Hey Everybody!
I'm back. So that this blog is broken up into readable chunks and in proper chronological order, please scroll down for entries covering the events of the past 3 weeks, they will be popping up in the near future. And now I shall explain why I haven't updated lately. As soon as I got back from the Highlands, I found out that my grandpa was in the hospital, and he had been there for the last 5 days, and they still didn't know what was wrong with him. For the next few days, I was really off-kilter, and so I was doing anything and everything to keep my mind off of it, but I kept coming back to how worried I was. I'm so glad that I have made a really tight network of friends here, and that my flatmates are so awesome, because I was having a really hard time for a few days, and if there hadn't been people here who I knew were there for me, I think I would have broken down a lot more.
I don't think I can leave this out of my blog, because it has really affected my experience here. Not in a bad, or a good way, but in an "oh, maybe I actually do miss being home a little bit," sort of way. I hadn't really thought about home at all, or been homesick since the first few days after I left Barrington, but I can tell you that it's been one of the hardest things in my life to be so far away from the people I love at a difficult time in our lives, and to be entirely out of control of the situation. The doctors couldn't figure out what was happening, and my mom was reliant on my aunts for information, so I was really, really out of the loop. Mom and Matt went out to see him, and I guess things weren't looking so good, but miraculously, he made a full recovery, and after I think, a week and a half (?) he was back at home. So, there you have it, my grandpa is a medical miracle (and a medical mystery worthy of Dr. House, apparently)! When I heard he was out of the hospital, I don't think I have ever been so relieved in my life.
In the midst of all this, I was starting to panic about a) my essays that are due in a few weeks and b) registration at Minnesota. Every semester I have a huge and paralyzing freakout concerning which classes I will take, and this time it was possibly worse, considering that I have only 3 more semesters left at Minnesota, and a lot of stuff to fit into that time. Scheduling karma is not kind to me, so I had to scrap a lot of my original plans in order to take things that count to my major. I think I'm okay with it now, but it was not a pleasant couple of days. Here's the kicker... I don't even register til 11/11, so I guarantee I'll probably change my mind at least 3 more times before then, and probably a few times after.
I am not too worried about my essays... I'm pretty confident in my abilities to crank them out. I just get so many thoughts running around my head when I'm researching, that it's really hard to organize everything, or even to sit down and read one thing without jumping around to a million other books. I'm pretty sure I have severe ADD, but I've been able to beat it for a long time, I don't see why now would be any different.
Okay- time for class. Remember to keep scrolling down for more updates, because they will be coming! Here's a preview: horrible field trip, the Classics Society, Edinburgh weather, classes, the visit of my (paternal) grandparents, and future travel plans! As of 28/10 at 9:46 AM CST, there is one entry below this, and it contains links to some photo albums.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
down with this sort of thing
The subject of this post is from a graffito on our campus, which I particularly enjoy. I'm not going to do multiple back entries. I'm just going to condense everything right here right now.
The week after the highlands, as you can imagine from my last post, was a scary blur. I went out with my friends most nights, and tried to focus as much as possible on work the rest of the time. That Saturday, I was incredibly excited because we were taking a field trip, and I haven't been on one of those in ages and ages and ages. Unfortunately, this field trip did not turn out so well. It was 12 pounds, which is quite a chunk of change, and we got on the bus, drove to the Scottish Crannog Centre along the same route we'd taken up to the Highlands the week before, got there, and when we saw what the Centre was, I think we were all a little disappointed. It was a tiny little building, and a re-creation of a neolithic lake-dwelling. We watched a dude show us how some prehistoric tools worked, and waited for him to finally get some fire made (the most exciting part of the day, by far), and then got taken into the Crannog, where we sat in the dark while a guy talked to us for a while. After this, we were left on our own to explore. I whittled a stick down, we looked at the exhibit 3 times, and had hot chocolate, and we still had an hour and 45 minutes until the bus was coming. There was really no path to hike around anywhere, and the centre didn't really have an indoors area, so we were all sitting around outside, freezing our butts off and trying to figure out how to fill up the time til the bus left. We mostly ended up meandering around the gift shop (the only heated area) until it was time to go. I got home, and pretty much fell asleep straightaway.
On Tuesday, my grandparents came to visit. I was really excited to see them! I have class until 6 on Tuesday evenings, so I didn't get to meet up with them until seven or so. I got moderately lost on the way over (stupid Google maps!), and had to call a friend to direct me there. I finally made it, and had a nice chat with my grandmother until my grandpa came back up from the lobby. We decided to eat at an Indian restaurant, Kismot, that I had been dying to try for ages. We waited forever and a day to get our food, but filled the time talking about plays and Mad Men (I could talk about Mad Men for just about forever!). When the food finally came, we were so hungry, I could have eaten anything. But this was amazing stuff... Kismot is family owned and all of the food is made up from scratch, and let me tell you, the difference is notable. My lamb was so tender and delicately flavored. Ahh, I have not eaten such a good meal in ages.
Wednesday, we went to the National Gallery. Art is interesting, but blogging about viewing art is not interesting. Dinner at the Hotel Bonham was amazing, and accompanied by more family tales. Thursday brought us to the National Gallery and a sushi dinner (yum). On Friday, we went to Glasgow. I'd never been there before, so we got on the train and headed there with the intention of going to the Kelvingrove Gallery. When we got there, we weren't entirely sure how to get to where we were going. I was so proud of myself that on my way to the visitors' center, a man actually came up to me and asked for directions! I pride myself on blending in, and usually I can give simple directions, but knowing nothing about Glasgow, I sadly had to admit that I wasn't from there.
We had difficulty finding the bus stop, so we took the subway, which I felt sort of bad about, considering that my grandma had her hip replaced recently, which means that she doesn't have a very easy time of walking up and down stairs. Then it turned out to be a longer walk than we thought from the subway station to the museum, so I felt bad again. We finally got there, and luckily, Grandma was able to use a wheelchair to rest while we were getting around the galleries. We looked at French and Italian art, had some coffee, and then checked out the other side of the museum, where they have natural history exhibitions. When the museum closed, we went back to the train station and waited until we could get an off-peak train back to Edinburgh.
Safely back on familiar ground, we went to New Town to eat seafood at the Mussel Inn, which was delicious. Saturday, G&G went on a highlands tour, so I tried to get some work done, and then went out with my friends Chelsea, Sam, and Lindsey. It was good to be out and about, and do some dancing! I came back, and went to sleep so I could meet up with G&G for the last time on Sunday. We went to look at the outside of the Scottish National Parliament Building, which is rather controversial because it was 1)not designed by a Scot, 2) went hugely over budget, and 3) does not fit in with the atmosphere of Old Town at all. Here are a few images so you can see:
http://tinyurl.com/3xzwxsk
http://tinyurl.com/32zrqdc
The inside was closed since it was Sunday, so we went on a bus to Leith, which is right on the ocean. We had another delicious seafood meal, and we said a sad goodbye as we went our separate ways.
