My thoughts and feelings

First off, the bus picked me up right on campus, so there was no real hassle there. We first stopped off at Doune Castle, about 15 minutes from Stirling campus. Doune is not super famous, but it was used in Game of Thrones, for which castle, I have no idea.

  From there, we stopped off in the village of Calendar to pick up a little lunch.

    Again, we were back on the road, and we made a few more inconsequential stops, mostly just for the views, so I’ll post those below, but our main destination was this spot in the hills which we walked for about 20 minutes to get to. What I’ll do is combine all those pictures together to make it easy to view :)

    The next few stops were Harry Potter stops, one not as iconic as the other, but both still very much staples of the movies. For those that are curious, the first was used in a scene from Prisoner of Azkaban, where Harry utilizes the Patronus charm to essentially same himself from certain doom. The other is the bridge.

    The site of Hagrid’s hut in Prisoner of Azkaban was actually right around the corner from the lake we saw, but because of the nature of the contract the film crew was given, they were able to put up the hut to film, but had to take it down once they were done. In terms of the loch near the bridge, I am not sure what its name is, but for a good deal of time, I thought it was Loch Ness, which of course it wasn’t.

From the bridge, we only made one more major stop, and that was to a castle which was the home of a man who legend says could talk to birds. It got to a point where the majority of what our tour guide was saying ended with a chuckle, as he was very fond of telling shaggy dog jokes, which have always driven me insane, but he told them in such a compelling way that it was hard not to smile. Anyway, the castle looked really pretty at night, as did the rolling hills on our way to our accommodations.

    The next day, we trekked out to the Isle of Skye, through pretty standard Scottish weather, and our first stop was the Fairy Pools, which on a normal day would have most likely looked a lot nicer than they did when we saw them, as there would have been a lot less of a current and more of a serenity to the place. Still, the view was pretty nice.

    By the time I got back to the bus, I felt like I’d run through the Atlantic from the States to Scotland the entire way, and I do mean run. The wind was horrible too, but our tour guide took us to another spot that he loved that made up for the wind a bit.

    The guy in the second picture is a friend of my tour guide’s, and he was standing with his arms spread because the wind was so incredibly strong. This area has been used for a few different films, Skyfall being one of them. They were also using it when they were filming the BFG, the adaptation of the Roald Dahl story.

From here, we went to the Fairy Glenn, which to my knowledge does not get nearly as much praise as the Fairy Pools do, although I think they are way prettier. This area is host to about 300 smallish mountain-like grass covered hills, with steppe-like features all over them.

    I forgot to include this earlier, but before we got to the Skyfall/BFG spot, we stopped off by the coast to take a peek at what we were told was a dinosaur footprint. Whether or not it’s a real one, I am not actually sure, but it looked real enough to me

    The last major stop we made that day was going out to the coast again to try to catch the sunset, and although it was super cloudy, we were still able to get a pretty impressive view.

    The last day, we returned to the castle of the bird-talker, and from there, we headed off to Fort Augustus, right on the edge of Loch Ness.

    Before we got to Loch Ness, actually, our tour guide decided to take us to one of his favorite spots, because we had been so accommodating and good-natured the whole weekend, and it was another impressive view.

    Fort Augustus itself is a very cute town, and the Loch is a sight to behold in it of itself. Supposedly, it is about 750 feet deep, and could hold the entirety of the Earth’s population something like 1o times over if it was completely drained. And it’s super cold. Which is why kids from my trip jumped in.

    The two at the top right are our tour guide and his friend. Again, someone else was taking their picture for them, but I took it more for me. The bottom left is the restaurant that served the best fish and chips I’ve ever had, hands down. And the sign on the bottom right is just a silly design that I liked.

The last spot we hit on our tour was this interesting woodland walk that was at one point an extension of a manor, but any other information about it has since escaped my memory. It was a pretty place, though.

    I couldn’t possibly praise this trip enough, so I am not going to try, but everything about it was simply heartwarming, and I would 100% encourage anyone interested in a compelling three-day tour in the Scottish Highlands to seriously consider spending it with Heartland Travel.

In order to be as transparent as possible, I think now is as good a time as any to share some of the pictures I took when I visited the William Wallace Memorial Tower right by Stirling campus, too. It is a really good hike up, and I met a very sweet older couple with a funny little dog when I stopped to take some pictures.

  Now, I hate heights. I hate them. Anyone who is willing to tell me that it’s possible to face my fears and get over my fear of heights is a bad person. But I did it for the sake of not being teased by friends and family for not going up there when it’s so close to campus.

    That’s pretty much everything that has been going on in terms of me exploring Scotland so far: oh, and this cute little candy shop.

    Other than that, everything else had been pretty much uneventful. I’ll let you know when that changes :) And it will.

My flat is honestly a good 15 minute walk to main campus, too. I had read something like that before I came, and kind of just shrugged it off thinking that it was probably not true, but the University of Stirling used is a 350 acre piece of land that used to be private property before the opened it up for the new wave of universities to be constructed in the UK (U of S was the first of that batch, too).

