Busy Week!

Hello dear friends, oh how I have missed thee! Lol



I was at Chris's this weekend - it was great. I went down on Thursday evening after all my classes had finished. We had a pretty good time just doing all the normal things. Choir on Friday and Sunday, pub on Saturday and Sunday nights etc etc. Chris has a class on Friday afternoon, just the one, so while he was at that I went shopping! I bought a birthday present for Andrew and a new dress for myself to wear out on Saturday (my wardrobe was in serious need of some new additions - I've worn all my other dresses about a hundred times each!!)



On Saturday afternoon we drove over to Kirby Knowle to see Chris's mum, Helen, and her partner Barry. There house is pretty cold so we had bacon rolls and cups of tea and we made a fire to keep warm :) We went for a walk with the dogs and we chattered a lot, and Helen made a roast dinner, which was lovely :) For pudding we had a delicious dessert called Chocolate Mud, which is very similar to Brownies but has no flour in it. Gorgeous sticky gooey fun! Very good with ice cream :)



Sunday was church as usual, then Chris's dad Peter made a roast dinner for lunch as well! We had lamb, which was just delicious, and for pudding we had a plum and apple crumble with custard. I must say that now I'm back at the flat I'm really missing proper home cooking - warm bagels with butter are nice, as are cheese toasties, and tomato and cheese pasta. But it's not quite the same :(



As for this week, my schedule's pretty tight! I got the train back on Monday morning in time for classes, then in the afternoon I had a shift at work and didn't get to bed until late.
Tuesday brought my only full day of classes, starting at 10, and finishing supposedly at 5, but this week we didn't get out until 6 because something went wrong with the statistics program in my Psychology practical class. Then in the evening I started revision for the Classical Art Slide Test (they show us a slide show of pictures and we have to write about them for just a few minutes each!) which counts for 25% of my grade for the course this semester!
This morning (Wednesday) I started at 10 o'clock again. I have this one hour off between my two classes, then at half 1 I'm meeting someone for lunch before heading to the library to do reading for a tutorial tomorrow and some more revision. This evening I'm looking after a girl I know with special needs - her mum and I are taking her to a trampoline centre, so that in the future I can take her myself. After that I may be going to see High School Musical 3 with my flatmates and friends, if I get back in time that is!
Tomorrow I have two lectures and a rather taxing tutorial (it's taxing because our tutor is Italian and her English is not always clear, and also because she asks questions which are totally different from the ones in the preparation, and expects really developed complex answers) In the afternoon I'm working again, then in the evening it'll be even more studying!
On Friday I'll be studying some more in the morning, then I'm going to Glasgow late afternoon to stay here until Saturday. On Saturday is the Scottish Scouting AGM, at which I'm doing a presentation of the major events of the last year. It's in the form of a news program, and I'm one of the presenters!
On Saturday evening, once I've got back from Glasgow, I'm heading up to the Scout Centre at Bonaly for a training course and staying over there on Saturday night, to do two more courses on Sunday morning. I finish at one o'clock then I'm getting picked up (by my dear darling parents) and whisked away to Gang Show rehearsals on the other side of the city! After Gang Show I may do some shopping, go to the house to see my dear family for the evening, then probably head back to the flat before bed time.


See you in a few days or so! If I can keep up! :)

Getting Better

I caught the flu last weekend! It's been pretty miserable. Felt terrible all day Saturday and went to bed early. Didn't go to church on Sunday morning because I just felt like death and I didn't want to spread my germs around anyway. I had to go to Gang Show on Sunday afternoon because I'd missed the week before and we were setting new items, so I spent most of the afternoon feeling terrible and wanting to go back to bed. My wonderful Dad came and gave me a lift home afterwards and made my tea for me, and that all made me feel much better. On Monday morning I was still all bunged up and I ached everywhere, but I dutifully got all my things together and headed back into town to the flat to drop off my bags before i went to class. However, I felt so ill while I was on the bus that I decided it would be better just to stay in bed. I didn't waste my time though - I did some reading, and I prepared a programme for Cubs in the evening. I couldn't go myself but it was my turn, so I had to go into uni to email the stuff to Jackie, the other leader. Then I made myself some scrummy cauliflower and bacon soup (see the recipe on the BBC Food website here) and went to bed early. Despite my good intentions however, I didn't get to sleep until about 4 am! :(


On Tuesday I got up fine, and I didn't feel tired all day! I still felt flu-ey though but I coped. I had a couple of lectures then I had lunch with two friends before my Psychology practical class. It was supposed to run from 2pm to 5pm, which is pretty long, but we did something strange to the data set we were working with and we were there until half 6 trying to sort it out! But we had to get it done that afternoon because we have to write a report on it for Monday (I've nearly finished mine!). You may think we shouldn't have left it to the last minute, but the data was from a questionnaire experiment that the year group did themselves, and we'd only just got all the data collated so that we could use it in our statistics package (it's the Psychology Teaching Fellow who does that, not the students). It's pretty tough then, because we only had essentially 5 and a half days to write the whole report! Like I said though, mine is pretty much finished. I just have a couple paragraphs of the discussions left to do.


