Einbahn a ticket to ride: Yes, we've got DeGualle to do it again!!!!

click below!

Paris and Toulouse

Here is the first part of pictures I took from France! Dont forget there are pictures below!!!

So Off i went on my week holiday from work to meet up with Allison in Paris and to tour around the south west of France. We were off to Toulouse and Bordeaux with a day trip to Carcassonne for good measure!!!
In this album you've got Paris where i met Allison and then went to meet Yelba! And then Yelba brought Another two people i worked with at camp who i didnt realize were back in Paris so that was a really great added bonus!!!! We had lunch together and a amble around Paris...to Notre Dame...specifically to see the Charlemagne statue and then to the Effile Panda exhibit....random i know. It was some random exhibit for WWF....and i badly wanted to steal on eof those little pandas.....the only security guard was taking pictures of someone i totally could have nabbed one....but im sure i would have been caught!!!!

Then we took a train down to Toulouse and walked to what we warmly refer to as our Accommodation Facility, as it was no where near either a hostel or a hotel. But it was dirt cheap and one metro stop or two from the city centre. It was all round sketchiness from the paper sheets, to the giant hole burned in my square blanket...square...for a rectangle bed....And the bathroom which had a shower head and a curtain just hanging out....no raised shower area...and as the caption says...a broom to sweep up the water...great....

So we did lots of walking the next dya and people watching in the squares especially in the morning with all the little old French people. French people im learning are not as hunched as old scottish people...just saying....We found a nice park where children were playing on a giant rotating wheel....that i nick named the danger wheel there is no way it was safe...NO WAY...

And then we met up with my friend James from Uni last year and he gave us a tour of a few churches and the university where he's on exchange! And the river which we never would have ventured down to!!!

The next day i think was our carcassonne day so ill leave that for the next round of picutres....But as you see in these, St Thomas was buried in the Jacobin church which is SO great!!

The whole area is heaped in Cathar Heretical history which i find amazing and fascinating!!! And i dont care if no one else does but anyway so i was just so in my element and took millions of pictures so enjoy Part one and look forward to parts 2-5.....i took on average 100 pictures a day.... YAY!!!!

Oh and please...the title of the post....I decided we needed to name our trip...and Einbahn refers to an unfortunate afternoon roaming Salzburg on our last trip thinking Einbahn was a attraction rather than the German word for One Way....and well the rest is self explanitory.....

Enjoy!!!

Who's House....Grandad's House!!!

Hey everyone,
Here are the pictures I took from a walk up the street to see Grandad's old house!! 2 Elm Road...also there are some pictures of a photoshoot i did up Calton hill again!!!


Link below!!

Who's House, Grandad's House

Tawit Tawit TA WHAT!?

Welcome to the new layout, I figured since it is no longer summer I needed to change it up a little and the dots seemed fun....thoughts?!

Alright so its been a while but its harder to blog now that im working. Yes thats right I work now, everyday...which is good, but generally i work from 4 to 6 every evening which isnt really a ton of hours. I work Saturdays and Sundays too which isnt fun but it gets me up and out and meeting people. The other instructors from my main company are really great, ive really got on well with most of them. Some are ex swimmers like my buddy Darren who is trying to make common wealth games this year. He's a history dork like I am and an amazing swimmer. He also has a car which is nice...i may or may not make him feel guilty until he drives me home after some shifts...it works out well for me!!

At first teaching for this new company was rough, I didnt understand the program and i had recieved no induction course so it was just GO! and at first i was very unhappy...but Ive got my head around the system now and its a pretty great program. Its different and unique in Scotland but apparently is very common in Australia and America..and I think really needs to come to Canada, and I will attempt this in the next 10-20 years i figure. Ill do a little export service. The women who runs the company is an utter nutbar. She took over training and babbled on about bejing for a good hour and belittled all the new instructors, had us do an exercise and then didnt wrap up or teach us anything...but they pay me for it bah ha. Generally for those who are Edinburgh inclined. I work at George Watsons college and Royal High school out in Davidson mains. So im really getting a chance to see the city more than i would if i worked in a office. Oh I also work at Leith Academy which is cool and warmer than most pools. I've just been filling out my paper work so i get paid for this month...for whatever reason we get paid monthly....and its the most awful system but i guess its a system that works for them...we'll see im sure i did something wrong!!!
My favorite thing is that I get to teach the little kids how to do breaststroke and dolphin kick....so they get to be froggies and mermaids. There is nothing quite like lining up four 5 year olds and listening to them going RIBBBBBIIIITTTTT as they boot along down the pool. One little girl on Saturdays has a private lesson with me, and she loves to do the froggie kick....and we're one of three people in the pool so she ribbits realy loud and then we alternate between a baby frog...which sounds like a screeching disaster and a big frog which is just her yelling RIBBBITTTTT(with scottish accent it comes out...RRUUUBBBBIIITT) while Darren scowles at me and her mother just sits laughing! She is fantastic swims all over now up and down to the bottom under and over....its great but the poor kid is only 5 so we spend half the time playing....i get to put her on my back and dolphin dive or i flot on my back and she paddles like she's on a boat..ahahaha...so great love getting paid well to play!!!

