Armenia, Part 3

So it's been a while because we have been camping and so in a land of no Internets. Since my last post, time has passed roughly as follows:

Friday: visited a cultural museum/historic site with Simona & Lilit (two young Guide Leaders who have been guiding us around Yerevan and accompanying us to the recruitment/activity days). This was followed by a visit to an Armenian/Lebanese restaurant which had been pointed out to us on our evening walking tour of the city. We each ordered between one and two dishes which came out in an arbitrary order spread over much time. In the UK this would have driven a diner to despair, but here it was nice to watch the dishes come out and to be able to sample everything because your own hadn't appeared yet. I really liked the garlic and herb potatoes Tina and Cara ordered. After a while, the gentleman on the table behind us started to talk to us and kept 'offering' to buy us things... with our answers making little impact on their ability to appear on our table anyway. Some champagne, water, ice cream and cake later we escaped quickly before the promised coffees also arrived! Having spent many more hours in the restaurant than intended our early night went astray that night and instead we stayed up packing and preparing for...

Saturday: An early start to get everyone through their last shower in a while. The owner of the apartment knocked on the door at 8am and we pulled our bags out and handed over the key. We headed downstairs and raided the shops of their chilled bottled water and picked up a little bread for breakfast. Next time to cram ourselves into two taxi's - six young women plus a large rucksack and small daysack each, plus two bags of resources and two tents. Struggled for a long time to communicate the fact that we'd rather have the bags on our laps than to pile them all into the boot and drive along with it open: eventually it looked like we had it all sussed - until we stopped to pick up Simona! As lightly as the Armenian's packed for a week's camp (think weekend bag at the most) this just didn't all fit and so one-too-many bags were thrown in the boot. Fortunately all the bags made it to our drop off point outside the Armenian Guide HQ (a flat and two garages in an apartment block); we pulled everything out and munched our breakfast as we waited for more girls and leaders to arrive. Some time later (this is another of those countries that operates in it's own unique timezone - everything runs to Armenia time) we piled our luggage onto a taxi trailer thing and climbed onto one of two yellow buses. Unlike many of the minibuses we have traveled on in Yerevan, this bus was pretty lightly loaded and everyone had a seat... until we stopped part way to pick up some extras! I can't imagine overfilling a Guide camp coach back in the UK.

Approximately two hours and one drink stop later we made it to near the campsite. The buses and luggage taxi pulled up at a set of gates and we all hopped off and walked the short way up to the field in which we would be camping. The next hour or two were spent sorting out bags, pitching tents etc. - all the usual Guide camp shenanigans. Once done we took a quick wander to explore: the field was situated between a number of disused buildings in varying states of decay which provided excellent sources for materials for the toilet and kitchen which were being assembled by the boys that girls had brought along for exactly this purpose (and for staying up over night to ensure the site was secure). As is often the way on the first day of camp, timescales slipped and both lunch (bread, salty cheese, ham, cucumber and tomato) and dinner (bread, salty cheese and potato) were served fairly late - bucking the trend, the GOLD team went to bed early :)

Sunday-Thursday: Camp days were varied but shared many common features:

• Morning exercises - the campers were divided into three teams within which they performed chores, completed group challenges (e.g. deriving a song, sports races) and exercises each morning. Somehow the GOLD team managed to avoid being available for the exercise sessions on all but one occasion.
  
• Meals - all included two large hunks of brown bread, often with salt and/or salty cheese
• Sun - lots of sitting out in the sunshine reading, knitting, writing diaries and generally sitting far more quietly than we ever would when camping back in the UK.
• Training sessions - we ran a total of six sessions for between 18 and 20 young Guiders. Our topics were: Leadership (Sunday), WAGGGS Global Action Theme (Monday), Guiding Traditions (Monday), Environment (Tuesday), Camp Skills (Tuesday), PR & Recruitment (Wednesday). The sessions all went very well and we had a lot of positive feedback which is always nice.
• Evening entertainment - the girls largely amused themselves of an evening; typically either sat around a campfire or by dancing to tracks from a selection of CDs that had been brought to camp.
  

Friday: This was the final day at camp and so it was time to pack up, strike camp and head back to Yerevan. Staying at the hostel for the first time it was now time to enjoy a fantastic shower - also appreciated was the clean and luxurious toilet facilities (certainly in comparison to those at camp). Once we all felt human again it was time to head out and pick up some bits and bobs from the SAS supermarket ready to make dinner. Cara and I knocked up something that resembled fajitas - very much appreciated after the restricted camp diet.

