Mind-Numbing Fridays

Today was a day of simply performing a number of jobs that are quite important, but slightly mind-numbing. In order to allow tour guides to efficiently inform their groups, it is essential for them to have a standard tour with all of the information, as well as a booklet with a number of images that enhance their presentation. First, I had to bind together the tour commentary, which did not take very long and was quite painless. But, right after lunch, I began the process of laminating 8 tour packets, each containing 17 pages worth of images. In order to laminate each page, the paper had to be laid into a lamination packet, which could be tedious, then sent through the laminator. In total, each page took about a minute and a half to put together. Once each packet was laminated, they had to be bound. With my plan to leave at 3 p.m., I was moving at a pretty quick pace and worried that I was going to miss my bus and trains. However, I finished up right at 2:59, ran the completed packets to the gift shop, and left for my weekend in Edinburgh.

While waiting on the bus, I was offered a ride up the hill by a kind resident of New Lanark who had noticed me with the tours in the gift shop. We had a nice chat on the way up the hill and it turned out that she was originally from Sweden and had lived in New Lanark for a number of years with her husband. She was quite interested to know that an American student was staying in New Lanark for 6 weeks.

Anyway, once I had picked up some water for the 2 hour journey, I boarded a train for Carluke. From there, I had to wait about 45 minutes for the next train to Edinburgh, but the train arrived right on time and I sat near the back.

Once I got off the train in Edinburgh, I decided that I would do a bit of walking to familiarize myself with the sites and then head out to my room just on the outskirts of the main shops. I could see the castle from the train station and see mountains surrounding parts of the city. At first, I could hardly believe that I was looking at the castle, but it was truly a site to behold.

My small guesthouse room was quite cozy and, for once, I was nearly freezing in my room. The manager was quite sweet and took me through for a look at the small porch where I would have breakfast the next morning. All in all it was a busy Friday, but pushing myself at work was worth because I got to get a headstart on the weekend and allow for new work on Monday!