My Parents came!!!

The joys of my parents coming to visit!!! My parents arrived on Wednesday and just left early Monday morning. It was good to see them, especially because they are very good at making me delicious meals, or buying them for me, and also buying me gifts and taking me to Edinburgh. I was excited that they got to enjoy this great city, as I love it here so much! That and it was good to have a wee piece of home here in Scotland with me, and we had unco fun together (as far as I can tell from my vast reading here Unco means lots in Scots).

They arrived Wednesday afternoon, and decided to take a tour of my campus here first, so I showed them most of what I could (and then we saw some things that I had no idea existed), and then they were a wee bit hungry so they took me out to dinner at the Ubiquitous Chip on Ashton Lane. I decided to have the Haggis neeps and tatties, Mom had the highland salmon and Dad had the pork belly. It was all quite delicious (it comes highly recommended from me) and for desert I had a poached pear with some sort of delicious ice cream. Overall it was a great experience for their first night in Glasgow, and then they needed to sleep in their fantastic flat, and I had class on Thursday so I had to sleep in my dorm. After class my parents wanted to see the Glasgow City Centre, where all the fantastic shopping can be found. So we took an adventure on the Orange Clockwork (our city subway) down to Buchanan Street where we visited some high end shops, and some others. Afterwards they made me a delicious ravioli dinner (as they finally realized that I starve here from the amount of walking I do each day) which I think I shall be repeating often for the rest of my stay here. All in all it was another successful day for them in Scotland.

Turns out that moms and dads make plans for when their daughter is in classes, so they decided to head to Oban while I had to go to my Scottish Literature Seminar (so sad I didn’t get to go too). I really like the seminars that they do here, it’s very calm and quiet, and we get to discuss anything that is going on in class which is very nice rather than just getting lectured at. After my classes and studying were over I met my parents again, and they took me to Ketchup (also on Ashton Lane) for dinner. They were rather surprised by the deliciousness and all of the burger options at the restaurant and also how amazing the chips are there, which was good. I spent the night at their flat in a bed not made out of stone! Early (ish) Saturday morning we left for Edinburgh, we got the train tickets as three for two (yay cheap), which was very helpful, and then enjoyed a day in Edinburgh which is truly a beautiful city. Again there was much shopping to be done (yay) and eating as well (we enjoyed lunch at the restaurant Tiles). We arrived back in Glasgow to have tea at Cup on Byers Road (which was as usual, delicious) and we all enjoyed our own pot of tea, and a scone. Afterwards we played a game of scrabble in their flat, but ran out of letters so some words were made up (mom...), and Pint was spelled in Ye Olde English (Pynte).

I left my parents Sunday after another fine dinner of ravioli (I am so lucky to have them). I am so happy they got to visit me, and we definitely had a lot of fun (or at least I did, I hope they did too). Hopefully they will want to visit this city again in the future, just because it is absolutely fantastic.

My weeks at school have been great so far, and I get to start my field trips this week, including ones to the Anatomy Museum, Possil Marsh, and more museums. It should be good and they won’t have to pull my arm to get me to do the assignments there. Lucky for me I finished the book ‘Waverley’ by Sir Walter Scott, however on an unlucky point, it means I have to read ‘Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ by James Hogg (who should have come up with a shorter name for his novel). Although a good thing is that all this reading has opened my eyes to some different spellings and pronunciations by these crazy Scots. I have been continuing on my pronunciation dictionary, and also some usage, like a single inverted comma (‘) to be used around a quote, not any of those silly double inverted commas (“) that we yanks use. It will also be time for me to start writing papers, which should be interesting and good. I am just having too much fun here in Scotland! No pictures this week, as my parents took all the pictures (they are such useful creatures). Love you tons mom and dad, hope you enjoyed your mini-cation, and can’t wait to see you at Christmas time! xoxo-Jessica