This is looking back down the path I come up from when I leave my flat. Granted, it was a foggy mid-morning, but it is still a very beautiful shot, if I do say so myself ;)

  I am realizing now that I don’t have any real good pictures of the golf course on campus lol. I have this really foggy one, though, same day as the others.

  This is from the same day, and a little further after the golf course. This is Airthrey Castle, and yes, there is indeed a castle on campus :)

Last weekend I also figured out how to utilize the special bus system here at the University, too, so I took it into Stirling proper and went to go see the big castle there. Some of you might have already seen the cannon shot I posted earlier today or yesterday, but there are a few more I’ve kept specifically for this blog :)

  For now, I think that pretty much sums up everything that has been going on with me up until now, but if you would like to keep up with absolutely all of my writing, be sure to check Facebook in the next couple of days, because I may or may not have started writing again for an organization I’ve had some history with :) Here’s hoping the relaxed schedule here will allow me to keep up with both writing outlets at the same time!

Hey everyone, this is going to be my first post of hopefully many to come over the next few months! It took a little bit of getting used to, but I think I’ve sufficiently figured out how to  use this site to put out the nicest looking blog I can, which was my goal from the outset. I’ve used Google Blogger before, and while I actually really like how Google does some of there own versions of the…

I’m different from my peers,

I don’t think the same way,

When they run, I walk,

When they’re quiet, I talk,

And question why I do it every day.

I was not a sad child,

I was just a bit demure,

People thought I was sad,

Which made me mad,

And I don’t want to be asked any more.

I don’t care if I’m accepted,

Like so many kids do,

And since one cannot be changed,

He who is self-estranged,

Then what must I get through?

Sometimes I feel like I’m falling,

a fear I dread and dread,

I feel like I’m alone,

In a place dark and unknown,

But I know it’s all in my head.

I feel overweight,

heavy with these pains,

The snake around,

holding me to the ground,

stricken by these chains.

Yet within my body,

lodged in my head,

Is something most foul,

It’d make anyone howl,

It is my greatest feeling: dread.

It keeps me from expressing

how I really feel,

And no matter what I try,

It only makes me cry,

And I’m trapped, unable to heal.

And like a wound untreated,

I fester like a sore,

And sore I am,

For with every exam,

I want to stop more and more.

But would it do to end it all?

To seal the wounds with sleep?

Through your tears you pass,

And as your parents lower you beneath the grass,

It’s now their turn to weep.

A quick short simple life,

A cursory glance at what may be,

But you want no more,

As life is a chore,

So instead, like a leaf, you adorn a tree.

And this is what fear can do,

It’s the most vile of its kind,

Can put a frog in your throat,

and a crocodile in the moat,

around the walls that seal off your mind.

But what is most important,

Is not that you can fit in,

It’s that even in the dark,

there’s is always a spark,

for those that wish to begin.

Begin what you ask?

Begin to ease the pains,

That restrain you so,

And one day you’ll know,

The way to sever your chains.

For there is a silver lining,

To every sad tale,

I’ve struggled a lot,

And internally fought,

So that my sanity cannot fail.

For I like this life,

And don’t wish it do end,

I will come to terms with my fears,

And after many years,

This is a long-form version of a dream I had a couple of years ago. It is a weird one, so bear with me. I hope you enjoy :)

Wishing to just be a part of the crowd, I stuck to the back of the auditorium. It was a big room, high ceiling, polished, fine wood stairs and seats. The only weird thing about it was that the incline of the room. When you looked up from the blackboard, it was like looking up the sheer face of a mountain, which is why sitting in the back was ideal. Unfortunately, today there were no clouds at the top, and the professor had sharp eagle eyes, so my hopes of blending in were dashed. It didn’t help that all of my “friends” had no facial features: they had normal heads and hair, but there was no signs of a nose, eye, mouth, or ear on any of their pale faces.

Immediately, the vulture­like professor snapped at us to move down a couple of rows because we were too far back. Slowly and carefully, we descended the mountain. I was impressed at how adroit my peers’ movements were, seeing as they couldn’t. From there, the lecture wrapped up quickly, and for some reason, when we were let out of class, all the other kids with the pumped up kicks, I might add, were even more agile than we were, and we had to get in the back of the line out of the lecture hall.

As we were leaving, another professor brought out a small portable table and put a nice floral tablecloth on it. My vulture friend came around and handed out oranges to every kid, and all she would way to them was, “You can eat the orange, but keep the peel.” That is what I did, but I had no inkling of what that might have meant. I tried to see what was going on in the front of the line, but it was like trying to see cleavage in a nunnery.

As the line thinned down, I realized what we had to do: the Vulture was having every kid throw their peels onto the table, and the object of the “game” was to have it stay on. That was the only way to get to go to the school dance, which for some reason was scheduled right after class. When it was my turn to throw, I took a couple of practice swings, so as to make sure I didn’t

overshoot the table. When I released, I watched the peel soar high and smack down on the table, close to the edge. The Vulture looked down at the table, scowled, and looked up, shaking her head slowly. As I walked away, my peel fell, and as she began to scream for me to return, I bolted down the corridor and made it to the dance.