Different Scotlands

Lately in our Scottish Culture and Globalisation classes we have been talking, well obviously, about globalization and the diversity of Scotland. There is more to Scotland than the ideas we maybe came with in our heads of red-haired Scottish men in kilts, playing bagpipes, eating haggis and drinking whisky. Our professor, Gerry Mooney, took us to his home city of Glasgow to illustrate this and show us a very different Scotland. On Friday, February 20th we all got on a bus and took a field trip there. We met up with Gerry in Glasgow and he directed the driver as he gave us a tour of the city. Glasgow is very different than the Edinburgh we have been hanging out in. Edinburgh is a much older city with the old stone buildings and castle on a hill. We were shown the rough parts of Glasgow… we saw the poor housing situations and trash scattering around some of the streets and lots. It was a bit of a sociology lesson that day. They used to have lots of shipyards and built many ships, now we only saw one ship being built for the military.
Gerry is a big supporter of the Celtic Football Club, which of course is soccer. We got a tour of their stadium and learned about the team’s history. There are about six students from our group that are actually from the UW-Superior soccer team so they had already been there for a game. There are two teams in Glasgow, the Celtics and the Rangers and there are a lot of very strong feelings between them. When they play against each other they leave 100 seats between the supporters. Catholics are related more closely to the Celtic team and the Protestants are correlated with the Rangers. The Celtic team is pronounced with a soft ‘c’, do not make this mistake, and they have a relationship with Ireland and many fans from there. We also got time in their gift shop and they had a lot of what I’ve come to know as a “Sydney” green.
After that we got time to explore some of the city’s museums, we went to the Museum of Transportation, which was neat. They had many displays of old street scenes, cars, caravans, bikes, boats, motorcycles, and even the Queen’s sleeper coach and a police van. We also got dropped off in the City Centre, which is a nicer district with lots of shops. Gerry suggested to us the Horseshoe Pub where we had a very good dinner. On the way our bus had an alarm problem, I think the sensors in the emergency exits were bad or something so we went most of the way back with it beeping, but switched buses in the middle.
We decided to check out the Edinburgh Zoo on Saturday. We took the bus in that morning and took a quick stop at a Greggs, a pastry shop that has really good donuts, baguettes, and pasties. I really like that place! Then we bought day passes for the bus, because we had to catch a different bus to get to the zoo then. The zoo is on the other end of the city than where we usually end up in. There is a great point over by the zebras that gives a wonderful view of Edinburgh. The zoo was really nice. Favorite part and they are famous for their Penguin Parade. At 2:15 they have this parade for the volunteer penguins to strut along the path in front of the crowd. It is so funny because they don’t get rounded up at all, just open the gate and at 2:15 they start waddling out. There was a group of 7 king penguins that came out for us. One of their penguins is knighted even! Another cool animal that I’d never seen before was the pygmy hippo. It was this funny shaped blubbery thing that resembled a hippopotamus but they spend more time on land and live more solitary lives.
On Sunday, Brittney and I spent the day with our host family. Dale and Neille picked us up from Dalkeith and we headed to the Scottish borders. We drove about an hour south to Melrose and Dale, Brittney, and I took a tour of Melrose Abbey. We even got the headphone set for the self-guided tour. I learned a lot about the monks and the different parts of the now ruined monastery. Melrose Abbey is also the legendary burial place of Robert the Bruce’s heart. On the way back out of Melrose we stopped at Scott’s View, which Sir Walter Scott’s favorite place to view the three big hills and valleys between two towns. The story is that he would always take a break there to enjoy the gorgeous view and when he died the funeral processional was going between those two towns and the horses stopped at that viewpoint just as they had always done for Scott. Then we went to the Wallace Monument, Wallace is considered the biggest war hero of Scotland. Dale and Neille know a lot of history and about Scotland. We took some of the farm roads rather than the highway on our trip through the Borders, because again, it is a very different part of Scotland. The Borders is made up of rolling hills that are spotted with hundreds of sheep. It is called the Borders because it is the part that comes before you hit the England line. The area, because of the agriculture, was a wealthy part of Scotland and there are other abbeys and castles around, but all in ruins after being invaded by the English and rebuilt and attacked again. We went back into Edinburgh to have dinner at Catri and Andrew’s, Dale and Neille’s daughter and family. She made us spaghetti with salad and garlic bread. Finlay was still shy and Ailee was sick, so didn’t join us. We also had dessert and tea! The first British tea I had! I didn’t even know I liked tea but it was pretty good with some milk and sugar.
This week my clan, MacDonald, has… dinner duty! So that will keep me out of trouble for the week. We have to go to the kitchen at 4:30 to help Naomi finish everything and set it all up. We then serve and clean up at the end. We try to get out by 7:00. I’m excited to get some quizzes and a paper out of the way so we can leave for Athens, Greece on Thursday!!! There are six of us going, Jenny, Brittney, John, Steve, Ben and me. It will be interesting as our first time out of Scotland! And without a common language! Since we aren’t scheduled to fly in until 1 am we haven’t booked a hostel for that night. So I’m not sure if we are gonna end up sleeping at the airport or on the roof of our hostel yet! I think there is a hotel connected to the airport too. We were hoping for some warm weather in Greece but the forecast looks like its going to be in the 50s. I think the new scenery will be very nice anyways. And… I get to celebrate my 20th birthday there!!!

