Arrival

So welcome all to my spectacular travel journal!
I think that just getting to my final destination was probably the most challenging experiences of my life so far and for once I think I have glimpsed just a little bit of what it is to be an adult. I left Portland yesterday afternoon and had to say goodbye to my mom for longer than I have ever been away from my family and I'm not going to lie and say that I did not almost cry, because I did, and I probably freaked out some of the airline personnel. From there I had a crazy long 9 hour flight in which I watched like 3 movies and tried to sleep, which got me about 2 hours of fitful tossing and turning next to a guy who constantly hogged the armrest for the duration of the flight. We landed in Amsterdam, and after a few minutes of shear panic and confusion on my part, I finally settled down and worked my way down to the smallish airplane terminal. I then proceeded to play "Amsterdam" by Guster on my ipod because that's what you do when you're in Amsterdam. From there I hopped on a little city-hopper with a whole bunch of people who were either completely Scottish, or sounded like the Swedish Chef from the muppets.
Scotland is just as green and gray as you would think it would be, though from Glasgow, you can't really see the rolling hills or amazing landscape so much. It is a lot of brownstone buildings and the river Clyde that snakes through the city. I managed to get a taxi and figure out where I was going and I chatted up the cab driver on the way over about Scotland and Glasgow. My dorm, truth be told, is in a somewhat sketchy area, and is nothing to look at really, but hopefully when there are people here, it will be a bit less depressing. Also the electrical outlets in my room don't seem to work really, so most of my computer time will be spent hooked up to the ones in the kitchen, yay! So far I have already had to navigate a wee bit around the city to buy groceries and a plug adapter, so by and by I feel that I have already made a substantial accomplishment.
Hopefully the next posts will be more exciting, but I think that if I'm going to do a travel journal I should at least give all the gritty details.
P.S. I am already noticing the open, gregarious nature of the Scots and am looking forward to some very satisfying conversations in the near future :)