First Blog Post from Scotland. Ohmygoodnessyes.

I know, I know. I've been an insocial homeschooler (well, actually now it's insocial public schooler) the past month and haven't done much in terms of keeping you American people back in Texas updated. But now I've overcome my laziness and procrastination and have started a blog where I'll post pictures and all that fun stuff that involves Scotland.

Anyway,

I guess I'll start off what's been happening this past month in a nutshell. I started going to school last Monday. Considering it's a 10 minute walk from my house, it's pretty nice. The schoolwork is extremely easy for me (thanks to homeschooling/Schola classes haha), and I actually don't find it that bad surviving throughout the day from waking up at 7 and getting home at 4 (though I'm not the fondest of waking up early and putting on a full business casual dressup for school -_-). Though to be honest, most people in the school are goofs and the system here of education is so inefficient from my point of view. Also this past month my family and I have been going to a non-denominational church. It's pretty rare to find a church like this, so only by God's grace have we been blessed to find such a great church. All of the people there are friendly, and they have tons and tons of stuff you can get involved in such as youth group, children's church, outreaches, etc. It's pretty sweet. Oh yes, and random side note: we got a cute little Volkswagen for our new car *insert Darth Vader commercial queue here*. I seriously cannot contain my excitement when I'll start driving it next year. I'll post a picture of it someday. Other than all of that, I've just been walking around the city, going grocery shopping, taking a billion pictures, and all of the usual you'd expect when you get your practically dream vacation to Europe....except that this isn't a vacation.

Now I guess I'll go ahead and give some of my first impressions about here in Aberdeen. To start off with: I LOVE THE WEATHER SO MUCH. Even though most of the time it's cold and rainy here, one or two days out of the week it'll be warm (with multiple cool breezes kicking in) where I can just chill with my sunglasses and shorts with a tshirt and just go to a city park or something. I cannot express how much I love the weather change. Secondly, the landscape here is amazing. It makes Texas look flat out dull. Last weekend we went to the countryside for the first time, and it just kicks butt compared to anywhere in America, to put it that way.  Thirdly, some of the foods here are pretty awesome. The sandwiches, cheeses, and chocolates are just way better, and coffee is just a total joy to buy (considering it's also a bit cheaper to get it here too). Fourthly, the accents here are 2nd to none. I'm totally getting one. And then there's the walking. I also love how walking can  practically get you anywhere here just using your best form of transportation: your legs. I mean who needs a car anyway...
 

Unfortunately, you may think Scotland is 100x better from reading my rather overjoyed writing up above, but it all isn't a walk in the park. Some things here I just wish didn't exist. For example, I am the worst person when it comes to converting American units to metric system units here. I can't stand it. And also everything is insanely expensive, so standard of living goes down drastically (for example, not as much food, only having one car, smaller house, etc). And lastly, the burgers here superbly suck. Actually in general most of the meat does, so that's quite nice how it doesn't taste very good and it's expensive.

And final section of this lengthy wallpost, because this obviously is the most important section of all. I decided to compile a list of some of the many words that I love using now thanks to British English. Beautiful.
 

Rubbish
Cheers
Mates
Brilliant
Hiya

And on that, I have ended my first wall post. I hope I haven't ranted on too much about Scotland, cause I'm guessing by now a certain number of people just might be slightllyyyy jealous. Just sayyin'.

Well, I miss all of you guys in Houston. I really can't say more than that. In fact maybe this summer I'll just sneak myself on a plane and fly back, even though I've only been here roughly a month. 

Feel free to take a look at the a couple of the pictures (my house, school, the beach) I posted below that haven't been on facebook yet. Anyhoo, That's all I've got for today. I'll try to keep updating this as life goes on!

Cheers,
Andres Alvarado

(the random European public schooler who takes pictures and creeps his friends in Houston's facebook profiles)