First Day in the UK

hello all,

so i have officially been gone from Tacoma for 24 whole hours! its crazy how fast that went. First i hopped on a 5 hour flight from SeaTac to Newark, caught a glimpse of the empire state building and the statue of liberty during our decent, and arrived in Newark for a 4 and a half hour layover. It wasnt too bad because i took the IFSA Butler group flight which gathered us all in a lounge to meet before we left. The next flight left Newark at 8pm local time (5pm west coast time) and got us into Edinburgh at 7 am local time (11pm west coast time), i was super excited to have a window seat because i'd gotten stuck with a middle from SeaTac, but i boarded to find out that there was actually no window in the row i was in...typical. When we landed the program chartered a bus to take all of us who took the group flight to the orientation hotel- everyone who is studying in Scotland has orientation in Edinburgh so there are quite a few of us here. The rooms were not set to be ready until 230 pm, meaning we had 8 hours to kill before we could shower, nap, or even change out of our gross airplane clothes. So a group of 7 other kids and i decided to explore a little bit, and explore we did. We walked up to Edinburgh Castle, down the Royal Mile, and pretty much everywhere else ( i even found the same hotel i staying in when i came here two years ago with band- still across the street from Erogenous Zone although it is now called Zone Eros). The architecture is so beautiful, everything is so old! i took some pictures, but i cannot seem to locate my camera cord to upload them, so hopefully i didnt leave that at home :( Also, we adventured to find phones and got a pretty good deal- its actually cheaper to call the US than it is the UK, which doesnt make any sense. we finally got to our room about an hour ago and i randomly got paired with one of the girls ive been walking around with all day. The view is awesome, we can see up to the castle from our window. We have a group dinner in two hours so i think im going to take a power nap so i can attempt to go out tonight to this pub across the street called Biddy's.

ill hopefully post pictures soon!