Saturday: A free day in Yerevan. Simona, her sister visiting from Germany and the two Lilits (we met another at camp) took us to the weekend market. Despite setting off at 10:30am to avoid the worst of the heat, it was still baking but we managed to enjoy seeing the many things on sale and to grab ourselves some bargains:

GOLD Team via Lilit: "How much?"
Stall Owner via Lilit: 1000 dram
GOLD Team via Lilit: "Why so expensive?"
Stall Owner via Lilit: 700 dram
Stall Owner via Lilit: OK, 400 dram

Following our market adventure we headed back to the hostel to cool down and prepare for the following day's activity/recruitment session. A little chill out time then before we headed out for dinner at Simona's family home (the metro there cost 50 dram each - less than 10p). Her mum cooked a beautiful meal and then we relaxed with a little Bingo before getting a taxi back to the hostel.

Sunday (Today): The first of our post-camp activity days. Again we took the metro to Simona's and she helped us get the right bus to a school in Yerevan which is where the activity day was to be held. We headed upstairs to a hall and set up our four activity stations. Despite arriving late, we still had to wait for some of the girls to arrive before we got going with a song and some parachute games. We then divided into four groups to do our GirlGuiding jigsaw and then stayed in those groups as we rotated around our four activity stations (pen topper people/yarn lions, juggling balls/balloon animals, card-making and balancing clowns/go fish). The room in which we held the activity day was very warm and rather dusty. Very shortly after the start I abandoned my flip flops as they were sliding off my feet - as a result, by the end of the sessions my feet and parts of my legs were looking quite black. We finished the activity day with a wonderwall quiz game and taps. We then headed back to the hostel with some stopping off to grab some food shopping on the way.

Cara and I were first back to the hostel with the resources bag and I hopped straight into the shower to cool off and get some of the dust off my feet; I even took the flip flops in with me in the hope that they might look a little cleaner once I was done. Whilst I was in the shower, the others came back with some mince, pasta and vegetables and Rachel and Lorraine started working on some spaghetti bolognese. Fast forward an hour or so and we're all now well fed and enjoying some time out for a change.

Tomorrow we have a relatively quiet day but a training in the evening. This one isn't really planned yet so that's the morning sorted too!

Armenia, Part 2

So far we've completed two recruitment/activity days in nearby towns/villages. Both days went well but the second day has resulted in the opening of a Guide unit in that village which is very exciting.

Today was a rest day (after a training we were planning to run was postponed) and we used it to visit the genocide museum in Yerevan. We had an English guide who talked us around the displays initially and then we went back round alone to spend more time looking at the different displays. I think we were all quite overwhelmed by the museum, particularly as we knew little of the genocide before our visit.

This evening we're chilling out playing Flux before an evening tour around Yerevan.

Armenia, Part 1...

So, I've fleetingly mentioned GOLD (once here, and then a second time here), and I had the greatest of intentions to follow those brief mentions with some actual information. Unfortunately, as is the way, I totally failed to do anything about letting people know what was going on and now I'm in Armenia!

So the story begins in October last year when I attending a Guiding weekend called INTOPS (International Opportunities), it was a fab weekend and I met lots of lovely folks all of whom seemed more suited to every project than I did. Imagine my surprise therefore to receive a letter some weeks letter telling me I'd been selected to participate in the GOLD project in Armenia to develop GirlGuiding over there (PR, training and recruitment). From then to now there've been four briefing weekends and a team of six of us have been frantically planning away until... yesterday we all hopped on a plane and five hours later we landed in Yerevan!

OK, so that's the really potted version but I'm the last member of the team to get to the Internet - if you want to know more you can follow Team Armenia's adventures on our blog. Alternatively, if you hang around long enough I promise to expand on things when I have a bit more time, I'll be keeping some comprehensive notes in the meantime :)

Nights Away

I've had the record card for GirlGuiding North-West England's 'Get Away From Home' challenge on my desktop for a number of weeks now. I need to sort it out for the Brownies and Guides but tonight I sat down and went through my calendar to see what I've done since January 2008:

Some observations...