Tuesday, I went to the Pub Quiz at the Greenmantle Pub, where I attempted to help out the ClassicsSoc team, but ended up being quite useless aside from the few questions I actually knew the answers to, but to which nobody actually believed that I was right. Oh well, next time! It's really mostly about hanging out with the group, because they are all really nice and fun. Well, actually, a couple of the guys got into a bit of a boast-fest, so Amisha, Sarah, and I left the premises.
Speaking of the ClassicsSoc, I finally feel like I've really integrated into something here, and it's killing me that I have to leave so soon. I wish I could extend to a full year, but I know that I have to be in Minnesota for the spring if I EVER want to finish my degree. Edinburgh is amazing, but I think at the end of this, it will be time to go back home and focus on determining my area of concentration, etc. I am thinking a lot about the future and things I would like to do, and feeling more and more like I'm meant to be in the education/communication side of things than the actual science-y bit. I'm still up for learning about the science, because that's hugely important (duh), but in the long run, I don't think that's where I'll end up. I've been working on internship applications (I know, already, can you believe it? A lot are due 17 Dec, which seems ludicrously early).
Okay, enough of all this. xx
The week after the highlands, as you can imagine from my last post, was a scary blur. I went out with my friends most nights, and tried to focus as much as possible on work the rest of the time. That Saturday, I was incredibly excited because we were taking a field trip, and I haven't been on one of those in ages and ages and ages. Unfortunately, this field trip did not turn out so well. It was 12 pounds, which is quite a chunk of change, and we got on the bus, drove to the Scottish Crannog Centre along the same route we'd taken up to the Highlands the week before, got there, and when we saw what the Centre was, I think we were all a little disappointed. It was a tiny little building, and a re-creation of a neolithic lake-dwelling. We watched a dude show us how some prehistoric tools worked, and waited for him to finally get some fire made (the most exciting part of the day, by far), and then got taken into the Crannog, where we sat in the dark while a guy talked to us for a while. After this, we were left on our own to explore. I whittled a stick down, we looked at the exhibit 3 times, and had hot chocolate, and we still had an hour and 45 minutes until the bus was coming. There was really no path to hike around anywhere, and the centre didn't really have an indoors area, so we were all sitting around outside, freezing our butts off and trying to figure out how to fill up the time til the bus left. We mostly ended up meandering around the gift shop (the only heated area) until it was time to go. I got home, and pretty much fell asleep straightaway.
On Tuesday, my grandparents came to visit. I was really excited to see them! I have class until 6 on Tuesday evenings, so I didn't get to meet up with them until seven or so. I got moderately lost on the way over (stupid Google maps!), and had to call a friend to direct me there. I finally made it, and had a nice chat with my grandmother until my grandpa came back up from the lobby. We decided to eat at an Indian restaurant, Kismot, that I had been dying to try for ages. We waited forever and a day to get our food, but filled the time talking about plays and Mad Men (I could talk about Mad Men for just about forever!). When the food finally came, we were so hungry, I could have eaten anything. But this was amazing stuff... Kismot is family owned and all of the food is made up from scratch, and let me tell you, the difference is notable. My lamb was so tender and delicately flavored. Ahh, I have not eaten such a good meal in ages.
Wednesday, we went to the National Gallery. Art is interesting, but blogging about viewing art is not interesting. Dinner at the Hotel Bonham was amazing, and accompanied by more family tales. Thursday brought us to the National Gallery and a sushi dinner (yum). On Friday, we went to Glasgow. I'd never been there before, so we got on the train and headed there with the intention of going to the Kelvingrove Gallery. When we got there, we weren't entirely sure how to get to where we were going. I was so proud of myself that on my way to the visitors' center, a man actually came up to me and asked for directions! I pride myself on blending in, and usually I can give simple directions, but knowing nothing about Glasgow, I sadly had to admit that I wasn't from there.
We had difficulty finding the bus stop, so we took the subway, which I felt sort of bad about, considering that my grandma had her hip replaced recently, which means that she doesn't have a very easy time of walking up and down stairs. Then it turned out to be a longer walk than we thought from the subway station to the museum, so I felt bad again. We finally got there, and luckily, Grandma was able to use a wheelchair to rest while we were getting around the galleries. We looked at French and Italian art, had some coffee, and then checked out the other side of the museum, where they have natural history exhibitions. When the museum closed, we went back to the train station and waited until we could get an off-peak train back to Edinburgh.
Safely back on familiar ground, we went to New Town to eat seafood at the Mussel Inn, which was delicious. Saturday, G&G went on a highlands tour, so I tried to get some work done, and then went out with my friends Chelsea, Sam, and Lindsey. It was good to be out and about, and do some dancing! I came back, and went to sleep so I could meet up with G&G for the last time on Sunday. We went to look at the outside of the Scottish National Parliament Building, which is rather controversial because it was 1)not designed by a Scot, 2) went hugely over budget, and 3) does not fit in with the atmosphere of Old Town at all. Here are a few images so you can see:
http://tinyurl.com/3xzwxsk
http://tinyurl.com/32zrqdc
The inside was closed since it was Sunday, so we went on a bus to Leith, which is right on the ocean. We had another delicious seafood meal, and we said a sad goodbye as we went our separate ways.
Tuesday, I went to the Pub Quiz at the Greenmantle Pub, where I attempted to help out the ClassicsSoc team, but ended up being quite useless aside from the few questions I actually knew the answers to, but to which nobody actually believed that I was right. Oh well, next time! It's really mostly about hanging out with the group, because they are all really nice and fun. Well, actually, a couple of the guys got into a bit of a boast-fest, so Amisha, Sarah, and I left the premises.
Speaking of the ClassicsSoc, I finally feel like I've really integrated into something here, and it's killing me that I have to leave so soon. I wish I could extend to a full year, but I know that I have to be in Minnesota for the spring if I EVER want to finish my degree. Edinburgh is amazing, but I think at the end of this, it will be time to go back home and focus on determining my area of concentration, etc. I am thinking a lot about the future and things I would like to do, and feeling more and more like I'm meant to be in the education/communication side of things than the actual science-y bit. I'm still up for learning about the science, because that's hugely important (duh), but in the long run, I don't think that's where I'll end up. I've been working on internship applications (I know, already, can you believe it? A lot are due 17 Dec, which seems ludicrously early).
Okay, enough of all this. xx
Monday, October 11, 2010
Wait a Minute! There's no Angus McLeod in North Kilttown!