Speaking of which, I suppose I'd better get back to work. Sorry this is a rubbish post, but my brain is mangled! I felt I should write something though as you must all be missing me terribly!

Published Again!

I got published again! Aren't you proud of me! In the same little magazine as last time. Here is the layout for this time:




My mum is the taller girl, with her mum and her sister :) Also, the date is a typo! It was meant to be around 1968, not 58!!





I've been really busy so I haven't updated here in a while. I now have a much better photo of my ring to show you (Thanks Dad!!)




Uni has been really busy. I start all my tutorial classes this week so I'm now doing 13 hours of classes each week, and the rest of my time seems to be spent studying too! Second year is a lot more hard work than first year was.





I went to Chris's this weekend, and only came back today (had to get up at 4.45 am to get to the station to get a train home in time for my 10 o'clock tutorial!!)
I had a really good weekend. On Saturday I joined with members of Chris's church's choir and loads of other church choirs from the Yorkshire Diocese to sing in York Minster (the Cathedral) in an Festival Evensong for the Yorkshire area of the Royal School of Church Music. We got the bus from Guisborough to York, and had an hour to find lunch (I had a gorgeous chicken pasty) before signing in and getting changed into our robes for the rehearsal in the Minster. We sang through all the music with the Minster's musical director, Robert Sharpe, (quite a hottie ;) then we had a processional rehearsal (yes - we had to practise walking into the nave in lines and going to our seats!) We only had a half hour break between then and the actual evensong service - just time to put our surplices on and have a drink and a snack.




I really enjoyed singing the service, although Chris and his friend Ste were in the congregation rather than singing, and they said that it wasn't great because the conductor's style wasn't clear enough for a 200-strong choir. At this point I should mention that Chris never enjoys these services, and so he is a biased critic, and I didn't believe it was as bad as he said!





Anyway, I'd better get back to my uni work - I have a practise Slide Test for Classical Art tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock!



Bye for now

First Week Back

Well I've finished all my classes for this week :) I have a really nice time table. Although I did just get a tutorial allocated for 10 o'clock on Monday morning, which is going to make coming home from Chris's rather unpleasant. But it is also only every 2 weeks so if I'm careful then I should be able to book to go down all the "right" weekends. I'm going down next weekend though, and that is, I think, a "wrong" weekend, so i need to go to the station and change my train time.



Classes have all been pretty good. Psychology is interesting so far, as is Classical Art - I've had three lectures of each now. Ancient History only had one lecture this week (normally they have two and a tutorial) and it was really boring. We had to watch a video of an interview of an historian, and the sound on it was really bad so it was hard to follow the conversation, and also it didn't really seem to be that relevant. We had a list of questions to consider in relation to the video but it was so difficult to hear what was being said that I have no idea what the answers to the questions may have actually been in this guy's opinion. But never mind.



My social life has been great this week :) on Monday night, after cubs, I joined my flatmates and Guy at the Tron for the end of their pub quiz and a drink or two. We did really rubbish in the quiz, but we beat the staff team so we were happy enough.

On Tuesday night, Marsailidh and I went to the BLOGS welcome social (its the Edinburgh Uni Society for Lesbians, Gays etc) - not because we are in any way gay, but because we have friends who are and we knew it would be good fun - and indeed it was. We played some silly games in the Student Union, to get to know everyone a bit, and a lady from the Advice Place (the uni's counselling and advice centre) came and gave a talk on safe sex and handed out free condoms (which Marsailidh and I then proceeded to blow up and play balloon volley ball with...) Afterwards we went to a bar in town for a while, and lots of people went on to the club next door (called Vibe, it's awesome fun! I've been before) but Marsailidh and I went home instead because we were tired and had classes on Wednesday morning.

Tonight we are going to the Edinburgh University Snow Sports Club (EUSSC) welcome social, and that should be awesome fun too!!

love and hugs,
Katie

Back to Uni

Term starts tomorrow and I'm really excited :) I haven't seen some of my classmates since we went on study leave back in April so it'll be good to catch up with them.