• Busyness really does clump together. Compare camping in 2008 to 2009 (20 nights vs. 5 nights total), in particular summer 2008 which involved four separate camps - remember also these are just Guiding commitments, there were many other nights away from home that weren't Guiding related.
• I do many more one and two night residentials than I would have acknowledged, this actually accounts for most of my nights away.
• I don't do most of my nights away from home at Silverdale and Forton - if I'd been asked prior to this I'd have told you I did almost all our nights away at these two sites.
• I need to stay at home more!

And now it's bedtime. Here in Maryland (oh look, I'm away from home again) it's gone 10:30pm - definately time for this jet-lagged English girl to get some sleep!

Slow and Steady

My fundraising for GOLD (Guiding Oversees Linked with Development) is progressing, slowly but hopefully steadily (and even more hopefully with ever-increasing momentum). I finally got round to writing to the Trefoil Guild (National, Regional, County and Local) last night, and the badges I put on eBay mostly sold (five out of six) raising a total of £4.78 once the costs were taken out... not bad for five badges, now to sell some more!

I realise I haven't actually written anything about GOLD yet, I will... soon.

PS - It's pancake day - time to dig out the dairy and egg free pancake recipe.

Getting Organised

I have been sorting through the ebay/freegle pile and have finally put a few items onto ebay. There's still more to go but it seems to be one of those jobs that takes longer than I expect. It's taken me most of the afternoon to list a grand total of 9 items for sale.

Six Guide Badges:

And three random unwanted, unused things that have hung around the house for two long (a KVM, a cat flap and a little mechanics project):

Still lots more odds and ends to sort through but this is a start... here's to more productivity.

PS - You can check these items out on my ebay listings page. Funds raised from the sale of the Guide badges will go towards my fundraising for the GOLD (Guiding Oversees Linked With Development) project in Armenia this summer.

In Which Saffy Combines Two of Her Favourite Things

Thanks to CastOn.com, I have become aware that I have unwittingly earned a number of Cast On Knitting Scout badges! So, here are my achievements so far...

1) The Proselytize Knitting Badge - "A requirement for all Knitting Scouts, the recipient must do his or her bit to present knitting in a positive light, whilst at the same time avoiding all references to “hipness”, grandmothers, and yoga."

Here's hoping I do a good job of this, at various points I think non-knitting people I know have thought the particular project I was playing with was kinda cool. Many of my Guides thought the fingerless mitts I did were really clever (they weren't) and were insisting I should sell them (Um... right).

Incidentally... I didn't know the word proselytize; it means to convert someone's faith. I don't think I've got that far yet.

The “MacGyver” Badge (Level One) - The recipient must demonstrate clever use of a non-knitting tool in a knitting-related scenario. For instance, recipient has used paper clips as stitch markers, or successfully whittled and then utilized bamboo skewers as dpns.

On the canal holiday this year I tried to turn some of my waste yarn into a little scarf for Pengi (a small stuffed penguin, of course). I wanted a looser gauge than I could acquire with the one circular needle I'd brought with me (in the days of project monogamy), so I used a pen lid as a knitting needle. (One assumes I used something else too, not much knitting could have been done with only one pen-lid needle - I can't remember what filled the gap).

The I've Knit Items With No Conceivable Practical Application Badge - Recipients are those “special” campers who have knit items which somehow missed the mark of their intended application. There are probably more who are deserving of this badge than one would expect.

Undoubtedly awarded following completion of this:


This was my 'Big Baby' project. A but-what-is-it pattern that would have been a bib in the right yarn. It was mostly intended as a fixing-my-twisted-purls project but I was originally hoping for something out of it. It's now a small cat mat, it bears closer resemblance to that than it could ever have done to a bib. Molly's rather fond of it.

Also deserving of an honorable mention are these:

The Yancy baby hat with gauge so tight it would reduce a baby's heat to slush and the Exfoliate face cloth that would leave little face behind. Oops.

Wow!

Thanks to Strictly Guiding for her blog post about this, I'd never have spotted it otherwise.

(grabbed from this article from the Kidderminster Shuttle)

On the one hand, wow - what an acheivement. And on the other, someone has a proper obsessive thing going on there - I do hope it's the girls and not the parents. At least kids grow out of these things :)

Still, they'll have no trouble at Guides, there seem to be somewhat less badges to be done at Guides than Brownies now. I should do a count.

So Many Badges...

