Here at last!

I finally made it to Edinburgh around 4 pm GMT yesterday, which was 10 am central standard time. I didn't sleep at all on my 9 hour flight; I guess I was too excited. Then I was supposed to have a 4 hour layover in London, but it turned into about 5 1/2 hours because the plane was late. I was so tired! But there was no way I was sleeping in the airport. I talked to some really nice people on both flights (thankfully the one from London to Edinburgh was only about an hour), and in line to go through customs (that was dreadful!). I also met a really sweet girl from France who was on the same flight as me to Edinburgh. We met some other people at the airport and three of us hired a taxi to get us to our flats. Unfortunately no one else had brought British pounds with them!
I made it to my building to pick up my key and found that I live in 27/5 Sciennes (pronounced sheens), in room #1. I'll put some pictures up of my living area later. When I got here I met one of my flatmates, named Alanna, who's from Ireland. My other flatmate is another U.S. student from New York. We're still waiting on one more girl to arrive. Alanna and I went to Tesco, which is a grocery store, to pick up some essentials like cereal and milk. Then we went out to a University of Edinburgh-sponsored pub crawl. I didn't last long at this, though, since I don't drink and was dead tired. I went home and went to bed early!
The city is absolutely beautiful! The buildings are old and stone, and everything is very grand. There is a beautiful, green park just near my flat with awesome playground equipment which I will have to try. And all the shops are so cute! There are dozens of restaurants, some of them familiar (Papa Johns, for example), but many privately owned (tons of Indian restaurants!) It's going to be hard to make myself cook! I'll take plenty of pictures of all of these lovely things later. As for now, I need to do a little more shopping and unpack.