I went into the Psychology department on Thursday morning to sign up for my main course and my outside subjects, expecting it to be a five minute job before I could head to the computing lab and the internet, however it seems I was out of luck that morning. When it got to my turn, the secretary looked me up on her computer and explained she that because I changed my degree from Classical Studies last year to Psychology this year, I had to be assigned a new Director of Studies who would oversee my Psychology degree, and this had not yet happened. In order to "get" a DoS I had to go and find the new office of the School of Psychology, Philosophy and Linguistics, which was in the not-fully-finished new building nearby. Having calmed the fiery beast who was receptionist of this new building, by signing in by my full name and the exact time, I found my way to the lift and then to the correct room on the correct floor, and I introduced myself to David who quickly had my switched to a DoS of the correct subject, and sent him an email, just to let him know the situation. Then he sent me back down to the secretary in the other building where I would then be able to sign up for my courses.



So back I went and I got signed up on my Psychology course, then the secretary attempted to find the two Classics courses which followed on from what I did last year. We did find the two courses but it appeared from the information that they only lasted for the first semester, and there were no recommended follow-on courses listed in their information. So I signed up for them anyway, then headed out to a different building, and up 5 flights of stairs to the Classics office to find out what the story is. The Course Secretary there explained to me that in term 1, they run Classical Literature in Translation 2a, Ancient History 2a and Classical Art and Architecture 2a, for second year students, and in term 2 they run Classical World 2b: Classical Myth and Religion, and Classical Word 2d: Art, History and Power (she didn't mention a third choice...) which all sounded quite complex to me. I went to the library to read up on the different courses and in the end chose the subjects with morning classes, so that I'll be free every afternoon bar one, when I'll have to do labs for Psychology.



So having gone in at half past 10 for a five minute job, I was all finished and signed up (and a lot better exercised) by quarter to 12! Despite my troubles, I'm glad I got it done, and I'm very pleased with my timetable, as my weekend starts at Thursday lunchtime!! That is good news, of course, because it means I'll be able to visit Chris for that little bit longer. Speaking of which, I haven't yet told you properly about all the excitement of last weekend, but that shall no doubt come in due course, so watch this space.



Also a heads up to my dad's blog emerging-ministry.blogspot.com My parent's had their 30th wedding anniversary yesterday, and there's a nice picture of them in his celebratory update, along with some chat about the church he's working at over the next 15 months.



Thanks for reading all the way to the end :)

I got a ring!!!!! :D

I arrived this weekend at Chris' and there was a ring waiting on the pillow for me :D

Published!!!

Seems like all my blog titles at the moment are past tense verbs followed by exclaimation marks!

Well, this time is less exciting, but it's still cool :) I submitted a layout to the DSP Inspiration Station a month or two ago, and it got picked :)


Here is the advertising magazine thing it's in, and here's the layout itself:




To see it bigger go here.

Thanks for looking :)

*edit* Temporary isssue has been fixed - I re uploaded the photo :)

"Engaged" by Carolat

Thanks to Carolat for making this gorgeous page for Chris and I!

See it closer here

Olympic Medalists

Yesterday (Wednesday) in Edinburgh 4 of the Scottish members of the Olympic Team GB treated us to a parade down the Royal Mile in an open topped-bus! The pavements on both sides were totally packed, with people balancing on top of bins and bollards, hundreds of press photographers, and a cavalcade of police on motorcycles and mountain bikes. We followed the bus down the lower half of the Mile, to the end of the parade in Holyrood Park. The carpark had been closed off and was filled with hundreds and hundreds of cheering supporters, including several groups of school children.



The 4 athletes were Chris Hoy (the triple-gold track cylist), David Florence (won silver in the Canoe slalom), Katherine Grainger (good name that - member of the silver-winning triple sculls ladies rowing team) and Ross Edgar (also a cyclist - won silver in the team sprint).
They spent maybe an hour with the press and the public, giving photos and autographs and interviews. I saw a few people I knew in the crowd, including one of my old cubs, and we met up with my friend Martin, who's the head ranger of the Park, so he was able to get us a lift home in one of their awesome vans!!

I was really hoping to get my picture taken with Chris Hoy, and to touch one of his gold medals, but he was really busy. I did manage to get a really good picture with David Florence though, and was very pleased to shake his hand and discover that even a silver medal is really heavy and really cool!

I'm Engaged!!

I thought perhaps that this link to my Dad's blog might be of interest to you :)


"Engagement Announced"



But just for good measure:


Chris and I offically announced our engagement to my whole family this Saturday, so now I am welcome to tell the world without worrying that people find out in the wrong order and things getting awkward.



We have ordered a gorgeous ring from a jewellers in his town, but it had not arrived before he came to visit me this weekend so I'm afraid I can't show you a picture. Although don't worry, you'll see one as soon as I have had it long enough to take a photo and upload it :)



*dances the happy dance*