"As the prosecutions unfold, I hope the international community will intervene,
right away, to protect the people of Darfur and prevent further violence. The
refugees don't need more resolutions or statements of concern. They need
follow-through on past promises of action."
"Giving is integral to the American sense of community. It has traditionally been a key characteristic of our society-"the spirit of mutual helpfulness"..."To read the editorial in it's entirety go here. And please take a moment to read it. Then think about how you can give to others less fortunate during the holidays (if not year round). If you're stuck on where you can help, here are a couple of places to get you started.
Well, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. It looks like works starting to get lighter so hopefully I'll get back on track. Then again, we are getting into the holiday season so no promises.
We started off by learning about a tale where a woman who had a disfiguring accident had her beauty restored by putting her head in this stream. If you look closely behind the girl in the black sweater, you will notice that there are a couple of people from our tour group who decided to test out the tale themselves.
I just looked in my travel book & discovered this is The Storr. And the point at the right is known as the Old Man of Storr.
Along the coast of Skye.
A view of Kilt Rock. Named because the shape of the rocks are like the pleats of a kilt.
Maybe one of the reasons I enjoyed this day so much was I decided to take it easy. So I sat here & enjoyed this view...
And this view...
While Trina & most of the group hiked this thing. If you look midway up at the right, you'll notice some white dots. That's actually the group hiking.
On Skye they allow all the animals to roam free. While we were waiting for the group, we found ourselves in the midst of shepherds herding their sheep. Here's one of them with his dog. We even heard one of them say "that'll do"... just like in Babe.
And here are a few of the many sheep they were herding. Very cute.
And the top reason this was my favorite day of the tour. This was the day,we finally got to see the hairy coos!!! Isn't it adorable? All the girls on the bus were begging Ped to pull off to the side of the road so that we could see them. One of the guys asked what they were used for... dairy, meat? Ped's answer was "tourist". Apparently they don't make good milk or meat.
And once he did, we all jumped off & went traipsing through the pasture. It's a baby coo too!
Here's Trina & one of the baby coos. Because of this trip into the pasture... as well as the lack of fences on the entire island, we got to through the special line at customs to have our shoes sanitized. It was so worth it.
And then we visited the faerie pools. In Scottish lore faeries aren't cute little Tinkerbell creatures. They are fallen angels. You know... like Satan. But still the pools were beautiful.
More of the pools.
And more.
So maybe this is Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in Scotland.
Then again, maybe this is Ben Nevis.
Or maybe even this is Ben Nevis. You get the idea.
Day 2 of the tour, had us taking our longest "wee walk" of the tour. We were told that we would take about an hour round trip to see Steall Waterfall at the foot of Ben Nevis (I admit, my travel book had a photo of the waterfall otherwise I would've just said "a cool waterfall"). Well in what seemed to be a trend for us, once we were off the bus it was like herding cats to get us all back on the bus. I think the trek ended up being more in the 2 hour range (although if I'm wrong I'm sure Trina will correct me).
So here's some photos of our little hike.
That's Trina a bit ahead. And way in the distance is the Waterfall.
Another shot of the waterfall. Ped told us that it was in one of the Harry Potter films. If anyone can remember which movie & what scene, let me know. I'm drawing a blank.
I learned a very important lesson on this walk... always carry a bottle of water. I wasn't expecting this long walk so I didn't have anything with me. Luckily Trina had a bottle & we shared. We even did something I never would think of doing here... we refilled the bottle in this stream. Very good mountain water, I must say. Either that or I was so desperate for water that anything would've tasted wonderful.
And our Harry Potter experience wasn't over yet. Here's the train bridge that they used in the flying car scene in the 2nd movie. And just for good measure, see the construction stuff in the lower left of the photo.
This is how far we actually were from the bridge. I know, great zoom, huh?
And here's Trina taking photos. She's to the right of the girl sitting on the ground.
Here are a few more pretty pictures. 
