The First Night

This is all from Saturday, September 10, 2011:

Upon arrival, I found out that we had a house meeting. David Horn is four row houses pushed together with connected hallways. You can only use one of the front doors and that one goes in to the common room. There are common kitchens and dining rooms, but the bedrooms are mostly singles with a few doubles. Europeans really prefer singles. Before the meeting, Lorrie and I went to Sainsbury's, where I bought dishes, etc. since the kitchen only provided pots and pans. I also picked up a phone for 15 quid. I haven't had a phone this simple since middle school. Browsing the internet isn't even an option and I'm surprised when it successfully receives or sends texts. At the floor meeting, the two RAs introduced themselves and had all the students do an icebreaker. About half of the residents had arrived so the common room was pretty full. 

The RAs had organized a pub crawl with a nearby student house, Kichener. We all met up outside David Horn at 6pm and went to the first pub: Steamie Gastro Urban Pub. It was really modern with cartoon characters on the wall. Behind us were superheroes, Batman, Spiderman, Superman, but also Darth Vader. 

A picture on another wall:

(Source: http://twitter.com/#!/steamieeh9)

Lorrie and I both had a pint of Tennent's. This is a picture from Lorrie's camera:

Before we left for the second pub, Lorrie asked a British student if it would be possible to get half pints. He was flabbergasted to think that we would ever order less than a full beer. Lorrie tried to explain that we weren't used to drinking full pints, but he refused to accept that as an excuse.  

After Steamie, we continued walking along the main road. The next place was too full to go inside so we kept going (it was a long walk). Another American girl needed to stop to use the restroom and I waited with her. When we got back to the street, we thought we saw our group up ahead and tried to catch up. After about 5 blocks, we realized that definitely was not our group. I called the RA Joe and he was surprised to hear how far we'd gone. He game to get us and only when he'd walked us back did we realize we had gone about fifteen minutes past the turn. We ended up at the Pear Tree, a much more typical Scottish pub. We drank out in the beer garden and I spoke to students from Germany and Bulgaria. 

The next stop was Teviot, the main student union and the oldest purpose built student union in the world. (It looks like a castle!) The group split up inside because there are seven different bars. I went to the Sports Bar first and then we went by a jazz night. There are usually a few different performers in the student unions on weekends. 

When we were ready to crash, Molly, Lorrie, and I decided to split a cab home, which is actually cheaper than taking the night bus. When we told the cab driver it was our first night in Edinburgh, he was outraged that we were going home so early (it was past 11pm at this point). He declared that we should be out until 2 or 3am at least and was ready to take us back to Teviot. We begged off since we had been out since 6pm and were still suffering from jet lag.