For everybody's future reference: pictures from the Highlands can be seen in these two albums:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031068&id=1135890300&l=4041347ff6
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031098&id=1135890300&l=26e7e553c5
Now, when I last left you, dear readers, I was about to embark on a journey to the Scottish Highlands. We left on a Friday morning at 7:45 am from campus, so all most of us wanted to do on the bus was sleep. However, our very enthusiastic tour guide only left us in quiet for a few minutes before we started hearing all about the landscape around us. I was so conflicted because on one hand, I was so sleepy, but on the other, I did not want to miss anything. We stopped at a Wal-Mart affiliate, ASDA, in Perth to allow people to get some food, and to meet up with the buses carrying Butler students from other universities. I thought I saw a girl I knew from high school, and as it turned out, it was a girl I knew from high school. So we had a little "It's a Small World, After All" moment, as we marveled at how random it was that we happened to both be in Scotland without knowing it.
Second, we stopped at a place called the Hermitage. The story goes that an ancient Scottish bard by the name of Ossian (who was blind) lived in a hut/cave in the woods here by a waterfall, and he wrote this beautiful poetry that went undiscovered til the 1700s, when a man called James MacPherson "found" the manuscripts and translated it from Gaelic. As it would seem, this is all a bunch of crap, and MacPherson himself wrote the poetry. Not that it's bad poetry, but it would appear that it is not actually ancient, and this Ossian fellow was made up. The area was just beautiful... there was another waterfall, and an old stone bridge, and many trees. We were being hustled through, though, so I was sad that I couldn't just walk around for hours. I should figure out how to go back, maybe.
Anyhoo, following this, we stopped in an adorable town, Pitlochry, where my friend Sarah and I ate in a cute little restaurant, and then had a wander about through some of the shops before getting back to the bus. Following Pitlochry, we drove to Glenfinnan, where the Hogwarts Express from the Harry Potter movies is filmed. We climbed up a big hill that was very muddy, so I carried Sarah over a bit of it, as she wasn't wearing appropriate footwear. The train coming was actually supremely anti-climactic, but my friend Lauren and I insisted upon humming the Harry Potter theme while taking video of the train passing.
Glenfinnan was the last stop of the day until we came to Inverness, our stopping point for the night. Inverness means "Mouth of the Ness," which I didn't know until I went there, so hooray for learning stuff. A few of us walked around Inverness for a while, and then decided we would go to a pub called Hootenanny, where there's folk music every night. Drinks were very expensive, but I had the local brew, and it was pretty good. One of the girls I was with used to do Irish step dancing, and she really wanted to dance, but wouldn't do it, so she attempted to teach me the basic step thing, and we went to dance (it was embarrassing), but then this one girl who's with Butler St. Andrews came out and totally kicked some ass at dancing, allowing us to fade into the background. This whole time, there was a lady sitting by the stage, and she was really, really into the music. We're talking clapping, foot stomping, hitting the speakers, nodding her head, the whole shebang. She really wanted to dance... so, we all started dancing as well, and it was pretty gratifying to see the joy on her face as we were all flinging each other in wild do-cee-does around the dance floor. After a bit, a few of us decided we were exhausted and went back to our hostel.
In the morning, we got up nice and early to go to Culloden Battlefield, the site of the last battle fought on British soil (16 April, 1746). Background knowledge: in 1745, the Jacobites started a rebellion against William of Orange, the Protestant and(duh)non-English king of England. Bonnie Prince Charlie (aka Charles Edward Stuart) led them in the name of his father, James, who believed himself to be king of England, but was chilling in France until further notice. So, Bonnie Prince Charlie rounded up a motley crew of Highland warriors, and had a really bad idea to try to march all night and surprise the government troops (incidentally, most of these troops were Highlanders as well. A lot of mothers would send one son to each side, because everybody wanted to be on the winning side. Hence, it was a battle of brothers against brothers), whom he thought would be ragingly hungover from celebrating the birthday of their commander the night before. Now, the British were not so stupid as to get trashed the night before there was going to be a huge battle. So, in short, the Jacobites didn't make it all the way to the government camp, the government soldiers heard them coming and started chasing the Jacobites, who were forced to retreat. They caught up at Culloden, and the battle was over in about half an hour. It was entirely a massacre, which led to the Duke of Cumberland, head of government forces, to be known as "The Butcher." Culloden spelled doom for the clan system in the Highlands, as the Highland clearances went into effect, and it became illegal for clan members to wear their tartans or carry their daggers with them. This is the end of my history digression.
Anyway, Culloden was spooky. In the morning, the fog was intense, and it felt really... Scottish. The markers for where each clan fell, and the larger cairn commemorating the battle stood out, and with all of the different groups of us walking around and emerging from the mist, it was a pretty shadowy atmosphere. It kind of reminded me of Antietam in that you could sort of feel the presence of death looming around.
After this mess, we naturally needed a pick-me-up, so our tour guide popped in a Proclaimer's CD, and a number of passengers on the bus had a little bit of a sing-a-long. Okay, so the first five or so rows had a sing-a-long while the back looked on in a rather bemused fashion. Happier, we disembarked at a working sheepdog farm, where we got to see some awesome border collies in action. The highlight of this was absolutely playing with the puppies. They are soooooooo cute. I think I need to get a border collie in my life in the near future. Also a highlight: the shepherd picked up a ram by its horns (one-handedly) to get it out of the herd to let people try their hand at shearing a sheep. I was pretty awesome at it. Interesting story concerning the shepherd's wife: she was an American girl who had been on a tour of the farm, loved the demonstration and found a way to work there over the summer, and by autumn, she was married to the shepherd. Now she has a Scottish accent! This whole thing prompted one of my friends to have something of a huge crisis on the off chance that a Scottish man proposed, whether she'd say yes and move to Scotland, leaving everything in America behind, or not. I was highly amused.
We had lunch in a cute little town called Aviemore, then the buses went their separate ways to different distilleries. We went to Glenfiddich. The entire place reeked of alcohol (oh gee, I wonder why?). Fermenting stuff looks pretty gross. The distilling area looks like it belongs in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. You can't take pictures except from a raised platform above it, because as a sign notified us, it was an "explosive atmosphere." The bathrooms are supposedly the nicest in Scotland... there was a chandelier and a fireplace, with a bunch of big leather armchairs. So classy.
We stopped in Elgin on the way back (I felt like I was at home... Elgin, Inverness..)and saw the ruins of an abbey, but it was just long enough of a stop to take a few pictures and then continue on our merry way. Back in Inverness, we took naps and then got back on the bus for dinner. Mmmmmm free restaurant food! It was lovely, though we had to wait FOREVER for our food to come. I guess that it's probably hard to serve like, 150-200 rowdy college students.
This is where the evening took a turn for the more interesting. A couple friends and I decided that we would go to the karaoke bar, since it was really the only other option than Hootenanny's, because Inverness is not so big. So, we had decided that we would sing I'm Gonna Be because a) we are in Scotland and b) we know all the words and have harmonies worked out and everything, but after the imbibing of certain liquids, somebody thought it would be really funny to sing Milkshake instead... I did not think this was the best idea, but somehow I went along with it. We did NOT know the words/rhythm of any part except the chorus, and we pretty much got booed off. We are planning to redeem ourselves sometime in the future with a better song choice. On the other hand, our friend Isaac brought the house down with a rousing rendition of "Roses" by OutKast. Props to him on the rapping part, haha.
