Heya!

I'm happy to anounce I now live with four lovely Scotts, first years in Architecture, IT, and business in Napier. They are slighly younger than me, they speak really fast, they roll the 'R' and often fight on how to pronounce words, which does not help me that much.
And it's like, in the middle of the city, in the old town. Let me translate: the location is perfect.

You see? I'm the red point. Just besides the well known castle. I'm 10min walk away from Prince's Street, the main shopping street, 1min away from 3 or 4 groceries, and 2min away from Starbucks. P-E-R-F-E-C-T.
Oh and it's 20min away in bus from my campus, which is largely bearable.

It's been two weeks now, so I'm starting to get used to the life here and I don't get lost as much as before (like, maybe once every other day, not twice each day). That being said, I still stick to my flatmates each time we go out on clubs or to the cinema, because in those tiny streets there is no way I would be able to find my way back home if I was to lose them.

That brings me to another source of amazement in my everyday life: Scots. The average temperature here is 0°C in January, around 3° in February, which would be ok if it wasn't for this terrible horrible wind. Well, Scots do not seem to fear the cold. They go out in clubs in t-shirts and crop tops, because, eh, it would be too much trouble to have to leave their coats in the checkroom - when I'm here with my biggest coat and still freezing to death. Wearing tights as a girl probably makes you weak! They do seem a bit cold, but my flatmates never got ill since I’m here… Viking blood, obviously!

But I do not spend all my time and money in clubs, I also go around and visit quite a bit, with a new German friend I met during my Scottish Culture lecture. So far I've been to Berwick, a small town in the North of Edinburgh, visit the Dirleton Castle from the 12th Century; I've been to Leith, the port of Edinburgh, to the Meadows, a big park you can see on the picture above to the South to the Castle, I spent a lot of time in Prince's Street and in the Old Town. So I'm making a bucket list to be sure not to forget to do anything.

The Bucket List:

-Visit Edinburgh Castle (We'll do it soon in my Scottish Culture & Society class)
-Visit Grassmarket
-Visit George Herio's School
-Visit the Royal Botanic Gardens
-Climb Arthur's Seat (It's a hill and I am definitively waiting until march to do this)
-Try Fish&Chips (For the reccord, I'm one of those people who hate fish)
-Have porridge
-Go to the pub
-Have an english Breakfast
-Go to the port
-Go to the National Museum of Scotland
-Visit the Zoo
-Have a walk in Prince's Street Gardens
-Have a walk in the Meadows
-Visit Giklerton Cove

What else? I'm suffering from the lack of food. Everything is really expensive compared to France and meat, especially beaf, is clearly unaffordable and also quite rare (£8.5 the single steak, uh)(Chicken is a bit easier to find). It's seems that my flatmates only eat pre-cooked and ready meals... I went to Mark & Spencer, hoping I would find some good basic food, and I was stunned to see that the 3/4 of the store was only ready meals. But don't worry, I managed to find some fine tea, pasta and rice, so there's no way I'll starve to death! (I did try some ready meals. Fresh chinese chicken noodles were ok. Beaf steak and fries really had me disapointed though)

My next article will bring a bit more details about my university and the courses i'm taking!

To be continued...

- This is an edit of a previous article -

HI THERE!

I'm Laureen Perroud, a 2nd year business student at ESDES, a french business school in Lyon.
I'm going to spend my fourth semester - from january to may 2015 - in one of our partner universities in the UK:

'Edinburgh Napier University'

Edinburgh, Scotland.

Yeah I know, sounds cool. I'll explain later what I actually do in it.
So here's a few things about me, to make sure you plainly understand the situation:

1) It's the first time I'm going to live abroad for more than 3 weeks

2) It's also the first time I'm going to be away from my beloved family for more than 3 weeks

3) I do not speak english very well, even if I am quite good at reading and understanding, and my accent is really awkward

4) I choose to come at Napier. I know it's not usually my fellow student's first choice, but it's mine. 

5) This results from me spending a few days in Edinburgh in 2012. Long story short, I fell in love with the city.

Great, right? Well, all of this somewhat explains why I choose to ask for student's accomodation from Napier. Let me rephrase: in order to REALLY improve my english and taste the local culture, I choose not to stay with my colleagues from France, but to find at all costs an english speakers flat. Now you can probably imagine that when you ask for accomodation, especially in the middle of the academic year, you cannot chose your future flatmates, in fact you cannot even know who they are before you actually step into the common room. I thought I would eventually end up in an international flat.

Little did I know that I would lend into a very crowded Scottish flat...