I love doing special 'limited period only' badges with my Rainbows/Brownies/Guides as appropriate. So far I've ticked off the WAGGGS Thinking Day Badge (Brownies) this year and the Thinking Day postcard exchange (Guides). Currently my Brownies are working on the Everest 100 challenge (pdf) and sat in the badge box are 30 Campfire Challenges. Still, I like this:

(image taken from the Centenary Time Travel Challenge Resource website)

If I can't squeeze it into one of my programmes for the rest of the year then maybe I'll just have to do it as a leader :)

Edinburgh: Saturday

Lizzie left early this morning but Tom, Lyndsay and I figured since we were so close that we should probably make an attempt to get the rest of the board:

• University of Edinburgh (Red)

Following last night's card games, we made a fairly relaxed start to the morning. When we did get out, we headed out into the university quarters to try and find the Labyrinth in George Square. Immediately after stepping out of the hostel we stopped to shop across the road - I'm too easily attracted by shops with pretty colours in the window and was lucky to come out with only a skirt! Sadly, when we did find the labyrinth (despite the wind that came suddenly from nowhere to blow us every direction except the one we wanted to walk in), it was closed: only open weekdays. As expected, the labyrinth wasn't full height - it was difficult to tell from the gates whether it was simply line markings on the floor or had a couple of inches of height but I suspect the former. I've never done a labyrinth before so it was a little disappointing to find it closed, that said I can't quite see how you could simply walk and think if you had to look at the floor to see where the path goes! Anyway, here we are in front of the rather grubby sign:


Whilst we were at the university, we also ducked into the foyer (shelter - hurrah!) of their new Informatics building - originally we thought it was in use but looking closer it was quite clear the building hadn't opened yet. So, all done at the university we picked off the last two:

• George Street (Orange)
  
• Princes Street (Purple)

George Street has statues at every junction (or at least I think it's at all of them) but the statues are in the middle of busy junctions (obviously) so didn't really make for great photo opportunities - instead we took our picture looking down the road with the hope of getting many of the statues in... I'm not sure we succeeded.


We'd walked up Princes Street many times throughout the exploration but never stopped for a photo. There's plenty to see along the road and many of the bits of it are in other photos but we hadn't had a picture for the road itself so we stopped to get one with the castle in the background.

All done, we stopped back off at Lady Stairs Close and did the Writer's museum there, visiting the folk music shop we'd seen doing the Bank whilst on the way. After the Writer's museum we headed back to the hostel via the Cathedral (some lovely stained glass but no photos allowed inside without the purchase of a permit) and the Museum of Childhood which was just across the road (that place is a maze - I nearly missed most of it!).

Edinburgh: Friday

On Friday, Lizzi took the reins. Friday's plan was to start with the castle but we also managed to use the opportunity to pick up one which we were passing on the way:

• Lady Stairs Close (Blue)
  
• Edinburgh Castle (Purple)

We almost walked past the entrance to Lady Stairs Close without spotting it. Edinburgh (Old Town) seems to be filled with these little tiny dark lanes, all with curious sounding names. Lots of them are mentioned in the haunted Edinburgh book Lyndsey bought.


After lots of short stops on the previous two days it was nice to get a really good look at the castle. I think we covered almost all of it, the exceptions mostly being the Military Museums. I took quite a lot of photos - I'd like to have a go at making a panorama with them.


Following the castle, our plan was to get some lunch and then do the dungeons. We had a little bit of time to kill as it wasn't quite lunchtime yet. Lizzi fancied visiting the Guide shop so we went in search of that - unfortunately it was as far from where we were as it conceivably could be! On our way we also got some photos for a couple of the other board spaces:

• Edinburgh Waverley (Station)
• Bank of Scotland (Community Chest)
  

A happy accident - we found the Bank of Scotland (just over the road from a folk music shop that we nearly visited). Looks like they've got a museum there which I hadn't realised from all my scouting around - I had enough problems trying to work out where it was!


Having completely failed to find a good picture of Waverley on either of the occasions we'd visited to catch a train, we a really nice view from a bridge on our way from the Castle. I stopped to take quite a few pictures here knowing that, if nothing else, Hobnob would appreciate them!