We decided to leave the karaoke place and go to Hootenanny's, but for some reason we left Hootenanny's with the intention of going back in, but as it turns out, you can't get into anywhere after midnight. This random old guy came up and asked where we were going next, and seemed to be trying to hit on one of our friends, so rather than making an attempt to get in anywhere, we decided to head back to the hostel as fast as possible, because the dude was creepy.
In the morning, we said good bye to Inverness and hello to Loch Ness. We took a cruise (soo cold) down the loch (no, sadly, I did not see Nessie), and stopped at Urquhart Castle, which, according to the brochure was "Raided. Attacked. And Blown Up!" or something to that effect. There was a trebuchet type thing that had been used in the movie Highlander, so naturally, my friend and I had to have an epic battle while screaming "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!!!" (Side note: I fully understand if you are embarrassed to know me at this particular point in time). It was really beautiful, and we climbed about for a bit until it was time to get back on the bus. We stopped in Fort Augustus for lunch, which was rather charming, and then our last stop was at Glen Coe, the scenic location in which HIGHLANDER!!!!! amongst other films, was ... filmed. It was really beautiful, but camemy ra was very nearly dead, and we were only there to take pictures (Literally, we had 10 minutes). I absorbed the scenery, took as many photos as possible before the death of my camera, and participated in a group picture. We drove by the place where they film Hagrid's hut for the HP movies, and set off for Stirling to drop off the students from that uni. We started watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and it was pretty sweet timing, because as we pulled into Pollock Halls in Edinburgh, the movie ended. We all clapped at Scott's (our driver) impeccable timing, and went home to be exhausted until class the next day.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031068&id=1135890300&l=4041347ff6
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031098&id=1135890300&l=26e7e553c5
Now, when I last left you, dear readers, I was about to embark on a journey to the Scottish Highlands. We left on a Friday morning at 7:45 am from campus, so all most of us wanted to do on the bus was sleep. However, our very enthusiastic tour guide only left us in quiet for a few minutes before we started hearing all about the landscape around us. I was so conflicted because on one hand, I was so sleepy, but on the other, I did not want to miss anything. We stopped at a Wal-Mart affiliate, ASDA, in Perth to allow people to get some food, and to meet up with the buses carrying Butler students from other universities. I thought I saw a girl I knew from high school, and as it turned out, it was a girl I knew from high school. So we had a little "It's a Small World, After All" moment, as we marveled at how random it was that we happened to both be in Scotland without knowing it.
Second, we stopped at a place called the Hermitage. The story goes that an ancient Scottish bard by the name of Ossian (who was blind) lived in a hut/cave in the woods here by a waterfall, and he wrote this beautiful poetry that went undiscovered til the 1700s, when a man called James MacPherson "found" the manuscripts and translated it from Gaelic. As it would seem, this is all a bunch of crap, and MacPherson himself wrote the poetry. Not that it's bad poetry, but it would appear that it is not actually ancient, and this Ossian fellow was made up. The area was just beautiful... there was another waterfall, and an old stone bridge, and many trees. We were being hustled through, though, so I was sad that I couldn't just walk around for hours. I should figure out how to go back, maybe.
Anyhoo, following this, we stopped in an adorable town, Pitlochry, where my friend Sarah and I ate in a cute little restaurant, and then had a wander about through some of the shops before getting back to the bus. Following Pitlochry, we drove to Glenfinnan, where the Hogwarts Express from the Harry Potter movies is filmed. We climbed up a big hill that was very muddy, so I carried Sarah over a bit of it, as she wasn't wearing appropriate footwear. The train coming was actually supremely anti-climactic, but my friend Lauren and I insisted upon humming the Harry Potter theme while taking video of the train passing.
Glenfinnan was the last stop of the day until we came to Inverness, our stopping point for the night. Inverness means "Mouth of the Ness," which I didn't know until I went there, so hooray for learning stuff. A few of us walked around Inverness for a while, and then decided we would go to a pub called Hootenanny, where there's folk music every night. Drinks were very expensive, but I had the local brew, and it was pretty good. One of the girls I was with used to do Irish step dancing, and she really wanted to dance, but wouldn't do it, so she attempted to teach me the basic step thing, and we went to dance (it was embarrassing), but then this one girl who's with Butler St. Andrews came out and totally kicked some ass at dancing, allowing us to fade into the background. This whole time, there was a lady sitting by the stage, and she was really, really into the music. We're talking clapping, foot stomping, hitting the speakers, nodding her head, the whole shebang. She really wanted to dance... so, we all started dancing as well, and it was pretty gratifying to see the joy on her face as we were all flinging each other in wild do-cee-does around the dance floor. After a bit, a few of us decided we were exhausted and went back to our hostel.
In the morning, we got up nice and early to go to Culloden Battlefield, the site of the last battle fought on British soil (16 April, 1746). Background knowledge: in 1745, the Jacobites started a rebellion against William of Orange, the Protestant and(duh)non-English king of England. Bonnie Prince Charlie (aka Charles Edward Stuart) led them in the name of his father, James, who believed himself to be king of England, but was chilling in France until further notice. So, Bonnie Prince Charlie rounded up a motley crew of Highland warriors, and had a really bad idea to try to march all night and surprise the government troops (incidentally, most of these troops were Highlanders as well. A lot of mothers would send one son to each side, because everybody wanted to be on the winning side. Hence, it was a battle of brothers against brothers), whom he thought would be ragingly hungover from celebrating the birthday of their commander the night before. Now, the British were not so stupid as to get trashed the night before there was going to be a huge battle. So, in short, the Jacobites didn't make it all the way to the government camp, the government soldiers heard them coming and started chasing the Jacobites, who were forced to retreat. They caught up at Culloden, and the battle was over in about half an hour. It was entirely a massacre, which led to the Duke of Cumberland, head of government forces, to be known as "The Butcher." Culloden spelled doom for the clan system in the Highlands, as the Highland clearances went into effect, and it became illegal for clan members to wear their tartans or carry their daggers with them. This is the end of my history digression.
Anyway, Culloden was spooky. In the morning, the fog was intense, and it felt really... Scottish. The markers for where each clan fell, and the larger cairn commemorating the battle stood out, and with all of the different groups of us walking around and emerging from the mist, it was a pretty shadowy atmosphere. It kind of reminded me of Antietam in that you could sort of feel the presence of death looming around.