Other than work ive kept to myself mostly trying to find a schedule to stick to, doing errands during the late mornings then getting to work in the early afternoon and catching up on tasks at night...i havent been out to visit anyone and i really should. The only other thing is that im volunteering with a Brownie Troop now, which is fabulous, they are great and im getting back in the swing of the lingo of brownies....its changed so much though, they all have these cute tracksuits..no more dresses and ties. And badge sashes are optional...which broke my heart a little...they've also changed the badges slightly...no more sewing homemaking badges...there is a construction badge which has a hammer on it which i find amusing...Sadest part though...no more toadstool...sigh!!!Good news is we still Serve our Queen and our God...at least some things stay the same...i know you were all worried!(it does make it interesting that other faiths are somewhat excluded as it is primarily a Christian based club for girls....seems rather unfair,...)

On the other hadn below are some pictures from my adventure to Stirling castle...the one outing i did get. My boy Jack took me out, he has a car so we drove out to Stirling for the day and I with my massive camera thoroughly played tourist whilst he tried to look at Scottish as possible so that we didnt look like the biggest tourists there....but my accent is like a sore thumb...

Amazing caslte though, its nice and compact, and walking the walls you really get some great views!! Its a pretty big castle historically even more so than Edinburgh as it was the royal residence of Mary Q of S. And the place where most of the kings and queens were baptized. We actually took a tour as we figured that would be the best way to see the castle...our guide was a very very proud Scots man who, while we both agreed was very good, we kinda poo pooed us both being history majors and no mom i didnt say anything out loud that he would hear....i kept the brat in me hidden!!! But the architecture is just amazing they brought an Italian in to do the one building which i show you in the pictures, the building sticks out terribly and i wasnt really all that fond of it, but apparently all the buildings were painted in that white wash colour on top of the stone, and the gargoyles and the sculptures were all painted in bright amazing colours which just blows my mind! Someone needs to restore a castle to that type of colour scheme!! It was good to be shown around by someone who knew Stirling, Jack went to the university of Stirling so i got to see the town and eat at some good restaurants there!



http://picasaweb.google.com/liz.swanson/StirlingCastle#

I think thats it for my little adventure for the month though as i work everyday...but get ready for super blog in October when I venture back across the channel(speaking of one of the guys i worked with swam across the channel last week...crazy kid) to the Auld country to meet up with Allison and see a bit of the French South.....YAY!!! Meeting up with some people from school last year on exchange and a few people I worked with last summer as well :)!

Enjoy the pictures!

The girls Invade!!!! See what happens when a little bit of Home comes to visit me...

Please enjoy responsibly....more pictures from this weekend to come! I know you are all excited.



And slide show with captions click below!
http://picasaweb.google.com/liz.swanson/TheGirlsInvadeScotland#

Older Pictures I forgot to Post...please see post below!!!!!

ROAD TRIP and the FATEFULL DAY AT THE ZOO

Cambodian Dancing, Joan Rivers and Glasgow...the Hamilton of Scotland...well except for the actual Hamilton of Scotland

Things have both rocketed ahead and at the same time slowed right down to a dead crawl and its driving me crazy.

For starters I had my training where i felt like a complete idiot, my boss was trying to get us to go back to basics...but its the same stuff i've been doing for years and I just hated it, but she did take a look at my breaststroke and fixed it up a little which is pretty great considering Ive been doing it wrong and its pained me for ages.
But then on Friday I had two interviews, one with a very sketchy company that would let me teach any way i want but only for 10 pounds an hour which isn't great...and then in the afternoon a interview for an amazing company who will pay me 13 and give me some Swim Fast experience. But i had to quit my first job in order to do it....sigh....so i did, returned all the equipment and now i work every day get paid well.....i start on saturday but i still dont really know what i'm supposed to teach....i don't have the program booklet and that stresses me out a bit...i know ill be just fine but i would like to see what goes where!!!

so i made that decision and then i took some time getting myself organized in our flat, my girls from home were coming on the saturday of the next week so i hung out went out a few times with people and in general just got ready for "THE ARRIVAL!"
Jess was off to Ireland with her boyfriend to his brothers wedding so it was just me!! All in all i dont think i did a lot in those few days tried to find exporations and all that it was pretty fun!

