Living in a Room Across the Road from the Highlands (or Rohan)

Hello again everyone! I have just made it through my first bout of classes, and also it turns out that jet lag has come back around to bite me, so I shall have to withdraw my previous statement about defeating it. But, with 99p (pence, for the Americans in the crowd - 100p = £1) soup from a local café in one hand and a smoothie in the other (metaphorically speaking, I do have to use my hands to type) I am recovering, and I shall update you whilst I do!

Last Saturday morning, after orientation was finished, we all awoke and boarded buses quite early to get to our separate residences. I arrived in the dorm complex of the University, which I had chosen for the purposes of meeting Scottish people, for the most part. I found my residence on the fifth floor - though they call it the fourth, because they have ‘ground floors’ here - and happily moved in. It has a sink, which I was quite surprised to see, and a view of Holyrood Park - a giant hill, or crag, of sorts, with King Arthur’s Seat on its top, and also a view of construction site, but with the crags in the background, how could I complain? Here’s the view (the spots are from the rain, which it adores to do here):

And the room (a tad messy, I had just moved in after all - and they even provided me with a fitted sheet and one other - very nice! I have my sleeping bag to top it off - Frugality!):

The dorm is working out pretty well so far. They serve breakfast and dinner (or ‘tea’ as they call it - silly Brits) and I have to forage for lunch, which I quite happily do. It helps me explore all of the cafés and restaurants here, which there are quite a few of in fact. A lot of Italian and Indian places actually. That’s another thing - the University is apparently about 50% English, 25% Scottish, and 25% International. Which is quite fascinating to me. But it’s reflective of the city and its international composition. The only drawback to the dorms is that 95% of its residents are first-years. This isn’t actually that much of a drawback, but it is something I wasn’t expecting, so I’m still getting used to it. Sunday was one of the windiest days on Earth actually, where a man of my height and weight was literally moved whilst I walked. I had to jog, sometimes involuntarily. Otherwise it was uneventful, and mainly involved the University’s orientation.

On Monday I didn’t have class until 2pm, so I decided to have a walk on the crags that I could see from my room. It was sunny out, which was a tad rare, and it was beautiful. Actually absolutely gorgeous. It felt like I had climbed into the Highlands (Northern Scotland - notoriously beautiful and sparsely populated) and completely left the city behind despite the fact that it only took me about fifteen minutes to get into the crags. I didn’t make it up to Arthur’s Seat, but I soon shall. I trekked up and quickly lost my breath both from the exhaustion and beauty of the landscape. Here’s a few pictures to give merit to my words (one of which is at the top of the post):
Hence the Rohan comment (It's a Lord of the Rings reference).
Lots of rain means frequent rainbows.