More fun before school begins.

Had another excellent few days. I thought I'd be writing my blog more often but I am quite busy seeing all the sights and meeting everybody.

A view of Stirling from the top of Stirling Castle.

I took a bus tour of the city on Wednesday. We drove into town up to Stirling Castle, which is at the very top of the hill that the town is built upon. It was first constructed in the 12th century, though it has been rebuilt to maintain its structure since then. One of the sides is fairly new and so the colour is totally different from the rest of the castle, but the tour guide said it is the same material, so it will slowly fade into the old-style look of the castle.

My flatmate Saori and me, sitting at the top of Stirling Castle.

I just love the view here.

This is Alessandra from Switzerland.

Kelley from Texas, Colleen from Boston, me, and Alessandra.

There are a lot of monuments to Scottish heroes William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. Both are very important in Scottish history, and the Scottish like to honour them throughout the town.

This is a statue of Robert the Bruce, an important Scottish king who led Scotland in fighting the English for Scottish independence.

Saori and I have been participating in tons of events together. Here we are standing near the Robert the Bruce statue. There is so much beautiful greenery around Stirling!

There are sheep everywhere. We could see them constantly as we drove on a highway out of Stirling to a nearby city of Dunblane.

We visited a medieval church, Dunblane Cathedral, also from around the same era. There are roughly 9,000 people living in the city, but it is still called a city as per a Scottish law that says anywhere there is a cathedral, there is a city.

I've never seen such a gigantic bible. I'm thinking it is a bible for all those religious giants.

The city is very small, but it is a very nice city and there is so much history here. I can't wait to learn about the history in my class, and then go out and actually see the places where the history happened.

Later that night, I went to a pub called the Corn Exchange where international students got to meet locals who were assigned as our "buddies." Unfortunately, my assigned buddy did not show up, but I got to meet a lot of locals and see the two Stirling students who were on exchange to Carleton University last year.

Thursday wasn't too eventful until the evening, when I went with my flat to a pub called the Birds and the Bees. It was an international society event, and we competed in a pub quiz. My team consisted of most of my flat, a Scottish guy named Jimmy, and a Swedish guy named Johan (though one of his parents is Scottish, and he has a mostly Scottish accent). The first round was to recognize skylines and landmarks, and Toronto was there! The next round was general Scotland questions, so it was very helpful having Scottish people on our team. Third was a sports round, so I was mostly useless, although I did learn that curling was invented in Scotland. Next was a music round, in which we had to name anthems. I only recognized USA and France, but it was fun hearing the different anthems. The last round was random questions. In all, we tied for first, but lost in the sudden death round tiebreaker, in which our team representative incorrectly guessed the number of steps to the top of the Wallace Monument.

Friday will be my first day of class: Kingship and Nationhood. I'm looking forward to seeing how different classes are, and whether or not I'll be able to locate the classroom. Crazy Scottish room-numbering system...