Just a Weekend in Scotland

We had a beautiful weekend! There was a house trip to St. Andrew’s planned for Friday. We took a bus about an hour and a half to St. Andrews, Scotland. It is an old university town on the North Sea. It is the “Birthplace of Golf” and home to the ruins of a cathedral and castle with a beautiful location right on the shore. We were pretty much given the day with a flexible schedule to explore on our own. We started off at the cathedral. Not much is still standing but there is a tower that we had admittance to. The spiraling staircase was lots of fun… as we imagined being monks! At the top is and observatory with a great view of the town and sea. It had snowed the morning before, but there was more than we had in Dalkeith. The day was given the name of “Where the snow meets the sand…” It was a sunny day and even with the snow it was gorgeous. For lunch I had packed a PB&J lunch with an apple and chocolate digestive biscuits and my friends, Jenny and Brittney, and I shared a park bench overlooking the North Sea. Before we could get in the castle we had time to walk on the pier and on the beach. We saw lots of people with dogs, mallard ducks, and even some swans! We also went out on some rocky juts by the castle. It was hard to traverse with the seaweed that grew on it. We finally got into the gift store by the castle and then got our admittance to check out the ruins there. The castle was really fun. I thought it would be the perfect fort to play in if you were little… but turns out its pretty fun when you are nearly 20 too! There were some secret crawl spaces and even a mine and countermine underground. It doesn’t look like too much in the pictures, but there really was a lot to still look at and rooms to get into (or imagine sometimes). After the castle exploration, we wandered into the St. Andrew’s University Museum- they had some fun interactive exhibits and it was cool to see what some of the student traditions that they have were, like walking down the pier and raisin weekend. We walked down to where we were meeting our bus, but still had some time. We discovered some rocks in the water with a pathway/wall to it. The tide was coming up, but the rocks gave us new angle to view St. Andrew’s. Brittney got hit by a wave walking back from the rocks and my friend, Kelly misjudged some waves jumping from one part of the rocks to the other… but I made it back dry!
Saturday and Sunday was spent in Edinburgh. Saturday was a lot of checking out shops and trying stuff on. The trends here are different than the styles I would say I usually try. Lots of dark colored tights with dresses and boots. But it was fun to look around. Sunday I went on a hike. Okay… so we climbed up Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Park. It’s an old volcano in Edinburgh (the castle is also built on an old volcano). I definitely broke in my hiking boots after St. Andrews and this hike! I climbed it with Kristin, Kelly, Jenny, John, Steve, and Brittney. There are trails all over this mountain! I looked it up and it’s 823 ft- I’m not sure if that exactly qualifies it for a mountain but maybe big rocky hill and cliff? We first went up on the Arthur’s Seat part before heading up the higher point. It was some rough terrain but very rewarding! On top we could see all of Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth (body of water that empties into the North Sea), the Firth Road Bridge we had gone over the day we went to St. Andrews, and the Highlands in the distance. It was really windy at the top, but we enjoyed it.
I am downloading pictures to Photobucket because I think that BlogSpot is linked to it and it takes a long time to download all of them individually onto here. There is probably an easier way that I haven’t found out yet.
I was happy to spend this weekend fairly cheaply after this past week. I’ve been planning trips and spending money on flights and tours. Our first extended weekend starts the 26th of February and goes over my birthday! There is a group of six of us heading to Athens, Greece for it! Then we got our tickets for spring break booked. We are flying to Nice, France. It is in the Riviera and one of the girls, Jonelle, has some friends studying there who offered to show us around and let us stay for two nights. They actually live in Antinibes. Then we are planning to move into Italy and there is soo much to see there! We also booked a Paddy Wagon Tour of South Ireland. A three-day trip that will take us from Dublin and loop around the Cliffs of Moher and the Blarney Stone.
Last week Thursday we celebrated Robert Burns, a very famous Scottish poet, by having a traditional Burns celebration and dinner. Robbie Burns actually had his birthday on January 25th already but we celebrated anyways with haggis, neeps, and tatties. Which if you don’t know what that is… you probably don’t want to know! For real! Okay… haggis- traditional dish…look it up sometime…, neeps- turnips, and tatties- pretty much mashed potatoes. I ate it. It wasn’t even that bad when you mixed the haggis into the tatties and neeps. Then we had cranachan for dessert… a cream, oatmeal, whisky dessert with raspberries on top. It was deceiving looking like cool whip but really not being all that sweet.
Well I'm going to try and figure out some picture stuff... Hope everything is going great in Wisconsin/Florida/Colorado/Texas... and Happy Late Valentine's Day!

