This is my travel journal from my study abroad trip to the UK and France. The names of my teachers and classmates have been changed for privacy reasons.
DAY 13 - June 1
               I woke up this morning and remembered that last night, before I'd gone to bed, I'd sent a bunch of drunk Facebook messages to my high school theatre teacher. I checked my messages to see if she responded. She's very proud of her little bird girl.

               Okay, so we're going on another group trip today. A few of the girls noticed I'd run off last night.. This actually made my day because I found out that they really do care about what happens to me, and that's always a self-confidence booster. I had to promise not to do it again and if I did, tell them. Also, it turns out that a lot of people stayed out way later than I did. Landon fell asleep in class and Dr. Owens told him to get out.
               We went up to St Andrews today, the birthplace of golf. Had to take the train to get there, though. I like the train. It was about an hour long trip and we went through the country, which is beautiful but incredibly difficult to photograph. For one thing, we're on a train. Assuming you can get a seat by the window you have to deal with reflections. Then everything's going by too quickly and there are walls and tunnels and trees in the way.

               It's like looking at a patchwork quilt with all different shades of green, with lots of ups and downs and when you can actually see further it all fades into the mist. I swear, I could never get tired of looking at all this green stuff. Everyone here seems surprised that we're surprised at how green the grass is.

               "Of course it's green! What else would it be?"
               "Where we're from, it's brown."

               I keep staring at random flora, tears of joy flying off my face, people backing slowly away...and it rains so much here. When we were with Carla and her friends, they apologized for the rain ruining our trip. We were standing outside, staring up at it. "No, this is fine...Can we borrow this for the rest of the summer? Is there a service we can sign up for?" [At the time of writing this, my home state was experiencing a really bad dry spell.]

               We got off the train at the station in the middle of nowhere and took two eight-seater taxis to the town. It cost us about ₤1.50 each, since we split the cost. (I got to ride shotgun with Rebecca!) And St Andrews was beautiful as well. I swear, everything in this country looks like it's been there for ages. There are all these brick and stone buildings that apparently came with the landscape. Even the new buildings look like they've been around for a few lifetimes. I think that as soon as they finish putting up a new building, they turn loose a team of scenic designers and have them age it.

               I like how our teachers bring us places and then just leave us to our own devices. What did you expect? We're adults, not elementary students on a field trip. We're supposed to be able to navigate a foreign city on our own without needing constant supervision. Imagine the lot of us, linewalking down Princes Street, hands behind our backs...

               [In my elementary school, "linewalking" was when the teachers made us walk in a single file line with our hands behind our backs.]

               We took pictures of the stone bridge on the eighteenth hole. This took quite a long time because there were a lot of us taking pictures, plus other tourists wanting pictures, and a lot of golfers who wanted us to get the hell out of the way because we're targets. Then Cat, Liz, Rebecca and I walked along the beach, which you shouldn't do barefoot because there's an awful lot of rocks and seashells and broken crap lying around. I acquired a pocketful of seashells. Next we walked along the streets looking for the Abbey or the Castle.

               Ran into Clara and Joan at a Catholic church. Because we'd left so late in the day, it was after five and everything was closed. We ended up going to a nearby hotel and calling a taxi, because it would take us a while to get back to campus. First the ride back to the station, an hour back to Edinburgh, and forty minutes to get back to campus. Our driver was cool. He was very friendly and told us stories while we waited in traffic. He almost got to drive Princess Anne once.

               We caught the train back. While we were waiting, we bought things we didn't recognize out of the vending machine and took silly pictures. I have a lovely shot of me hitchhiking by the train tracks. Once we got back into Edinburgh, Joan and Clara went off shopping while the rest of us went to the Tron to eat.