When we did find the Guide Shop I picked up some Holiday badges for my Brownies and an Edinburgh cloth badge for my camp blanket. Walking back it was now definitely lunch time! Once done with lunch, it was on to the dungeons:

• Edinburgh Dungeons (Prince's St/Go To Jail)

We weren't allowed to take any pictures in the dungeons and it didn't occur to us to take anything outside (though I don't remember there being much to look at outside) so there's nothing to show here. According to a rather hysterical drama student (who totally broke out of character once Tom said he was Coventry) I spent last night dancing naked singing chants - and I thought we'd just been playing cards. All done at the dungeons, we headed out to Holyrood:

• Holyrood (Red)
• Scottish Parliament (Green)
  
• The Royal Mile (Yellow)

Holyrood itself is a fairly busy area in terms of attractions, hosting the Palace of Holyrood, the Queen's Gallery, the Scottish Parliament, Arthur's Seat and Our Dynamic Earth. As the Scottish Parliament already features on the board we'd decided to use the Palace in the photos but it was a little dark and I struggled to get good pictures.


Having wandered a little in confusion, we eventually discovered that we'd come in past the Scottish Parliament - clearly none of enough know enough about politics to know what the building looks like. Sadly it was far too big for any really effective photos and the poor light didn't really help, but here's a bit of it!


Holyrood is also the start of the Royal Mile.


Having made a plan to pick up those four we'd thought about getting yesterday, we headed out towards FountainBridge for dinner:

• Grindlay Street (Yellow)
• FountainBridge (Red)
• Rutland Court (Green)
• Charlotte Lane (Yellow)

Grindley Street was a nice easy find and we got a quick picture outside the theatre there.

From Grindley Street we carried on to FountainBridge for tea at an Italian restaurant. A proper city restaurant, the kind I miss from London.

On our way back, we picked up the last two far out ones (or at least something that approximated to them). We couldn't find a Rutland Court - but got a Rutland Court Lane which must have been pretty close.
For this final night, our dormitory for six now had another two guests in it so we headed down to reception to play cards - Mau again. Having been thrown out of the reception around 11:30pm (because they were closing up, not because we were behaving terribly!), we found a spot in the corridor instead and attempted to keep the noise down whilst playing Coffee Pot. I think it was around 2am when Tom, Lyndsey and I went to bed!

Edinburgh: Thursday

Starting out with a few quick ones to pass the time until cheap day trains:

• St. James Centre (Orange)
  
• Prince's St. Gardens (Blue)
  
• The Meadows (Brown)

We got up somewhere around 8am, collected ourselves together and nibbled on whatever bits of breakfast we'd bought yesterday. Starting out with the little ones, we headed back to the St. James Centre (which we had passed on our way back from the quays the previous day) and got a quick photo outside. We did stick our heads into the centre but there wasn't anything hugely inspiring shopping-wise and there would be plenty more opportunities as all three of the oranges were shopping related.

With most of an hour still to go before we could buy cheap-day tickets, we moved on to do Prince's Street Gardens. The plan here being that we could spend some time looking at the various things in the park and optionally go up the monument (but probably not given the excellent views we had got from the museum roof the previous day). Unfortunately when we got to the Gardens it turned out that they were closed for some sort of work (it looked like they were dismantling a Fairground in one bit but I don't know if that was all). We stopped at the gates (guarded by a builder) and took a picture.
From Prince's Street Gardens, we walked along a little further to The Meadows (which we could get into) and walked around there. We got a good view of the Castle and of an overly tame squirrel that sat in the middle of the footpath.
All done with the gardens, and once train prices had dropped it was time to get the awkward one out of the way:

• The Forth Road Bridge (Station)
• Edinburgh Haymarket (Station)

Getting to the Forth Road Bridge was always going to be one of the most challenging of the spaces. Without a car, we could 1) try and find a bus/taxi to cross the bridge 2) take a train over the rail bridge 3) see if any boat trips passed under the bridge. Train seemed the simplest option here as there's a station just the other side of the bridge. At only about £3 for ticket to North Queensferry with a student railcard, this was also a reasonably cheap option. Getting to North Queensferry we had about 15 minutes spare before the return journey so we wandered down the road to see if we could get a better view of the road bridge.
Coming back from North Queensferry, we got off at Haymarket which gave us that station and placed us at a different part of Edinburgh to better get those spaces off to the side.

