Edinburgh Scavenger Hunts

As stated in my previous post, Friday through Saturday was one giant scavenger hunt organized by Kate and Flo. Basically what they did was create a list of 111 challenges, each challenge was worth a certain number of points and in order to get the points you had to take a picture or film the action taking place then post it onto the Scavenger Hunt facebook event.

If you are interested in a PDF of this scavenger hunt, reach out to me. Otherwise, check out the google maps link and other resources I created for you of things to do when you visit Edinburgh.

The challenges ranged from Eating a Fried Mars Bar, to leaving Edinburgh and (hard when you’re an exchange student with no transportation), to Invading Austria (yes. you read that right). It ran from 10pm Friday night to 3pm the next day. Mind you, Kate, Flo, Clara, and I had just returned from CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN, and we only got 1 hour to rest before this started up. There was roughly 18 people who participated, and we got split into 3 teams of 6 people. First thing we had to do was plan which challenges we would try to complete and the order in which we would do it. I was not sure how to write this post so I am basically going to talk about each of the teams and tell fun stories about what they did.

My team: Team Lemons. Because Adam was on our team and he uses Lemons as a negative descriptor, as in ” you are such a Lemon”. The team was: Adam, Kate, Clara, Gab, Gwyn, and Me.

Team “Gingers and friends” had Michaela (a ginger), Emma (also a ginger), Flo, Alessandra, Claire, and Eleanor (who actually didn’t make it 🙁 ).

Team Rat Pack 2.0: Basically Flo’s flat minus the Kitchen Warrior (see the bottom of this post for an explanation). And since there was no kitchen warrior they were the new and improved Rat Pack.

I feel as though my team specialized in word play. For example, one of the challenges was to freeze something. So Gwyn yelled at a random stranger to “Freeze” and then the girl just stood there afraid while we all filmed and said ” hooooold it, hold it, hoooollllllddddddd itttt”. Anyways, poor girl was probably traumatized but it counted 😛 Another challenge was to take a shot at sunrise on top of Arthur’s seat, so I “took a shot” at Adam (we were given no points for this. lame.)All the challenges were fun, here are a couple more:

• Petition for Scotland’s independence at Parliament
• Get married at the ruins on Arthur’s seat (mind you, this means I am now married to 3 people here in Scotland, and I believe engaged to 2 people in the states?…)
• Call your mother and tell her you’re pregnant (she really loved this one, especially after learning that I had been married the night prior)
• Steal food from Pollock Halls Dining Hall (I do this practically every week so this one was easy peasy LEMON squeezy)
• Go skinny dipping in the ocean (believe it or not… one of my teammates did this one in the middle of the day in broad daylight)
• Become Ordained (go kate)
• Sing a Disney song to a random stranger on the street
• Perform an exorcism on a ginger (because they have no soul. Sorry michaela…)
• Re-create the lady and he tramp with Greyfriars Bobby
• Invade Austria… so someone on our team logged into a computer and emailed the Austrian government… if you want to know what was said watch the video… but long story short if I stop posting blog posts then its because we were arrested
• Put the Harry Potter scar on your forehead

Friday night we stayed up until 4am completing challenges and running around the streets of Edinburgh. We then slept and woke up at 7 am Saturday to climb Arthur’s seat for sunrise. I attempted to wake up my teammates, but some were not as excited for only 3 hrs of sleep… I even tried blasting Mambo No. 5 at 7 am to get them up.

Right after this Flo and Emma from team “Gingers and Friends” came running around the corner and I learned that THEY HAD NOT SLEPT AT ALL. Instead they ran from Edinburgh to the beach, then up Arthur’s seat, and back, which according to Emma’s phone was a 21 km round trip… they are crazy

Team Gingers and Friends did quite well for themselves. They completed challenges that my team did not, such as dress up as a Princess and get carried down Princes Street

As a summary. Over 48hrs I climbed a mountain, then raced in a scavenger hunt for 19 hrs and had only 8 hrs of sleep between the two days

UPDATE: WINNERS WERE ANNOUNCED LAST NIGHT AND we lost to team gingers and friends. granted considering THEY DID NOT SLEEP i will give this one to them. Unfortunately, I made a bet with my friend Claire that loser will dye their hair which means I’M DYING MY HAIR. Get ready.