But Saturday when my girls came...Laurian i knew from university, she was the first person i met in residence and she was in my program and then her two friends Aubrey and Jess(who used to live with one of my best friends Yaz from middle school). I had met the two girls when visitin laurian numerous times so it was good fun. I picked them up at the train station late and made them drag their bags down to our place and then i ate the amazing peanut butter they brought for me from home and watermelon slices!! they also brought me KD....love it!!! No one here gets KD they just dont understand how we can love floresant powdered cheese!!!
So the next day i took them up Arthur's Seat we had a little photo shoot and then we headed up slowly to the castle for the afternoon...i say slowly becuase the fringe stuff is still on on the Mile and it takes forever to push your way through, its my favorite part of the festival though you get to chat wth the most random people about their shows...i always lie and act really interested....Dad did that last time we were here and it just makes it much more entertaining...(as a side bar i saw one stand up act and it was fabulous very funny guy...i also dragged poor jack to the second fringe sunday where they have previews in the meadows and its like a giant fair like the one in haliburton with the food trucks..oh it was amazing)
Anyway so we did the castle which was good took some good pictures and all that jazz...and then we headed to dinner at pizza hut(yaya i know but sometimes you have to) And then we all got ready to go out to some music!
I took the girls to see Mace play at the globe, good ole times, and they fell in love with him as quickly as i thought they would...Ewan McGregor look alike with a voice like that....albiet with a Australian accent is pretty irresistible. He sang for hours such a good show the girls loved it! And then we stumbled our way home...i think...or no we took a taxi....
Early start the next day off to the stores of Princes Street did a bit of retail thearpy...and then Aubs and Jess went to the art museums and laur and i shopped and hung out a bit....we ate lunch all together at a place called...BAD ASS...picked purely on name and it was so kitch so awesome!

Then we headed on to a bus tour of the city...and when the bus never arrived the ticket man let us get on another for free so off we went around the city freezing our butts off and loving it, giggling....we got all the way around and jumped on our original bus the "Horrible Histories" tour as narrated by Terry Dreary, so so funny and we sat on the top deck of the bus....where it had recently just poured and we got soaked....so cold so wet and just laughing hysterically. And we just jumped off close to my place bought some stir fry materials and had a big dinner!! Then we played cards all night and just acted silly and the next day we all went to Glasgow!
Not my most favorite city its much like Hamilton, but it was fun we saw the important buildings and then hoped on another city bus tour they make theirs about 2 hours but they take you down almost every street in glasgow so its not as good....and we got off at the Tall ship and had a little bit of a photoshoot on this ship....eyepatch included...pictures coming soon.....Then we went shopping again and then met with a friend of theirs who is from canada but lives in Glasgow with her husband, and she took us to a great Italian restaurant for dinner and then we stayed in a hostel. We had a ridiculous evening of drinks and giggling....just fun all over.

In the morning i headed back to edinburgh on laurians train ticket and the girls headed to the airport for their flight to Dublin :(
It was a fabulous few days i loved every minute of it!

So then i was sad that they had left...until i got a text that same day from Laura (cousin from England that came last summer and i went down for her grandmothers birthday) She and Ben had come up for the festival and were staying with Ben's friend Bryoni. So on Friday i met up with them and we walked all over looking for shows and ended up going to see a Cambodian traditional dance show....most random thing ever, we got to sit up in the balcony which only had us and this random couple up there and it was in an old church righ off princes street. And it was just ridiculous these are kids who live on the streets in cambodia and they spend time learning traditional dance to get them off the street and yea it was crazy they showed a video at the end and then tried to get us to buy scarves and donate money....Western guilt was insanely prominent at this point...the worst part that Ben pointed out was that we had gone to the half price hut and didnt even pay full price for the ticket....sigh...so then we headed out to the Underbelly(large inflatable upsidedown purple cow tent) We sat and had a drink or two, and without lunch were quit giggly....and then....laura started freaking out and there right in front of us was Joan Rivers and her entire family just chilling looking at the merchandise hut. And so the two of us freaked out i took pictures on her cell and we just watched her for a bit, and then i explained about her preshow crap at the oscars and stuff, and then i wa slike im surprised her daughter isnt here...and then i look...THERE SHE WAS.(the funniest part was Laura had just askd if i had ever seen celebrities hanging around and i was like psshhhaw no way man)
So then we went to their friends place and had dinner...Haggis...both vegetarian and regular and some potatoes and then got drunk (well this just makes it sound bad im sorry i dont drink all the time) and played Balderdash which im very very good at.

Well thats my update for now!!!

Dont forget to look at pictures below!! Many more to come!

More pictures

and the external link if you want the captions!

Maryfield Place and My Wander up Calton Hill