We had therefore planned planned to do:

• FountainBridge (Red)
• Grindlay Street (Yellow)
• Rutland Court (Green)
  
• Charlotte Lane (Yellow)

However, whilst these spaces formed a nice cluster around Haymarket station they still left us with four rather awkward ones to get. So instead we did:

• Murrayfield (Pink)
• Tynecastle Statium (Pink)

These two stadiums aren't terribly far from Haymarket but are in the direction away from Edinburgh. Very close to each other too.
Having got these two it was time to get the last two really awkward ones:

• The Gyle Centre (Orange)
  

• Lauriston Castle (Blue)

Starting out with the Gyle Centre to give us a place for lunch. Both these two were to be done by bus so we bought an all day ticket. Arriving at the front of the Gyle we easily found the food court and each picked out something to eat. Having decided that this was the shopping centre we would use to shop in (if that makes any sense) we had a bit of browsing time in New Look, La Senza (without Tom), a walking shop, the Disney store and a supermarket (to replenish the Mini Egg supply).

Back out at the front of the Gyle we struggled a little to find the bus we wanted, but having done so it didn't take too long to arrive. We did miss the stop we wanted as it was part way round the route but were very lucky to be overheard wondering where to get off by a couple who told us we'd only just missed it and where to look as we walked back. This Castle is really more of a big house (in the middle of a lot of other houses) but has a huge drive. The place was closed up for the day but as we hadn't planned on going inside this wasn't a disaster.
Seeking a lazy evening, we walked all of about three doors down the road for our tea shortly after returning to the Hostel. We'd seen the place yesterday which was a hybrid Indian/Thai restaurant. Marginally more pricey than some of the things we'd looked at but really nice.

Back at the hostel, Tom taught us Mau - a card game I wish I would be able to find people to play with at home. Just my kind of game :)

Edinburgh: Wednesday

We arrived in to Edinburgh Waverley around 11am, as we couldn't easily spot a sign for the station in a convenient point for a photograph we left that for another time and found the tourist information instead to pick up maps and leaflets for things we'd got planned (plus Lyndsey picked up some early postcards). After that we wandered to the hostel (finding it surprisingly easily) and dropped our bags off. Despite the booking form which had asked when we were checking in it turned out we had to wait until 2pm so we headed out for lunch at Pizza Hut instead. Lyndsey, Tom and I each had the buffet lunch whilst Lizzie had a pizza; when the bill arrived at the end it seemed our waitress had forgotten to add the three buffets to the bill (making the total only around £12 for the four of us) - when we asked if their had been a mistake she very kindly only charged us for two of the three buffets making it only about £7 each once we'd split the bill.

Once we were done at lunch we headed out to wander for a while until we could book in to the hostel. We were accosted by a monk on our wanderings but it was a poor time to catch us as we'd all just spent our change on food! We hadn't especially planned to do any particular activities on the wanderings but to see what we found and to do anything we thought appropriate. Stumbling around we found ourselves in Chambers St and so we did the following:

• Museum of Scotland (Community Chest)
  
• Chambers Street (Brown)

On entering the museum (photos on the way in), we started with the Kingdom of the Scots on the ground floor: most memorable things for me on this floor were the quotations written on the entrance, the huge ceremonial sword (and I mean huge) and a very clever looking metal chest whose lid was entirely taken up by it's complex locking mechanisms. Following this, we moved on to the Connect and Move It interactive galleries: I designed a robot that could perform surgery (followed by one that was completely unsuited to this purpose - think of hoover on wheels and then add a huge radar dish!) and together the four of us powered some wind-up electrical stuff. Finally we popped up to the roof and looked out over the city and wandered back out of the museum via the shop.


Leaving, we came back out onto Chambers Street and looked round for a photo spot and took them in front of a statue in the middle of the road before heading back to the hostel.


So, part two... after sorting ourselves out in the hostel we went out to find a number 35 bus (from right outside the hostel) out to Ocean Terminal to pick up:

• Prince Albert Quay (Community Chest)
  
• Royal Yacht Britannia (Station)
  
• Leith Walk (Green)
  
• Easter Road (Pink)

Despite my wad of Google Map print outs, the first two of these were suprisingly hard to find - particularly when it turned out that we couldn't physically get to the first one (there was a rather large set of gates in the way) and that the second wasn't quite where Google Maps thought it was. Still, we got reasonably close to the first and took some photos next to one of those lifesaving ring things - complete with reflective strips for flash photography :) The Royal Yacht turned out to be inside a shopping centre (somehow - I never did quite work that one out) and was well and truely closed by the time we found it but none of us had much of an interest in actually seeing the inside of a boat anyway. Walking back from the quays, we followed as much of Leith Walk as we could (it's apparently one of the longest roads in Edinburgh), stopping somewhere near the start at a Tesco to pick up whatever we fancied for breakfast the following day (pancakes with lemon and raisins for me) and taking a quick break away to visit Easter Road. Coming back into Edinburgh proper, we passed the St. James Centre (which appeared to be mostly taken up by John Lewis - mmm... haberdashery goodness!) so at least we now know where that one is.