After this mess, we naturally needed a pick-me-up, so our tour guide popped in a Proclaimer's CD, and a number of passengers on the bus had a little bit of a sing-a-long. Okay, so the first five or so rows had a sing-a-long while the back looked on in a rather bemused fashion. Happier, we disembarked at a working sheepdog farm, where we got to see some awesome border collies in action. The highlight of this was absolutely playing with the puppies. They are soooooooo cute. I think I need to get a border collie in my life in the near future. Also a highlight: the shepherd picked up a ram by its horns (one-handedly) to get it out of the herd to let people try their hand at shearing a sheep. I was pretty awesome at it. Interesting story concerning the shepherd's wife: she was an American girl who had been on a tour of the farm, loved the demonstration and found a way to work there over the summer, and by autumn, she was married to the shepherd. Now she has a Scottish accent! This whole thing prompted one of my friends to have something of a huge crisis on the off chance that a Scottish man proposed, whether she'd say yes and move to Scotland, leaving everything in America behind, or not. I was highly amused.
We had lunch in a cute little town called Aviemore, then the buses went their separate ways to different distilleries. We went to Glenfiddich. The entire place reeked of alcohol (oh gee, I wonder why?). Fermenting stuff looks pretty gross. The distilling area looks like it belongs in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. You can't take pictures except from a raised platform above it, because as a sign notified us, it was an "explosive atmosphere." The bathrooms are supposedly the nicest in Scotland... there was a chandelier and a fireplace, with a bunch of big leather armchairs. So classy.
We stopped in Elgin on the way back (I felt like I was at home... Elgin, Inverness..)and saw the ruins of an abbey, but it was just long enough of a stop to take a few pictures and then continue on our merry way. Back in Inverness, we took naps and then got back on the bus for dinner. Mmmmmm free restaurant food! It was lovely, though we had to wait FOREVER for our food to come. I guess that it's probably hard to serve like, 150-200 rowdy college students.
This is where the evening took a turn for the more interesting. A couple friends and I decided that we would go to the karaoke bar, since it was really the only other option than Hootenanny's, because Inverness is not so big. So, we had decided that we would sing I'm Gonna Be because a) we are in Scotland and b) we know all the words and have harmonies worked out and everything, but after the imbibing of certain liquids, somebody thought it would be really funny to sing Milkshake instead... I did not think this was the best idea, but somehow I went along with it. We did NOT know the words/rhythm of any part except the chorus, and we pretty much got booed off. We are planning to redeem ourselves sometime in the future with a better song choice. On the other hand, our friend Isaac brought the house down with a rousing rendition of "Roses" by OutKast. Props to him on the rapping part, haha.
We decided to leave the karaoke place and go to Hootenanny's, but for some reason we left Hootenanny's with the intention of going back in, but as it turns out, you can't get into anywhere after midnight. This random old guy came up and asked where we were going next, and seemed to be trying to hit on one of our friends, so rather than making an attempt to get in anywhere, we decided to head back to the hostel as fast as possible, because the dude was creepy.
In the morning, we said good bye to Inverness and hello to Loch Ness. We took a cruise (soo cold) down the loch (no, sadly, I did not see Nessie), and stopped at Urquhart Castle, which, according to the brochure was "Raided. Attacked. And Blown Up!" or something to that effect. There was a trebuchet type thing that had been used in the movie Highlander, so naturally, my friend and I had to have an epic battle while screaming "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!!!" (Side note: I fully understand if you are embarrassed to know me at this particular point in time). It was really beautiful, and we climbed about for a bit until it was time to get back on the bus. We stopped in Fort Augustus for lunch, which was rather charming, and then our last stop was at Glen Coe, the scenic location in which HIGHLANDER!!!!! amongst other films, was ... filmed. It was really beautiful, but camemy ra was very nearly dead, and we were only there to take pictures (Literally, we had 10 minutes). I absorbed the scenery, took as many photos as possible before the death of my camera, and participated in a group picture. We drove by the place where they film Hagrid's hut for the HP movies, and set off for Stirling to drop off the students from that uni. We started watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and it was pretty sweet timing, because as we pulled into Pollock Halls in Edinburgh, the movie ended. We all clapped at Scott's (our driver) impeccable timing, and went home to be exhausted until class the next day.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Hill-Walking, Reflections on Safety, Costco, Working Hard, Hardly Working, Not Necessarily in that Order
I haven't written in what feels like ages. Oh well, I guess I'll make up for lack of quantity with some high quality blogging. I'm going to start this post out on a serious note, and then move on to the goings on in my life. Also, I apologize for the weird layout of this post. I'm not sure what's up with that. Here goes...
This week, with all of the terrorist threats, Butler sent us a ton of emails and urged us to register with the American Consulate. Normally, I tend not to take things too seriously, but I decided to register right away, because I plan on travelling as much as possible, even with these warnings. I'm pretty sure that most of the places I want to go are not really huge spots. Some of the other Butler kids and I have talked about whether we think there is really any sort of threat or not, and it seems like most people are kind of worried, but still proceeding with plans anyway (my friend Liz is going to Paris this weekend, and other people had already purchased tickets for upcoming weekends to various places). While I don't feel really personally threatened or anything, the volume of information we've been receiving about safety and travelling are really making me consider safety in my travel plans a lot more. Not only did we get emails from all of the Butler people here, we got one from the director of IFSA Butler. I feel like there's not so much we can do differently, and I'm not going to lie, I am very American. I open my mouth, and people know I am American as soon as I say one word. If I travel, I'll be travelling with a group of American students, and there's really very little I can do about that. I try not to draw attention to myself, but I feel like I'm very bad at sinking into a crowd, especially because of my tendency towards brightly colored hats. I don't know where this train of thought is headed... just thought I should probably remark on how seriously Butler is encouraging us to take these travel alerts. Okay, enough of that, and back to your regularly scheduled blog programming.
Since my return from England, and realizing that time moves very quickly here, I've been working on getting myself to do things more frequently. Tuesday was our Butler reunion dinner, which was fun (mmm free food!), but I've just decided that I'm not going to go absolutely day-by-day here because I have been spending a lot of time doing school work (that's a surprise!), so things have been pretty low-key. So, the highlights of the last week and a half:
Wednesday: Getting lost, chilling out, emerging victorious!
Wednesday provided me with much excitement. I had my first tutorial, for Scotland and Orality, and I was a little nervous because I wasn't sure if we were going to be quizzed on the reading or what, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Our tutor is very warm, friendly, and laid-back, so I think it is going to be a good experience. Starting next week, I'm moved back to Thursday tutorials, because they ended up unable to cancel the date as there was one girl who couldn't make it on a Wednesday. This means that the tutorial will probably consist of me, two other students, and our tutor. After that, my friend and I decided that we should go to the travel "fayre" that Butler was having at their offices, which are located in the New Town (relatively new... it's Georgian. I will write an entry just talking about Edinburgh itself sometime in the very near future), which is a good distance from where our classes are. Having only a vague notion that Rutland Square was on the west side of New Town, we set off, and walked for a long time, eventually (after a call to my roommate for help, and randomly deciding to walk down an alley that fortuitously led into the square) made it to the Butler office. The travel fayre turned out not to be so helpful, as I am pretty savvy at researching destinations and travel options on the Internet, but there were sweets, and a guy to tell us about travel within Scotland, which was actually helpful. When we left, my friend realized that we could have come a much easier way, and went back that way, but I had to do some shopping on Prince's Street, so I went back the way we came. I was looking for a sweater or sweatshirt, which led me to H&M, where I came out with a belt and some hairclips. Oops.