Blog #2 in Scotland

We are just starting our second week of classes. I am taking History 210: Modern World, Engl 241: Human Issues in Literature, British History, and Scottish Culture and Globalisation. The Modern World class is with a professor who teaches at Stout. The Literature class is with a professor from River Falls. I’ve never taken her before but she is very nice and seems like a fun professor. British History is with a Scottish Professor and we only have that with her once a week. Culture and Globalisation is taught by two Scottish professors and we start out as a big group for a powerpoint and lecture after lunch on Mondays, and then we split into two groups for discussions and peer presentations. We also get to go on a trip to Glasgow for the class on Feb. 20th. These are some the only history classes I’ve taken so far for college and hopefully the last ones too. I guess I’m just not big into reading history books that get assigned to do for homework. We don’t have classes on Fridays ever, so on Thursday (2/5) lots of us went into Edinburgh for the evening. Back in the States “Thirsty Thursday” is a common term on campuses, but when we went out in Edinburgh it we realized that it was pretty quiet compared to the weekends there. The agenda we had was a pub crawl. Over thirty of us took the bus in to take on this challenge. It started at World’s End where we got a map and where we’d have to return at the end of the night for our ‘free’ t-shirts. We were aiming to finish before midnight so we wouldn’t have to take the night bus back. Then we realized just how much walking was involved in this task. I think we walked over 40 minutes to go from the second place to the third. We had broken into smaller groups. When were working our way through them we realized that we were not going to make it through them all in this one night if we were to make the bus, but we were determined to finish it. Just a quick synopsis of the night would be all the stamps we had to get at each place, a walk through the ‘meadows’, karaoke, and finally free t-shirts! We were able to catch the night bus just fine and when we got back to the house we learned that we were the only group to finish it! The others got mixed up on some streets and came back before the buses stopped running. The next day our group proudly wore our new shirts and some bragging went on.
Friday we had a couple of mandatory events at the house so we all stuck around here for the weekend. One of the big things we had to figure out was what we wanted to do with our first extended weekend, Feb. 26- March 2, also over my birthday! Jenny, Brittney, John, Dan, and I spent a lot of time in the computer lab looking up rates for different destinations. We were looking at France, Spain, Italy, and Greece. We finally booked a flight to Athens, Greece! It was very exciting and I know Mom got a phone call from the credit card company too that night! But we are all very excited for it!
I was contacted by my host family over the past week and Saturday was the Host Family Brunch. Brittney (from Bemidji State) and I were assigned to a family in Edinburgh. On Saturday we met Dale and her daughter, Catri, and Catri’s children- Ailiedh (Ay-lee), 8, and Finlay, 5. Finlay was really shy the whole time, Ailedh is a very active 8-year old. Dale has been in Scotland since 1973 with her husband, Neille (Neal), who is a doctor. Catri and her husband had been living in Scottsdale, Arizona for the past 9 years but recently moved back to Scotland. It sounds like they just got into their house. After the brunch Catri had to take Finlay to a birthday party, but Dale and her granddaughter, Aileidh, were planning to go to the Potrait Gallery of Scotland. She invited Brittney and me to join them and since we didn’t really have other plans we decided to take a bus in to meet them there. It was actually very interesting to see the different portraits of Scottish figures from modern medical surgeons and musicians, to Robert Burns. Dale knew a lot about many of the pieces and told us about them. Aileidh also did very well as we even listened to someone speak about the ‘Potrait of the Month’. Brittney and I stayed in Edinburgh after that and checked out a few souvenir stores and stuff like that.
Sunday Kristin, Jenny, Brittney, and I decided to go into Edinburgh for the ‘Car Boot Sale’ going on in the parking garage of St. James Square. First off, the trunk of your car is called a ‘boot’ here. So it was kind of like everyone was running little garage sales outside of their ‘boots’ in the 4th level of the parking garage. It was a lot of fun. Lots of it was junky, some were antique book collectors or electronics and different stuff. I found a small clutch type bag for only 50 pence and a curling iron for 2 pounds. It was really fun to check everything out though. After the sale ended at 1, we continued shopping around St. James Mall and Princes Street and the Royal Mile. It began to snow some again Sunday evening.
I used some of my Monday morning to make up for lost sleep over the weekend. We have a trip to St. Andrew’s, the birthplace of golf and home to a cathedral and a university, coming up on Friday. In our Scottish Culture and Globalisation class we’ve been talking about the differences between the United Kindom and Scotland from the U.S. We have also started talking about devolution, or those who both oppose and support Scotland becoming an independent nation. Some of the differences we’ve been noticing are the dependence on public transportation (lots of people don’t even own cars and 95% of the population is within a 5-minute walk to a bus stop), language- both accents (understanding about every third word from some locals!) and the way we use words (toilets rather than bathroom, ginger/coke for soda/pop, and you hear some curse words used more openly than you would at home), and the level of surveillance (there are about 8 cameras on the bus its called CCTV and is in restaurants and stores too). Much of Scotland has been watching America as we went through the election process. Even my friend Kelly’s young host brother asked, “How do you like your new President?” It doesn’t sound like many people were fond of Bush over here, but are looking forward to seeing what Obama will do for us. We are also learning how important football and rugby are to our Professor Mooney and many Scots, oh and whisky too! There are actually six students here from the UW-Superior soccer team so a bunch of the guys went to a Celtics game in Glasgow over the weekend. They said it wasn’t the best as games go, but the cheering and energy at the game never let up. They also saw quite a few people taken out by security for getting out of hand.
Well we I’m doing laundry for the first time since being here, really fun sharing those few machines with so many people! We also had a fire drill, but I guess it wasn’t a schedule drill but a girl doing her chores of mopping got the water a little to hot and steamy and set it off. I’m music sharing with my roommate right now, but should go download my Modern World readings soon. So till later…

