USA Scholarship 2022

On Sunday, Gayle and Woody took me to the most beautiful place in Baltimore - The Longwood Gardens. This is the place where you want to go and take your mind off things, it did that for me! It was like therapy. I was having the most amazing time walking around the park. When I walked through the visitor centre and into the park, I was shocked at how pretty the park was! This park goes on forever! This park was first built in 1906, by a famous gardener of Baltimore named Pierre - this park has increased its size decade by decade. At the moment they are building a big massive extension of the greenhouse. I have never seen a greenhouse this massive before - I thought it was going to be a small one but nope...

  Sorry everyone for another late blog. I have finally met our family friend here in Baltimore - she also kindly invited me to stay with her at house beautiful house for the weekend. I was so excited to meet her - Gayle and her husband Woody. When they first met me - they already made me a family of their own! We were chatting a lot on the way to their house, they wanted to drop off their dog and my bag before heading back out for ice cream! :)a= The ice cream was AMAZING!! We went to a proper creamery with an ice cream shop on the property. I had a Key-Lime pie flavoured ice cream and ho ho ho, I loved it. If I remember correctly, her house was built in the 1930s. The layout of her home is beautiful and the interior was absolutely gorgeous! They have also got a big massive garden which I was jealous about.

  I caught up with Krista for a coffee and chatted for a couple of hours as I haven't seen her in a good few days. She took a vacation this week and next week. She has been keeping herself occupied by painting her very own house, and renovating her living room! Loved what she has done with her house - I'm considering thinking about getting a house like hers back home in Scotland soon (maybe)..

  This day was the most fun day ever of this trip! :) I went to Mount Clare House again to take some photos of the interior to give me more ideas of what to put into my CAD program for them. These photos will help me to find out what I actually need to put in the program to allow visitors to see what the interior will look like. Mount Clare house is by far the most beautiful mansion I have ever seen in my life!! I am honoured to volunteer and help Lucy & Krista with what they need from my service!

  Those last few days, I have been taking some time for myself and started working on the 3D Design project for Mount Clare House. It took me a while to get my thinking around the plans because I was told that the plans were wrong by the architects and I had to make sure they would be correct before sending them to Lucy and Kritsa. This is the set of floor plans that I was given... Front View Rear View As you can see that the plans are not accurate at all! I had to research the online website of Mount Clare, the book and my images to see if everything is in place?! As well as using old historic photos and drawings of Mount Clare So I have been doing this for three days because I wanted to get started on the first designs out of 5 different building layouts. This is number one: On Day 11, it was again another one of my favourite days where I got to work with all the details of the house to put it all into this program... This is the overview of my work on Mount Clare House.

  GUESS WHAT?! I HAVE BEEN HERE FOR A WEEK ALREADY?! HOW CRAZY IS THAT?! DAY 7: On the night of Day 7, I got the opportunity to meet my sponsor William Garner after two years of online contact. I met him on the day of my scholarship conference in 2020 at Dunfermline Halbeath Fife College Campus with Abigail (another winner) and Lyn for lunch. We all had a lovely chat and talked about what we would love to do and why when visiting America! Here's our article from two years ago with William and Abigail. https://www.fife.ac.uk/news/abby-and-niamh-head-stateside-thanks-to-george-lauder-bursary/ During dinner on the 19th of August, we talked about how I was getting on and what I had been doing during the first week of the trip! So we talked for a while then the conversation was diverted to talking about our family and friends. And then Lucy appeared, Krista could not make it unfortunately because she had so much paperwork to do before taking a vacation. But, William and I met her the v...