Once we'd got back to the hostel and rested our feet for a bit be stumbled out to a nearby pub for dinner. Lyndsey, Tom and I had haggis/veggie haggis with tatties and neeps (which I learnt were turnips not parsnips as I thought someone had told me once). Getting back we played contract whist before crashing out :)

A/A Form Woes

Just phoned Louise and she's still not had my A/A form - this one is determined not to leave Lancaster I think. Anyway, I've emailed her a copy so hopefully we'll get this all sorted out :)

Books I Read in December

Total: 7 books

Flanimals: A Pocket Guide (Ricky Gervais)
Eclipse (Stephenie Meyer)
New Moon (Stephenie Meyer)
Twilight (Stephenie Meyer)
Secret Vampire (L.J. Smith)
Brown Owl's Guide to Life (Kate Harrison)
Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey (Alison Weir)

Does Flanimals really count as a read? Thom got this for Christmas in his stocking and I read through it that evening.

So it didn't take me long to submit... read the three currently available paperback Twilight novels: Eclipse (26/12), New Moon (20/12) Twilight (18/12). Each book took longer than the last and are reasonably comparable to the older, Night World novels. I enjoyed these three books and am now resigned to the fact that I shall have to make the effort to catch the film at the cinema sometime soon.

Hobnob bought me a copy of Twilight yesterday and as I looked (and only looked for now) at some of the sequels on Amazon last night I remembered L.J. Smith and her Night World series. It turns out they're being reprinted (persumably in anticipation of the release of the final book... who'd have thought it'd be a 10 year wait?) and her publishers have allowed her to make the first book available as a free eBook until December 21st. Read SecretVampire in an hour one morning on my macbook (12/12) - the writing is still suprisingly good even when reading as an adult - perhaps when Strange Fate is released I'll check them all out :)

When I spotted Brown Owl's Guide to Life in the charity shop on campus I figured as a new Brown Owl I really should read it. An enjoyable, light read about a group of women (once in the Pixie six at Brownies) taking on their lives, their weaknesses and their dreams. A pleasant relief from the manic paper writing being done at the time (03/12). Hope to pass it on to some other reader via BookMooch - think you might be interested? Check out my teaser.

Finished Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey on the 1st of December so it just scrapes into this one rather than last month. I really enjoyed this book. A great historical novel for anyone who enjoyed The Other Boleyn Girl and Philippa Gregory's other Tudor England novels. Like many novels based on true history we know the end at the start but this is a well-written novel which I got myself nicely caught up in. A keeper to sit on my shelf.

Title Deed

Having struggled to draw them out by hand, I've given up and scanned the title deeds. Hobnob's created me a generic template based on the scanned cards.Next job is to print them, fill the gaps and colour them in!

Monopoly Activities

Been working on my spreadsheet today, planning activities for the early half of the Monopoly Board for my QG exploration to Edinburgh. It's taken far longer than I thought. Some of these places are quite difficult to find much for even on Google. Combining Google with the Guidebook is getting me there, but slowly!

Mmm.... cheese!

Started on the Monopoly activities spreadsheet for Edinburgh today. I've found a guy who brings a cheese van up to The Meadows some Saturdays which sounds quite nice. Have sent him an email to see if he'd be up there when we are.

Edinburgh Train Tickets

Bought my train tickets for Edinburgh! I'm racing through the "To Do" list today :)

QG Exploration Planning

Met Lizzi again today in the Venue to try and get the programme divided up nicely before Lizzi goes home for Christmas. To keep it nice and simple we've agreed that the properties can be divided straight down the middle, so I will do Brown->Orange (inclusive) and Lizzi Red->Purple (also inclusive). I'll do the four stations and Lizzi will look into the Community Chests. For each one we'll try and find one or more suggestions of things we could do (bearing in mind timing and costs) and put them together in a template which we can send back and forth until it is complete. Once it's complete we can use the list and my maps so that together we can (via MSN or some similar) have a think about a good order and who's to lead which bits. In addition, we thought it'd be a good idea to make up some large size (A4) property deeds to use in the photographs - we'll each make cards for the properties we are researching.