Weeks 3-4

Its been a while since I posted, but after suffering from suspected swine flu and slowly recovering, and being in and out of town for the past two weeks, I finally have time to update. England is still wonderful (despite the swine flu, feeling like death, and quarantines) and in our third week we spent a weekend in Stratford upon Avon (Shakespeares home). It sits in the countryside and was beyond beautiful. We saw two performances at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and walked around the town and down by the canals. I actually spent most of that trip sleeping in the sun in the parks trying to recover, but overall we had a good time.

This past weekend I went to Scotland (Edinburgh) with some friends. We shacked up in a slightly grimy hostel and spent two days bumming around the city. Scotland is unbelievably beautiful and freezing cold. We went into Endiburgh castle, took a 4 hour tour, ate some Haggis and tried some Scottish whiskey, and overall really enjoyed ourselves. Also, important side note, deep frying is really big in Edinburgh and you can take anything you want into a restaurant and they will deep fry it for you. We bought a deep fried mars bar (really delicious chocolate bar) and it was awesome. We also went to the Elephant Cafe (see the picture of me with the elephant stool) where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter on napkins and had some delicious deserts and beverages. :)

We've only got two weeks (one full weekend) left in the city so we're all scrambling to do everything we havent done yet. On Friday a couple of us are taking a bus tour to Stonehenge and Bath and then we're going to attempt to go to the changing of the guard and Oxford. Plus theres the usual stuff of playing in the park while drinking wine and eating cheese, so we will all be extremely busy.

Thats it for now, I cant believe my trip is almost over. But Anna comes over soon to travel with me and my friend Matty and I cant wait :) Hopefully Ill be able to supply one or two more updates before my program ends and we set out to backpack across Europe like gyspies!

With love from England,

Kelsey