I managed to submit my last regular S104 assignment for the year. For that course, I have the two more multiple choice tests and the final project (which I haven't even looked at even though it's due in like a month). I am currently putting the most of my energies into the final project for SXR103 and I'm pretty pleased with my progress. I aim to have in the mail by Monday at the latest, but Friday would probably be better, knowing Royal Mail. Since it needs to be trackable it's going to cost a fortune :-( But well, then in case something goes wrong like it did last year, I'll be in the clear.

There is one more assignment for S342, the fourth and final one which covers the whole course and will require quite a bit of prep since I skipped that one topic study earlier on and now need to catch up.

And if I ever get all that done, then there is the exam prep. That's going to be a lot of work too. But I really enjoyed the course so far, so it shouldn't be so bad.

Well, back to work with me.

I'm home, finally. The trip back was fairly uneventful even though I got very little sleep on the bus. Apparently it's a law of nature that there always have to be little children on the bus.

I got a few hours sleep just now, but I think I'm going to go back to bed after I've eaten something. My cold is still plaguing me, so I'm planning to take it easy this weekend seeing that I have to be back at work on Monday. Better not think of that, it makes my head ache even worse. I have so much work to catch up on for my courses that I can't really take out time to be sick.

But a weekend in bed still sounds nice...Plus I brought back a few interesting books. What can I say, I love academic bookstores ;-)

All done with the academic part of my trip! It's been a good week, but also a very long week. I'm simply not used to working 12 hour days :-/ But I met many nice people at the school and the tutors really went out of their way to help us with the work. I should be home in about 18 hours. I can hardly wait. I caught a cold on the field trip and really just want t go to bed right now (maybe shower before that!), but that's not going to happen as I'll be spending the night on a bus which will be making around ten stops or so on the way to London. (At least on the way to Edinburgh, it was a direct bus). In order to kill the rest of the day until my bus leaves tonight, I bought a day ticket for a nearby internet cafe, which is where I am right now, bought a newspaper and a couple of magazines to read and am planning to hit the supermarket later on for snacks and something to drink.

I didn't get as much work done for s342 as I would have liked during the week, so I need to get cracking next week. And there is of course TV to catch up on. And fanfic of course! I wrote the next chapter of Avenging Angel and hope to post it this weekend. Preferably after I've had some sleep...

Today was the (much dreaded) field trip. We went to a place called Aberdour (about 45min from Edinburgh). There we inspected, identified and later counted different species of lichen.

It was about as interesting as it sounds. At least it wasn't raining, although it was was only 14°C and pretty windy. :-/

There was a beach nearby and we did get a lot of odd looks from the locals as we were clambering about the rocks with our clipboards and hard hats! In the afternoon we moved to a second site called Kinghorn, also at the coast. There were had a look at rock formation and learned to identify various types of rock. All in all, we spent about nine hours in the field today, plus another hour of debriefing in the evening.

I'm feeling pretty exhausted from it all. Tomorrow we'll be in the biology lab, examining the effects of radiation on plants.

It's officially the end of day 2 here at the residential school. My feet are sore and I'm tired, although in regard to both of those, I do not seem to be the only one. It was a lab day today - drinking water analysis methods. Pretty easy for me for the most part since I've done quite a bit of chemistry over the years. Tonight we had a safety briefing which was pretty boring. But all in all, the day was good.

Tomorrow we'll be working on a research project, on what exactly we'll find out tomorrow, that we have to present by the end of the day. Not sure if I'm up for a day of intense group work. I'm starting to feel progressively more exhausted and thing like noise sensitivity are cropping up more and more. In the hopes of dampening the stress a bit, I didn't go to the cafeteria today for dinner, but had some quiet time in my room instead. I'm not sure it's helped, but it certainly didn't hurt.

The weather has improved and the sun has even come out a little bit. There is still hope for the field trip, then I guess ;-) Curiosity got the better of me today when Debbie and I were walking back to the halls of residence and heard some weird noise coming from a dust bin. Of course I went to check it out. So I went up to the bin and had a look only to surprise a squirrel on its search for food. It was probably as frightened as I was. I so didn't expect that!

First of all, I have internet, obviously. Plus, all the activities this evening are optional, so I have a bit of time to myself.

It is a bit exhausting and difficult for me to interact with people all the time. I should do some work for S342, but I need some time to unwind first. These long days are really hard for me. We were in the lab all day today, working on an activity titled Rocks and Radioactivity. It was pretty easy, especially the morning session, although it seemed to pass a lot more slowly than the afternoon session. We (my lab partner Debbie and I) got nowhere near done with plotting all the graphs or taking all the measurements for that matter, but I don't think that's so important (for passing the course). I will try and fill in a couple of blanks tonight and have a read through the activity for tomorrow.

It's still rainy and cold. There is a field trip to the coast later this week and I hope that the weather improves by then. The people doing that today came back absolutely drenched. I wouldn't mind the rain so much if the walks between the halls of residence and the teaching labs weren't so far. The breaks for lunch and dinner barely leave enough time to eat, let alone eat and walk back and forth. But all in all, it could be worse. I've had some trouble keeping focused during the afternoon session, but I'm doing okay, I think. But I can't believe that it is only Sunday and that it's going to go on like this for another week! I'm going to be so shattered when this is over.

Arrived early this morning. First order of business was to procure breakfast (easy, plus I stocked up on diet coke aka nectar of the gods), then I set out to find a place to access to 'net.

That proved to a bit more tricky. There are several listed in my travel guide, but the first was too expensive, the second I had some trouble finding, but that's where I am right now. You sure have been busy posting since yesterday!

AS for first impressions, it's much colder here than I expected. Hope it warms up during the week because otherwise I'm going to be wearing lots and lots of layers ;-)

I have to be at the university early afternoon, so I'll still have to find something for lunch in town and figure out from where the bus leaves. All the booklet I got says 'from city centre' which isn't too helpful.