Getting over the jet lag!

We made it! After a long flight across the pond we made it to Edinburgh on Thursday (1/29) morning! There were a bunch of us from the program on the flight and we ended up making a pretty big pile of luggage at EDI while we waited for more flights to come in and for our 12:15 bus. We made it through customs and I got my first stamp in my passport (exciting!) around 9:30 am in our new time zone. In our camped out location I probably got the most sleep of the whole journey and I knew that we were going to be allowed to sleep until late that night (or actually early the next morning!). Our new professors and faculty met up with us and we found our bus to take us to Dalkeith.
We parked in front of our new home and were greeted by a true Scotsman greeted us in a traditional kilt and costume and played the bagpipes as we gathered together all our bags. We got into the entrance way and were passed a key for our new rooms. I have three roommates, Jonelle from UWRF, Angie from UW-W, and Kari from UW-S. We have room 111- a long room with high ceilings, four big windows looking at the entrance, lawn, and side, and a secret closet… dubbed ‘the beer fridge’ by the last couple groups residing here. That day we were split into our ‘clans’, groups of students with about 8 or 9 of us in them for different activities and jobs that we will doing throughout the semester. I’m in the MacDonald clan and we did a little orientation and some tours of the house and grounds that evening before we decided to check out the town.
Friday we had some more introductory activities and got to know our faculty and staff. All of them seem very nice and I think the courses should be interesting. Saturday we finally got to leave Dalkeith for a day in Edinburgh, learning how to use the Lothian buses and visiting the Edinburgh Castle. When you get into the gates of the castle you realize how big it is! Many of the buildings now hold displays and serve as museums or memorials. There were amazing views of Edinburgh from the castle that sits on the highest point in the city. We stayed until things were closing down and the sun was setting- around 4:30! A group of us walked the Royal Mile where my friend and I found some lambswool tartan scarves and then we got dinner at Deacon Brodie’s. After dinner we walked down to Princes Street, a very popular street in the city filled with shops, Waverly Station, and the Scots Monument. We walked back up to the Royal Mile and met in front of the St. Giles Cathedral to meet up for with more students for a Haunted Tour of Edinburgh. Our tour guide told us many stories and cleared up some myths and legends for us too. We walked to the cemetery where Bobby the Skye terrier sat at his master’s grave for 14 years! And then she cleared it up that it was the wrong grave and the monument was erected by American Bobby the terrier lovers and Disney made the story into a film. We also were able to walk into the part of the graveyard that is locked to the public because of strange happenings and suspicions of a poltergeist. We stood inside of the Black Mausoleum and the tour guide claims that some people come out with strange scratch marks, bruises, and she even had six tourists knocked out one time. It was cold and creepy and one girl in our group swore something whispered in her ear when no one was there and another felt a tight squeeze at her side when no one was there. I got some stories and history of Edinburgh from it and a good spooky rush but was glad to get out and not find any marks!