I hustled back to Old Town, to leave my books and stuff in my flat before I went back to the campus area for the Classics Society Pub Crawl, starting at our patron pub, the Greenmantle, where we are always presented with very free food and very low-cost beverages. I started the night out classy with a glass of wine, fried food (it seems like everything is deep-fried here, which is why I tend to do my own cooking as much as possible!), and Haribo gummies (they are HUGE here. every store has a big display of Haribo, which is pretty funny to me). I spent a delightful hour or so with the few people who had shown up at the beginning (Who starts a pub crawl at 6 pm?!?), before I had to go to a different pub to meet up with my flatmates for the Hermit's Croft charity pub quiz. I got there before the rest of the team, so I tried to stake out an area, which was hard, since the pub was terrible and had no more than five tables. We ended up sitting on the floor, which was not particularly comfortable, but oh well. We were presented with a sheet of aluminum foil and the paper for our answers, and the pub quiz began. Our team consisted of me, flatmate Katherine, flatmate Caroline, her boyfriend Liam, and two other girls from HC, Jess and Becky. We stole a team name from a team that had won the FreshAir pub quiz during Freshers' Week: Quiz in my Pants. They told us to use the aluminum foil to make a sculpture incorporating sport and veg(etable), so Becky suggested we make a man benchpressing a carrot or courgette or cucumber. Somehow, I became in charge of making the guy, and we ended up with a lovely little sculpture.
The team was an excellent combination of talents, because we ended up coming in second (1st place in the sculpture category with 9.5/10!!!) and we won a box of variety chocolates. We went back to our flat to celebrate (by eating the chocolate, yum!)
, and ended up giving most of it away, which was probably a good thing.
Friday: Harvest Festival and a Lovely Dinner
On Tuesday, Ying, Sarah, and I had decided that we would have dinner together at my place and class things up a little bit. I decided I would make a roast pork loin with rosemary, accompanied by a spinach salad and roast sweet potatoes with sage and rosemary. I'd already bought the pork when Ying decided she didn't want to go out since she'd be busy all weekend (sadness), so I invited my flatmates to join our dinner party. But, I have gotten ahead of myself. In the afternoon, I went to the Harvest Festival and learned about various environmental programmes in Scotland, as well as some of the different groups on campus. I wanted to go to a talk about sustainable food, but it didn't happen at the time it was supposed to happen, so I settled for my piece of free pie and then left to go shopping to buy some plates and a roasting pan. All of this was achieved at Poundland, and our plates, as you will see shortly, are quite fashionable. At Poundland, we had our first real unintelligible Scottish experience. A lady kept talking to us, and we were trying to hold up the conversation, but we really,really couldn't understand most of what she was saying. Something about being a bookbinder, but then they moved it to Harvard. I was trying to ask questions, but I'm not sure she understood me either. It's amazing how much difficulty there can be between people speaking the same language...
I started cooking and dinner was ready a little late, but it was okay, because it was DELICIOUS.
I am an amazing chef, and modest too. It was a very nice evening, and then Sarah and I decided we would go out to the Hive, which is a club on the Cowgate. However, we couldn't find it, and in the end, we decided that we're boring, so we went back to her room at Pollock Halls and watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It was an entirely worth while choice, and I was so tired by the end of the movie that I got home and fell asleep right away.
Scottish Party Lifestyle
Saturday was a pretty laid-back day in the daytime. I got a little work done, tidied my room, hung out with my flatmates in the kitchen for a while. Katherine and I walked around looking for dinner for a while, but mostly just ended up exploring, because we didn't find anything that we deemed cheap and tasty enough. I stopped at the store to pick up some ciders to take to a friend's birthday party later that night. Sarah was going to come to the party but had work to do, so I went over to the party myself. I got there before my friend who knows the hosts much better than I do, so it was a little awkward, but I was talking to this guy, Yuri, whom I had met last time these people had a party. Fun fact: Yuri was on the Austrian National Basketball team, but now he is getting his PhD (I think) in mathematics. Later, Yuri's flatmate Anthony, who is getting his PhD in classics (but Greek stuff, not Latin) showed up, and we all talked for a while. I had promised Katherine that I would go up Arthur's Seat with her on Sunday morning, so I left fairly early and went home and slept.
Sunday: Muddy Sunday
I woke up later than I meant to, and woke Katherine up to go up Arthur's Seat. She had not realized that I actually wanted to do it. So, we got our act together and went outside. No sooner had we walked out the door than the sky opened and burst forth with torrential rain. No, I'm exaggerating. It was just a cold drizzle, so it was pretty unpleasant, but we were committed to doing some hill-walking. We couldn't figure out where the easy path was, so we started walking up some stairs on the side of the hill. These stairs just so happened to terminate at a random point, leaving no path to follow. However, there was a lovely view of the Salisbury Crags
and of the city as a whole.
So, naturally, we decided it would be a great idea to climb up the rock face and see if there was another path at the level ground that we could see probably 30 feet above us.
That is the view looking down from when we found the path at the top that actually did exist. So, we walked until we saw more people walking, and then followed them to what we thought was the top, but was not actually the top. There's a little grassy area between the three peaks, and so we had to walk across it to get to the highest peak on Arthur's Seat. While we were doing that, we saw all the messages that people had written with rocks they found, and we decided to add our own.
At this point, I realized that I was supposed to meet my friend LeeAnn at 1 to make a pilgrimage to Costco, and that we would never make it back down on time, and I didn't have my phone. Oops. So, we went up to the summit and had a grand old time looking all around the city and the surrounding areas, and trying to point out the buildings we knew. There's a map sort of thing that tells you what the big things in the distance are, and how far away they are. We were trying to figure out if we could actually see some of the things in the longer distances, but we still aren't sure.
Then I had a go at trying to pull the sword out of the stone...
On the way back down, we tried to go the "easy way" and failed miserably, facing the choice of sliding down a bunch of rocks or going back up and trying again. We ended up walking down the really steep stairs that go straight down the face of the mountain, and we were puzzled by the people who kept passing us at faster speeds, because we were afraid of falling and dying. It was SO slippery, because it was raining, and the steps are really uneven, and there's nothing to hold on to. It was pretty much my nightmare, but we made it down okay, and then we hustled home so I could get a hold of LeeAnn and tell her I'd be late.
