Arrival in Stirling!

Hello from Scotland! I am now at the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland. In case you were wondering, yes my bag did make it-it arrived on Friday, so I only had to go one night without it. Not too bad, since there are still students here who arrived on Saturday and their bags are still not here. I'm glad I'm not one of them. For the most part, it has been very rainy but today on our first day of classes it was quite nice. The sun was out and it got to around 60 degrees. I tend to find it a bit on the chilly side, but the native Scots think that it's quite nice-they were out wearing short sleeves and shorts. Campus itself is very pretty-one of the prettiest I've seen.

My classes are very interesting. I will have to do some homework while fitting in sightseeing on top of it. I'm at least a 1/4th of a mile walk from my classes, so I'm at least doing a half mile everyday, sometimes more. Now that I have internet access again, I can start uploading pictures!

Below is a picture of the debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament:

It is very much a 21st Century building in design, with a motif of highland cows and boats to represent Scotland's past throughout the building. Parliament is located on the Royal Mile in Ediburgh, and is only across the street from Holyrood Palace, the Queen's resience when she is in Edinburgh. The Royal Mile stretches from Holyrood Palace to Edinburgh Castle, so if you start at Holyrood, you end up walking up a pretty big hill.

The picture at the top is a view of campus from one of the many footpaths that wind through campus. In this particular picture, you are looking down the hillside to the loch (lake) and that would be the Cottrell Building in the foreground. It is one of the academic buildings on campus.
The picture in the middle is of Airthrey Castle, located only 5 minutes from Alexander Court (where I am living). This was where we had our welcome reception on Saturday night and we got to meet each other for the first time.
The bottom picture is a view of Stirling Castle from Bannockburn where the famous Battle of Bannockburn took place in 1314, nearly 700 years ago! This is a significant battle in which the much smaller Scottish forces led by Robert the Bruce defeated the formidable English forces led by Edward II of England. This was a crucial victory for the Scots in what later became known as the Wars of Independence. It brought about the end of English invasion of Scotland.

Sorry if some of the pictures are dark-it has been quite rainy the past few days. The top one I took today, so that's why it looks better than the others.