The Birthplace of Harry Potter!

In just a week's time, I've explored three cities, conquered two incredible feats, and had probably one good night's rest.

I'm dreaming of bedtime even as we speak, and it's only 6pm here.

But, let's take it back to Tuesday when I saw my entire life flash before my eyes. The night before, I'd gotten a grand 3 hours of sleep, followed by a day of class and ahh-whooping hiking. In the early afternoon, a group of us embarked on a hike up the Wallace Monument, which is a tower dedicated to Scotland's first hero, William Wallace. The hills and inclines just leading up to the monument had me questioning my life choices--and that doesn't even include the nearly 300 steps up a very narrow and winding staircase from the base to the top of the monument. Granted, it was incredibly fun laughing with everyone on the way up and marveling at the view from the top.

But good Lord, my poor glutes.

Alas, then came the hike up Dumyat Hill (see also: hecka tall hill that's really more like a mountain). In our information packets, this hike was described as a walk--so you can only imagine our surprise when we ended up trudging up a full-blown mountain that we couldn't even see the peak of from campus. The trails were muddy, and at some point, I'd ended up crawling on my hands and knees to keep from sliding back down into a creek. The constant inclines were the toughest things I'd ever managed to scale.

But it was all worth it.

We got to watch herds of sheep, see ruins of the homes of shepherds, and get some incredible views of the town below us. And don't even get my started on the top.

The walk up took about an hour and a half while the trek back down took somewhere around an hour, and we spent a little over thirty minutes at the peak that was roughly 1400-1500 feet up.

Fast forward to Thursday--day trip to Edinburgh, Scotland's capital and the birthplace of Harry Potter! My friends and I started the morning off with breakfast at a small Italian cafe followed by a self-guided Harry Potter tour of the city. Places visited included Victoria Street, Mary's Milkbar, and of course The Elephant House, which was where JK Rowling wrote most of the first Harry Potter novel.

Fun fact! Did you know that in the UK you have to turn on the electrical outlets? Do you realize how utterly confusing it was trying to function in the kitchen without knowing this essential information? Turning on the oven is a five-step process.

And with that, we segway into adventure number three: Glasgow! Each of my courses has an excursion somewhere in Scotland as part of a homework assignment or project relevant to the course. For my Photographing the Urban class, we got to crash graduation at the University of Glasgow by showing up as a group of fifteen with raggedy little camera obscuras fashioned out of cardboard boxes and trash bags. I'm not kidding. We looked utterly ridiculous, all to get photographs that turned out looking like this:

I get it: we're working through the history of the camera, and this is probably what some of the first images captured on camera looked like--and it was fun to explore the galleries on campus and see the beautiful architecture of a university that was first established in the fifteenth century. But we still looked ridiculous. Luckily, I did manage to get some regular shots in as we wandered around the campus.