I showered, then ran to the bus stop, where a nice man helped us figure out how to take a bus other than the one we'd planned to take that wouldn't be coming for a while. We were concerned that my card wouldn't work for European Costco, but oh, did it work. After shopping at Tesco Metro for the last month, Costco was heavenly. I ended up not really buying too much because I knew I couldn't carry a lot, but I was pretty proud of myself for purchasing liquor at Costco on my own. The checkout guy was really friendly, and amused that we were Americans at Costco in Edinburgh buying large quantities of liquor. Then, we had hotdogs. It was divine. Mmmmmm...
The Week
It's been a good week, but a busy week. I've been in the library getting things done quite a bit these last several days. You have to do a lot of reading here. A lot a lot. And you actually have to do it. It's been absolutely gorgeous, for the most part, all week, so I have been doing my reading outside and breaking it up with short strolls. Lovely. Tuesday was my first archaeology tutorial, and it turned out just fine. My tutor is nice, and I met an Aussie named Hannah who is quite lively, and I think we will get along very well. Wednesday I did more work, and then decided to go to the Edinburgh CouchSurfing meetup, which was a good plan. Something interesting was pointed out to me as we were all talking about having out of the ordinary names... my name is cool because I can just change the accent and pretend I come from pretty much anywhere in the world. I don't feel like too many names can go entirely unaltered in spelling and general pronunciation throughout so many languages. So, maybe I'll pretend to be German for a while. I was responsible and didn't go dancing afterward, but we were at the pub until they kicked us out just after 1. I forgot how many people you meet at once when you go to CS events! That brings us to today: I got SO much done today. I was proud of myself. After all my classes were done, I went to Spanish Society, because somehow, Ying, who does not speak Spanish, is the president of the society. There was free food. Mmmm. I met a girl from Italy, and a girl called Camille from New Zealand. We hung out for a while after the meeting, and then I went back to my flat to cook up some salmon with Katherine. We blasted Disney music and Motown while cooking, and it was a generally good time.
Now that you're all caught up, I am going to go to bed, because tomorrow I have to meet the bus at 7:30 to go to the Highlands!!! I'm going to go catch the Loch Ness Monster, you betcha.
This week, with all of the terrorist threats, Butler sent us a ton of emails and urged us to register with the American Consulate. Normally, I tend not to take things too seriously, but I decided to register right away, because I plan on travelling as much as possible, even with these warnings. I'm pretty sure that most of the places I want to go are not really huge spots. Some of the other Butler kids and I have talked about whether we think there is really any sort of threat or not, and it seems like most people are kind of worried, but still proceeding with plans anyway (my friend Liz is going to Paris this weekend, and other people had already purchased tickets for upcoming weekends to various places). While I don't feel really personally threatened or anything, the volume of information we've been receiving about safety and travelling are really making me consider safety in my travel plans a lot more. Not only did we get emails from all of the Butler people here, we got one from the director of IFSA Butler. I feel like there's not so much we can do differently, and I'm not going to lie, I am very American. I open my mouth, and people know I am American as soon as I say one word. If I travel, I'll be travelling with a group of American students, and there's really very little I can do about that. I try not to draw attention to myself, but I feel like I'm very bad at sinking into a crowd, especially because of my tendency towards brightly colored hats. I don't know where this train of thought is headed... just thought I should probably remark on how seriously Butler is encouraging us to take these travel alerts. Okay, enough of that, and back to your regularly scheduled blog programming.
Since my return from England, and realizing that time moves very quickly here, I've been working on getting myself to do things more frequently. Tuesday was our Butler reunion dinner, which was fun (mmm free food!), but I've just decided that I'm not going to go absolutely day-by-day here because I have been spending a lot of time doing school work (that's a surprise!), so things have been pretty low-key. So, the highlights of the last week and a half:
Wednesday: Getting lost, chilling out, emerging victorious!
Wednesday provided me with much excitement. I had my first tutorial, for Scotland and Orality, and I was a little nervous because I wasn't sure if we were going to be quizzed on the reading or what, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. Our tutor is very warm, friendly, and laid-back, so I think it is going to be a good experience. Starting next week, I'm moved back to Thursday tutorials, because they ended up unable to cancel the date as there was one girl who couldn't make it on a Wednesday. This means that the tutorial will probably consist of me, two other students, and our tutor. After that, my friend and I decided that we should go to the travel "fayre" that Butler was having at their offices, which are located in the New Town (relatively new... it's Georgian. I will write an entry just talking about Edinburgh itself sometime in the very near future), which is a good distance from where our classes are. Having only a vague notion that Rutland Square was on the west side of New Town, we set off, and walked for a long time, eventually (after a call to my roommate for help, and randomly deciding to walk down an alley that fortuitously led into the square) made it to the Butler office. The travel fayre turned out not to be so helpful, as I am pretty savvy at researching destinations and travel options on the Internet, but there were sweets, and a guy to tell us about travel within Scotland, which was actually helpful. When we left, my friend realized that we could have come a much easier way, and went back that way, but I had to do some shopping on Prince's Street, so I went back the way we came. I was looking for a sweater or sweatshirt, which led me to H&M, where I came out with a belt and some hairclips. Oops.
I hustled back to Old Town, to leave my books and stuff in my flat before I went back to the campus area for the Classics Society Pub Crawl, starting at our patron pub, the Greenmantle, where we are always presented with very free food and very low-cost beverages. I started the night out classy with a glass of wine, fried food (it seems like everything is deep-fried here, which is why I tend to do my own cooking as much as possible!), and Haribo gummies (they are HUGE here. every store has a big display of Haribo, which is pretty funny to me). I spent a delightful hour or so with the few people who had shown up at the beginning (Who starts a pub crawl at 6 pm?!?), before I had to go to a different pub to meet up with my flatmates for the Hermit's Croft charity pub quiz. I got there before the rest of the team, so I tried to stake out an area, which was hard, since the pub was terrible and had no more than five tables. We ended up sitting on the floor, which was not particularly comfortable, but oh well. We were presented with a sheet of aluminum foil and the paper for our answers, and the pub quiz began. Our team consisted of me, flatmate Katherine, flatmate Caroline, her boyfriend Liam, and two other girls from HC, Jess and Becky. We stole a team name from a team that had won the FreshAir pub quiz during Freshers' Week: Quiz in my Pants. They told us to use the aluminum foil to make a sculpture incorporating sport and veg(etable), so Becky suggested we make a man benchpressing a carrot or courgette or cucumber. Somehow, I became in charge of making the guy, and we ended up with a lovely little sculpture.
The team was an excellent combination of talents, because we ended up coming in second (1st place in the sculpture category with 9.5/10!!!) and we won a box of variety chocolates. We went back to our flat to celebrate (by eating the chocolate, yum!)
