Today was the first REAL day of orientation. It was pretty laid back. Breakfast is on the rooftop room of the hotel every morning. From there you can see the Castle of Edinburgh. This was followed by information sessions on Scottish history, St. Andrews, mobile phones abroad, and MEETING CONSTABLE STEVE. Funny guy. Later we got information about our family homestay. IFSA Butler plans it, and I'm PSYCHED to be going to Aberdeenshire. All forty of us were split up, with only six of us going to the more rural northern Scotland, and the rest going to Stirling or Edinburgh again. It'll be really cool to travel with such a small group, live on farms, and really get to see that part of Scottish life. Another girl, Anna, and I will be staying together at a house. Our host parents have cats, dogs, horses and birds!! There's lots of castles in the place we're going, so that'll be nice too.

Afterwards we were let loose in the city. My roommate, Alison, and I took our rubber ducky, donned Douglass, out to see Edinburgh. He can be seen checking out the sites in many pictures. A bunch of us climbed up to see the castle (a military fortress), but Anna and I then split off to go to the Scottish Parliament, the royal palace, and the seat of King Arthur. Very cool. We plan on getting a group together to climb it tomorrow.

Dinner followed at a restaurant downtown before we up and left for the ghost tour. It was at the covenanters prison, which is locked during the day to tourists because it's so 'spooky' and is only open to one tour company at night (it's in a churchyard). It has the best documented cases of the supernatural apparently with people emerging with scratches, bleeding, sometimes feeling unconscious, reportedly due to MacKenzie the poltergeist. It was a fun and funny tour, and definitely something to do in Scotland, but he doesn't exist or made no appearances to us. So, day two is over, and Scotland is still beautiful, light until 8 o'clock, and easy to walk around in without a coat. We've been told to enjoy these days.