Another brilliant idea

I've been trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life and how I'm going to get everything done that I want to do. I've been talking about Culinary School for about a year now and the idea of it still is thrilling to me. This is something I really want to be able to do. However, the few schools I've looked into attending after I graduate are a bit on the pricey side (50k pricey side...) They're close to home, but not close enough to live at home and still attend full time, so I'd have to find a place to live out there. That would just be extra costs. All around, the cost was making me rethink my desire to go to Culinary School. There's no way I can come up with that much money in the amount of time I have.

Then yesterday at church I saw a woman I've known since I was a very little girl and we started talking. I told her I'm considering changing my minor from ballroom dance to culinary arts, just so I can get that done while I'm still at BYU-Idaho. She then proceeded to tell me about a trip she took to Edinburgh, Scotland a couple years ago. While there she met an American girl in the small branch there. She asked her what she was doing in Edinburgh and it turns out she was attending a culinary program in the city. The girl is from the Orange County area and the culinary school she wanted to go to was the same I want to go to but, like me, she lacked the funds. The woman, Sister Macky, encouraged me to look into the program over seas and told me I'd love it.

I looked it up. I love it.

The Edinburgh School of Food and Wine has a six month program after which you get a diploma in Food and Wine and all together, the costs (including living) come out to be about 15k (I feel like my brothers playing their online RPG games when I say 50k and 15k). It's vastly more affordable, a whole year and a half shorter than the other schools I've looked at, and it's in SCOTLAND.

I looked at the dates that the program runs and it goes from January-June. My hope right now is that I'll be able to attend the January-June 2010 program. That means I've have to defer my Summer 2010 semester at BYU-I, but that when when I get home I can go to school straight on through Fall/Winter/Summer and graduate in Summer 2011. Of course, this idea is still in the beginning stages of figuring everything out, so it very well might not happen. There's a lot of research to be done, a lot of money to be made. It all depends. But I'm hoping it'll work out! It would be quite the experience.

Plus, the Edinburgh Zoo has a penguin parade every day. How could I not want to go there?