, and ended up giving most of it away, which was probably a good thing. Friday: Harvest Festival and a Lovely Dinner
On Tuesday, Ying, Sarah, and I had decided that we would have dinner together at my place and class things up a little bit. I decided I would make a roast pork loin with rosemary, accompanied by a spinach salad and roast sweet potatoes with sage and rosemary. I'd already bought the pork when Ying decided she didn't want to go out since she'd be busy all weekend (sadness), so I invited my flatmates to join our dinner party. But, I have gotten ahead of myself. In the afternoon, I went to the Harvest Festival and learned about various environmental programmes in Scotland, as well as some of the different groups on campus. I wanted to go to a talk about sustainable food, but it didn't happen at the time it was supposed to happen, so I settled for my piece of free pie and then left to go shopping to buy some plates and a roasting pan. All of this was achieved at Poundland, and our plates, as you will see shortly, are quite fashionable. At Poundland, we had our first real unintelligible Scottish experience. A lady kept talking to us, and we were trying to hold up the conversation, but we really,really couldn't understand most of what she was saying. Something about being a bookbinder, but then they moved it to Harvard. I was trying to ask questions, but I'm not sure she understood me either. It's amazing how much difficulty there can be between people speaking the same language...
I started cooking and dinner was ready a little late, but it was okay, because it was DELICIOUS.
I am an amazing chef, and modest too. It was a very nice evening, and then Sarah and I decided we would go out to the Hive, which is a club on the Cowgate. However, we couldn't find it, and in the end, we decided that we're boring, so we went back to her room at Pollock Halls and watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It was an entirely worth while choice, and I was so tired by the end of the movie that I got home and fell asleep right away.Scottish Party Lifestyle
Saturday was a pretty laid-back day in the daytime. I got a little work done, tidied my room, hung out with my flatmates in the kitchen for a while. Katherine and I walked around looking for dinner for a while, but mostly just ended up exploring, because we didn't find anything that we deemed cheap and tasty enough. I stopped at the store to pick up some ciders to take to a friend's birthday party later that night. Sarah was going to come to the party but had work to do, so I went over to the party myself. I got there before my friend who knows the hosts much better than I do, so it was a little awkward, but I was talking to this guy, Yuri, whom I had met last time these people had a party. Fun fact: Yuri was on the Austrian National Basketball team, but now he is getting his PhD (I think) in mathematics. Later, Yuri's flatmate Anthony, who is getting his PhD in classics (but Greek stuff, not Latin) showed up, and we all talked for a while. I had promised Katherine that I would go up Arthur's Seat with her on Sunday morning, so I left fairly early and went home and slept.
Sunday: Muddy Sunday
I woke up later than I meant to, and woke Katherine up to go up Arthur's Seat. She had not realized that I actually wanted to do it. So, we got our act together and went outside. No sooner had we walked out the door than the sky opened and burst forth with torrential rain. No, I'm exaggerating. It was just a cold drizzle, so it was pretty unpleasant, but we were committed to doing some hill-walking. We couldn't figure out where the easy path was, so we started walking up some stairs on the side of the hill. These stairs just so happened to terminate at a random point, leaving no path to follow. However, there was a lovely view of the Salisbury Crags
and of the city as a whole.
So, naturally, we decided it would be a great idea to climb up the rock face and see if there was another path at the level ground that we could see probably 30 feet above us.
That is the view looking down from when we found the path at the top that actually did exist. So, we walked until we saw more people walking, and then followed them to what we thought was the top, but was not actually the top. There's a little grassy area between the three peaks, and so we had to walk across it to get to the highest peak on Arthur's Seat. While we were doing that, we saw all the messages that people had written with rocks they found, and we decided to add our own.At this point, I realized that I was supposed to meet my friend LeeAnn at 1 to make a pilgrimage to Costco, and that we would never make it back down on time, and I didn't have my phone. Oops. So, we went up to the summit and had a grand old time looking all around the city and the surrounding areas, and trying to point out the buildings we knew. There's a map sort of thing that tells you what the big things in the distance are, and how far away they are. We were trying to figure out if we could actually see some of the things in the longer distances, but we still aren't sure.
Then I had a go at trying to pull the sword out of the stone...
On the way back down, we tried to go the "easy way" and failed miserably, facing the choice of sliding down a bunch of rocks or going back up and trying again. We ended up walking down the really steep stairs that go straight down the face of the mountain, and we were puzzled by the people who kept passing us at faster speeds, because we were afraid of falling and dying. It was SO slippery, because it was raining, and the steps are really uneven, and there's nothing to hold on to. It was pretty much my nightmare, but we made it down okay, and then we hustled home so I could get a hold of LeeAnn and tell her I'd be late.
I showered, then ran to the bus stop, where a nice man helped us figure out how to take a bus other than the one we'd planned to take that wouldn't be coming for a while. We were concerned that my card wouldn't work for European Costco, but oh, did it work. After shopping at Tesco Metro for the last month, Costco was heavenly. I ended up not really buying too much because I knew I couldn't carry a lot, but I was pretty proud of myself for purchasing liquor at Costco on my own. The checkout guy was really friendly, and amused that we were Americans at Costco in Edinburgh buying large quantities of liquor. Then, we had hotdogs. It was divine. Mmmmmm...
The Week
It's been a good week, but a busy week. I've been in the library getting things done quite a bit these last several days. You have to do a lot of reading here. A lot a lot. And you actually have to do it. It's been absolutely gorgeous, for the most part, all week, so I have been doing my reading outside and breaking it up with short strolls. Lovely. Tuesday was my first archaeology tutorial, and it turned out just fine. My tutor is nice, and I met an Aussie named Hannah who is quite lively, and I think we will get along very well. Wednesday I did more work, and then decided to go to the Edinburgh CouchSurfing meetup, which was a good plan. Something interesting was pointed out to me as we were all talking about having out of the ordinary names... my name is cool because I can just change the accent and pretend I come from pretty much anywhere in the world. I don't feel like too many names can go entirely unaltered in spelling and general pronunciation throughout so many languages. So, maybe I'll pretend to be German for a while. I was responsible and didn't go dancing afterward, but we were at the pub until they kicked us out just after 1. I forgot how many people you meet at once when you go to CS events! That brings us to today: I got SO much done today. I was proud of myself. After all my classes were done, I went to Spanish Society, because somehow, Ying, who does not speak Spanish, is the president of the society. There was free food. Mmmm. I met a girl from Italy, and a girl called Camille from New Zealand. We hung out for a while after the meeting, and then I went back to my flat to cook up some salmon with Katherine. We blasted Disney music and Motown while cooking, and it was a generally good time.
Now that you're all caught up, I am going to go to bed, because tomorrow I have to meet the bus at 7:30 to go to the Highlands!!! I'm going to go catch the Loch Ness Monster, you betcha.
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