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After all the traveling across the UK, we finally made it back to Edinburgh, Scotland. 

Yesterday we went to Edinburgh Castle.  For all you history fans out there, you would really like this place.  I got a little bored with all the museums inside, but the rest of it was great.  We saw the Crown Jewels!  I wish I had a picture to show you, but that was prohibited.  We were around to see the world famous "One o'Clock Gun", a time gun that people use to set their clocks/watches.  My watch was a couple minutes off, so that worked out well.  The picture was taken right after the cannon was shot. 



After we went to the Castle we walked down The Royal Mile.  We didn't make it very far due to stopping for lunch, souvenir shopping, and watching street performers.  Lots of men in kilts, some playing the bagpipes!  How's that for my blog title?  All 3 in one day! 

We came across the most beautiful church, St. Giles' Cathedral.  Would highly recommend going in for a peek.  Note to self: attend mass there sometime during my stay.

At night we went on a haunted tour.  The tour took us to Edinburgh underground, a place with a dark, deep history.  After the underground portion, we went to Greyfriars Cemetary, which holds about 450,000 bodies... on top of one another.  Yuck.  One of the nine places in the city where they dumped bodies from The Plague.  Creepy.  Don't think there were any ghost attacks on our tour though.

Today I moved into my new home in the Leith neighborhood of Edinburgh.  I unpacked all my stuff and explored the neighborhood a bit.  I found a wonderful cafe and I made my first trip to the grocery store!  That doesn't sound very exciting, but I think it was a significant hurdle.  It's conveniently located across the street, so I will be stopping by often since I don't have much space and I have to carry my groceries up 4 flights of steps.  I have spent my day applying for teaching jobs... maybe I need to spend the rest of my day praying to get hired!

School starts on Tuesday... nervous & excited!