oxford adventures revisited - part 3: scottland adventures

i've decided to post my online journal entries from my time this past summer (july) studying at oxford. the original post date for this entry: July 21, 2006

well i made it back from scotland yesterday and i must admit that i am glad to be back at oxford. scotland was beautiful and the temperature was cooler, but all of the traveling the past five days has worn me out.

as always there is much to write... especially since my internet access has been limited. we spent 3 nights in scotland (and the drive there took us around 11 hours, because they don't know what it means to have a straight street), and the scenery is amazing. i saw more sheep since i've been here than i have in all of my life (there are actually more sheep in this country than there are people). we went to the town of st. andrews and i was able to see the remains of a castle and a cathedral, and i was able to see the old st. andews golf course (golf was invented in st. andrews and i was able to actually stand on the course - the picture is of me on the famous bridge on the 18th hole).

we stayed at the university of edinborough while we were in scotland and traveled out from there every day to see other things. we had a very interesting experience out last night there. one of my professors 16 year old daughter was staying on the same dorm hall as i was, and had her purse stolen from her room. in that purse was her passport, drivers license, money, credit card, etc. we spent a good 5 hours dealing with that... the police came, and the thief (thieves) had already purchased 3 train tickets within 20 minutes of getting the card. the number one crime in the UK is theft, and sadly we got to experience that. so now they are working on getting her passport replaced, thankfully we had to turn in copies of them to the leader of the trip, which will help make the process much quicker and smoother.

one interesting thing... when walking around in the larger cities of the UK, one would see this "look right" or "look left" painted on the ground. the brits have actually painted instructions for us dumb americans so that we know which way to look before we cross the street. i find this quite funny.