12 September 2010

Aberdeen Trip, Day 5

I am out of my room, my shoes are off, and I am sitting in the television room of Crombie Hall, enjoying my Internet password, as well as electricity from the university. I should get up and go to the city to have lunch and do something, but I'm out of energy at this point after having walked up to the river just now to see the sea lions sunning themselves. They were, in fact, sunning themselves. I don't think I have ever seen a sea lion in the wild before. Now, I have. I have also seen men in kilts and heard the bagpipes a couple of times. Come on Scotland: you're playing into the stereotypes!

I am thinking about going to see a film, but I'm not sure there's really anything I want to see. Perhaps I will just go to a corporate coffee shop and drink coffee and read. I need to get some souvenirs for the girls as well. Hopefully I can do that at the supermarket.

Being near the sea has been nice. It smells so good. In Matsuhama, I lived a ten minute walk from the sea and hardly ever went. Same in Fukuoka. While in Aberdeen, I've been twice a day. I like the sense one gets looking at the sea. Cannot be explained. We need to go out there with the kids sooner rather than later.

Tomorrow, Naomi goes back to school and hopefully we will have much less drama. I am going to take her all three times this week. No drama with Dad.

There's a really nice shopping centre at Union Square. I went to the Apple Store and saw all the new iPods. Amazing. I also went to Zara and this other really cool clothing store that I had never seen before, but was playing the killers. I was looking for a scarf: I found the one I wanted at Zara, but as it was £19, I kept looking and ended up with something nice from TK Maxx. Brownish and thin, but huge so you can layer it.

I know I said I was going to take the day off, but I think I will now make comments on my Bham student's paper.