Currently Listening Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia By The Dandy Warhols see related

One Munro done, 283 to go! Had a fantastic hike up to Lochnagar in central Scotland this weekend despite absolutely atrocious weather. The day started out nicely but quickly deteriorated to steady 20-30 mph winds and several spats of rain while we were climbing over a 6 hr period. Wind chill brought the temperature down to the mid-20s, but the view from the summit made it all worth the hike. The countryside is so usual here, like somewhere between the mountains of New Zealand, the outback of Australia with a bit of the Rockies thrown in.  There's such a beauty to the place, though. I could just send hours sitting atop one of the hills watching the small, golden shrubs covering the landscape make slow, undulating waves with the passing breeze.

Went to Stonehaven on Sunday and took another much shorter hike along the coast to Dunnottar Castle, an old ruin near the city at the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. I’ve got some more photos up at http://photos.yahoo.com/enviro0025. I went with a group of French exchange students and I’ve run into so many recently that I think I’ve been exposed to more French speaking than English while being in Scotland. I’m overjoyed actually since I was hoping that I’d run into other spoken languages aside from English while I was here (I was expecting Gaelic, but French is great too). Sadly, my French is still very poor.

I found a really interesting website called Gapminder (http://www.gapminder.org/- kudos to Mel and Matt Ritter for originally finding a site linked to it) that shows graphically differences in health and income throughout the world. It really shows some of the misperceptions that I know I at least had about much of the rest of the world and helps in putting everything in perspective. Definitely a site to check out.