On Sunday our clans competed against each other in a version of the ‘Amazing Race’ around Edinburgh. We got to use the buses on our own and find different monuments, streets, shopping centers, museums, and landmarks as we went. We did some good planning on the bus ride over and got some of our bonus questions figured out when we talked with a local on the bus. It was really fun and got us familiar with the town. We ended up at the St. James Center where we made a stop at Orange to pick up our SIM cards for the (ghetto) phones we were given. Then we got some lunch and checked out the mall. We all found something at Poundland, pretty much a Dollar Tree but everything is a Pound instead! Then I browsed at some other stores that had some really cute fun stuff and shoes and boots and sparkly bags, but ‘I need to save my money for trips’, I told myself! Lol! So I took some pictures instead! When we got back to the Dalkeith House I tried out my new phone that somehow ended up eating my credit after I talked to Mom for like 5 minutes! So I had her call the payphone later. We had a Ceilidh in the Dining Hall that evening. Ceilidh is a Gaelic word that you say like ‘Cay-lee’ and is a bunch of traditional dances. We had a professional Celidh caller teach us four different dances and it was so much fun! It was also the warmest we had all gotten in the Palace so far. When we had a break finally I had to run upstairs to take off my Cuddle Duds from the day in Edinburgh! After the Ceilidh we went to Mayson’s where they had the Super Bowl on for us. I didn’t stay for the whole thing though because it was really late when you figure that we are six hours ahead of you guys! It was starting to flurry just a little that evening.
Monday starts off our week of classes and we woke up to about an inch of snow (okay…a couple centimeters it would be). We also have a host family reception this coming weekend, so hopefully they found enough families for us all! We also want to go to Edinburgh again sometime soon. But I’ll try and keep you up-to-speed when I can! ;)

Heading Out!

Uff-dah! I did a lot of packing/un-packing/re-packing today! My suitcases were switched around a few times, went on diets, and I even sat on them to zip them up! But fingers-crossed they should all make it through! Thanks to all of my family and friends for all of your love and support and best wishes for my journey. I love you all and will miss you (but def not going to miss the WI winter).
Well Mom, Dad, and I will be heading out tomorrow morning after we drop the boys off at school. I'm meeting up with a few fellow travelers at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport... and then be arriving in Edinburgh the next morning!!!! The next few days will be pretty full with getting to know the rest of the Wisconsin in Scotland (WIS) students and getting accustomed to our new home, the Dalkeith House. If anybody wants to see anything more about the program at all you can check it out and even take a virtual tour of the house at www.uwrf.edu/wis. Otherwise I'll hopefully figure out how to get pics uploaded on here when I get a chance!
Well it will be an early morning, but... my plan is to sleep all nine hours on the plane... we'll see how that goes! LOL!

Counting Down... 8 Days!

I found some new stuff for my blog! Notice the world clocks so you can compare the times... we are about six hours ahead home. I put in the 'picture of the day' things of places in Europe and Scotland. ...and the airfare deals to Scotland just in case you feel the urge to visit! :) It will get more interesting once I'm actually putting up pictures when I'm there, I promise!

TWO WEEKS!!!

JUST TWO WEEKS!!! And I'll be boarding that plane! I'm getting so excited! Actually I would leave tomorrow if I could, it'll be hitting about negative 40* with the windchill here in Wisconsin!
Packed up yet??? Course not! I have the suitcases laid out and stuff all over... its coming together I'd say... I just need to spend some time with it! haha! Oh the fun of packing! :)