disease so they had a competition for who could make the best design to expand Edinburgh. When the town was built by Craig, many of the wealthy folk moved over to New Town. New Town was designed as three parallel streets, Princes St, George St, and Queen St, and on either end a church was built. Another church we came across today was circular in shape and Jenny said there were two stories about why it was built that way. The first is so that devils couldn't hide in the corners, and the second is so scotsmen couldn't hide from the offering plates. Ha. Ha. Ha. :) Those naughty scotties. We ended our tour downtown near the art galleries which overlook part of Princes Park. Here are a few pictures from the park and surrounding areas:




After the tour (and I forgot to take pictures of New Town, so I will post another day), Sally and I had a lunch picnic in the Princes St. gardens. We waited until 1 pm because everyday at this time, a cannon is shot from the castle. Here's a fun little video we made today at the park:




After lunch we took a little break at our flat and naturally, went back out to buy some cookies. We then decided to climb the famous Scott monument:


Sir Walter Scott:


was a famous Scottish writer and poet. His famous works include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, The Lady of The Lake , Waverley and The Heart of Midlothian. A monument was made in his honor after he died. Here are some pictures of our way up the 287 steps and our various views of the city. It was SO beautiful, and they even gave us a certificate because we climbed the creepy narrow stairwells:




Blogger REALLY hates me uploading photos here for some reason and I have about 70 pictures from today that are all REALLLLY beautiful...so you guys will all just have to wait and see! :) I will try again tomorrow to figure out how to do this!

LOVE ANNABO

I am alive!

Hi everyone,

I tried to blog yesterday but blogger wasn't working for me. Yesterday, Monday, Sally and I met in front of the flat and met up with the coordinator of the program, Jenny. She let us in and we were in for a great surprise. The flat is huge, with three bedrooms, and in a very central location. Here are some pictures:



My room!




Anna C's Room:


Sally's gigantic room! :)


Half of the living room:


Other view of the living room:


Adorable kitchen!


Bathroom #1 that has shower and no toilet:

Bathroom #2 that has just toilet.




We were told that the other Anna was coming in on Tuesday due to a delayed flight. So Sally and I decided to get acquainted with Old Town, walked around, ate dinner, and went grocery shopping. We then spent 2 hours successfully fixing our gigantic television. It was fun and we get along swimmingly. Today we woke up to let the other Anna (Anna C.) in and showed her the place. We met with our program coordinator, Jenny, who took us to lunch (thanks epa!) and explained that we'd be meeting with our internship companies today.

I was told on Monday a little bit about my internship and learned that I would be working for the Media Company Limited. This company produces four popular magazines, Spain, Living Abroad, Foodies, and Edinburgh Festival! (Their most popular magazine in the summer). Today I met with my future supervisor, Sue, and she is awesome. She basically told me that I would be in the production room with the editors of the magazine daily and that I would be insanely busy and have a lot of responsibilities ranging from pdf making to image research to writing articles and everything else in between. The staff includes only about 12 people who seem upbeat and creative. I start on Friday and will work 9-6 five days a week. I'm really excited about this. Sue gave me copies of all four magazines and they are so interesting and comparable to magazines that I like a lot in the US. The job will be really fast-paced and I feel like that suits my personality. I definitely won't be bored! More on that after my first day Friday.

The city is so beautiful. It's friendly and small and not that busy and the views of the castle are fantastic. The city screams nostalgia and romance. :) :) :) I just like the fact that the streets are not overcrowded and each side street apart from the main downtown has a lot of character.

Tomorrow Jenny (program director) takes us on a tour of New Town. I will try to take more pictures and post! If I don't get to blogging regularly, it's because I'm having a smashing time OR we haven't installed internet yet at our flat.

Hope everyone is well, leave some comments so I know you are alive, too!

Pictures from today

Here are some pictures from my walk home from the pub...





Here is a little video of the area of my hotel:

yesssssss

my first gay bar...in ANY country! :) I knew I was right with the leather pants and the loads of guys making out...I just ate the best din din ever...and I'm going to walk home in the rain with my trusty umbrella.

Tomorrow I move into my flat and meet my roommates, I'm so excited! :)

Goodnight! :)

Hiding from the rain at a pub on a melancholy day...

Yo,

Since I slept from 11 am (after breakfast) until 6 pm, I was starving and needed to find dinner. Luckily the Regent Pub was open and has food and free wi-fi just down the road. There's nothing sexier than a girl with messy hair in an argyle sweater whose glasses FOGGED up in the nerdiest way when she walked in from the cold. hahaha. And now here I am, I ordered a tuna sandwich (some things just don't change), and some hummus and pita for dinner. It looks like a lot of locals getting drunk which is fun. Everyone is here to stay away from the rain.

Will report in a few minutes after I eat this....

Edinburgh day 2

Helloooo...

It's 8:15 pm and I've had a splendid day. I woke up around 9:30 am after about 5 hours of sleep, and although I wanted to keep sleeping I knew I had a "hearty scottish breakfast" awaiting me. Oh my my...I went out to the eating area and saw cereal and oats, and thought, wow, this looks HEARTY, not....but little did I know they had a menu full of the most heart attack enducing types of food ever. I ate scrambled eggs, whole wheat toast, bacon, and hashbrowns. Relatively tasty! I was really full and went back up to my room....and went back to sleep. I wouldn't be Annabo Kristine T if I didn't sleep until 3:30 pm! At 3:30 I launched myself out of bed and got dressed, brushed my teeth, and went out. I knew I had to seize all the time I could if I was to have an ACTIVE day and be able to sleep tonight. Oh I did. Here are some of the things I did:


Here is a view of the buildings near where I am staying:



I walked to the famous downtown street, Princes street. Because the weather was almost up to the seventies, it was jam packed with people, and of course, men playing bagpipes. Here are a few pictures from downtown:






Here is a video of downtown Princes Street:


After I took in the beauty of downtown, I walked back up near my hotel, grabbed dinner, and decided to tackle the hills of Arthur's seat (which has a beautiful view of the castle:


Here is the presbyterian church I will go to tomorrow, located at the end of the street where my hotel is:





Here is the healthy, small portions dinner I had...fish and chips...I couldn't even eat 1/3 of this, but it was tasty...:




However, I probably burned all calories I had in the last week with the 3 hour hike I took to Arthur's Seat....so worth it! It was disgustingly hot but the sights were oh so breath taking....Here are some pictures!:
This is what I had to climb!! :)












I have more pictures but the computer is pretty slow...enjoy!

Ahhhh...

That was the BEST shower ever....in a magical weird old shower...I'm happily in my hotel snug in my bed. It's 11:41 pm here, which is ridiculous because it feels earlier to me. I took an afternoon nap (I tried NOT to) and still felt tired when I woke up around 9 pm. It was getting dark so I went to the reception desk and asked for a place within walking distance that was open for food. Lucky for ME, there was a nice inexpensive Italian restaurant just down the hill.

Here are a few pictures from my day:

A picture from the heathrow airport in london:



A picture just outside the shuttle I took from the airport to my hotel:



My hotel!

Lots of old looking hallways and stairs:








Here is the restaurant where I ate dinner, about a 5 minute walk from my hotel..I had lasagna!:




I just took the best shower (felt so dirty after 12 hours of flying) and am so excited to go exploring tomorrow! Right now I'm feeling happy, it's all sort of surreal and I think that is from lack of sleep. :)



Goodnight! :)