Death & Dancing (Day 7)

Today was once again very long and packed with a dozen different activities. We had class time in the morning and then toured the Necropolis in the afternoon (a.k.a. The City of the Dead). There are more than 50,000 people buried there and 3,500 headstones.  It was very powerful to walk through it and we visited the Glasgow Cathedral right after and took some time to journal our thoughts about how we want to be remembered once we pass away.

The activity for the night was much more enjoyable! We went to a Ceilidh (pronounced kale-ey), which was very much like Century Ball Room in Seattle, except that we were taught dances from Scotland instead of swing dancing. Everyone was very hot and sweaty, including our professors, and most people were drinking beer. (I also spent a majority of the time deciding which Disney characters everyone is… I was given Wendy from Peter Pan!)

We have a much more laid back day tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to since I need to take some time to read and journal for my classes. I’m missing the countryside and open spaces and I’ve been feeling a bit claustrophobic being stuck in the city. But hopefully visiting the country in a few days will help take care of that.

Goodnight!

Accidentally Drunk (Day 6)

This is an embarrassing story… but here it goes anyway. (Don't worry Mom, I'm fine now.)

Today I accidentally got drunk/tipsy at lunchtime, and it caught me completely off guard.  No, I did not order any drinks or anything that I thought had alcohol in it.  But I did order crayfish, which came in a cocktail looking glass with a funny pink sauce on it.  I had already been feeling woozy earlier in the day, and I have been since my flight over here so maybe I have an ear infection or something else that contributed to this.  But I started to eat my food and I didn’t like it very much because it had a peculiar taste to it… I didn’t even finish it, and there wasn’t that much to begin with. 

After I stopped eating I started feeling really warm and lightheaded/dizzy so when I paid for my food I asked the waiter if he could check what was in it, just because I wanted to make sure it wasn’t something strange that I could be allergic to.  When he came back from the kitchen he said, “The cook told me that there was the shellfish, some Tabasco sauce, mayonnaise, and brandy.” 

“Brandy?” I said. Both of my professors were standing right next to me since they had been at lunch with a group of us and my first thought was dear God, please let me not be drunk in front of them.

But I was.  At least I think I partly was because I felt very lightheaded and dizzy and similar to what I felt like a few of the nights after I went out with my friends in Edinburgh, but this time I wasn’t enjoying myself at all.

Dr. Chaney, the English professor said, “It would make sense if you were feeling it because you are very tiny dear.”  Many of the other students agreed with that statement and threw in the fact that I hardly needed any alcohol at all to feel something. Unfortunately all of this happened right before we went to hear a guest lecturer speak and one of the girls looped her arm through mine as we walked to the university.  All I could think was this is so embarrassing and I don’t feel good, I really want to sleep.

During the lecture I had to resist the urge to put my head down and zonk out on my desk, so I spent my time drinking a bottle of water that our trip guide had bought for me.  After I finished it I felt much better, but I still have to say the whole experience was not enjoyable.  However, my friends did get some funny pictures of me walking down the street and making faces at them… (please don’t ever show those to anybody.)

So that was my adventure of the day! The moral of the lesson for me was this: Marie Rose sauce (the sauce on my cocktail) it not like any normal sauce.  There is alcohol in it – brandy is definitely not my cup of tea.

P.S. We are now in Glasgow and will be here for 5 nights!

Hiking to the Sunrise (Day 5)

Incredibly early this morning, me and 12 other crazy members from my group decided to climb Arthur's Seat outside of town to watch the sunrise.  Needless to say, I think it's been my highlight of the trip so far and it was well worth being tired later in the day. (It's about dinner time right now and I'm ready to go to bed.) Anyway, the view was spectacular -- even though most of us are completely out of shape the hike was a great way to get our blood pumping, regardless of how hard we were panting by the time we reached the top. Some parts of the hill were so steep that we had to use our hands to help us on the way up. When we reached the top we all sat down and the sun literally started to rise about a minute later, which was amazing timing. It was absolutely breathtaking! Below are 17 pictures that I posted, some of them with captions. Enjoy! I definitely did.

P.S. The rest of the day was nothing too special. We had some good class time and then went to a museum and took a tour, which one of our professors apologized for after the fact because it was so boring and far too long. Wandering around the museum after the tour was much more fun and I spent most of my time with Stephanie, one of the girls from our group, at an interactive exhibit where you tried to match 12 different animals with their different sounds. The best we got was 8/12 before we got kicked out of the museum since it was closing.

More tomorrow -- we will be moving on to Glasgow! 

As you can see, we were on the go before 6 o'clock. Crazy.

Me & Brooks

The marker for Arthur's Seat

Liz & Madeline

Alec

Most of the group...

Wild purple heather -- one of my favorite parts of the hike. 

Arthur's seat is at the top of that hill.  I took this photo during the descent.

Walking back to town.

All the Pretty Churches (Day 4)

Today we had our first class time, which ended up being really great.  After working an office job all summer and sitting at a desk 8-hours a day I can proudly say having time class for four hours was like a walk through the park on a sunny day.  Some of my peers mentioned how long it was during our break and I simply said, “I could listen to this all day!” We had a guest speaker from Britain talk to us about the differences in theology between Islam and Christianity, which was fascinating and she brought up some amazing points that I didn’t know about before. 

Then we had a lecture from the English professor, Dr. Chaney, who is very eccentric and entertaining.  She taught us a brief overview of the bloody history (I’m not cussing, I’m actually talking about violence) between Scotland, Ireland, and England and used different voices all the way through to represent the different people she was talking about! The class was laughing at many parts of that even though the things she was talking about were very serious.

The afternoon consisted of tours of two churches… one of which I had already walked through a few days prior.  But we had a wonderful tour guide take us through – he was an older Scottish gentleman and he enjoyed telling us how various people in Scotland's history had, well, died.  And we got to see the room where all of the knights of Scotland meet every year! That was probably my highlight of the day, it was different from anything I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been getting closer to everyone on the trip, which has been a lot of fun.  All of the people here are great and everyone has such different personalities.  Some of us are getting up at 5 o’clock tomorrow (me included) to climb Arthur’s Seat, a hill outside of town, so that we can watch the sunrise. I can’t wait to take pictures of that! Goodnight!

Palaces & Castles (Day 3)

Our group was up and out of the hotel by 9 this morning, actually probably a little latter since everyone was lagging a bit.  Today we toured a cemetery with a statue of Abraham Lincoln (the first statue of an American president in Europe and the only statue of an American president in Scotland - pretty cool! The statue can be seen out of focus in the first photo below). Then we walked up to the Firth of Fourth, where a whole view of the city could be seen.  After that we walked through the Palace of the Holyroodhouse, where the Queen of England still takes some of her summer holidays.  Elizabeth II has accepted the key to the house at least 20 years in a row now - it's part of a ceremony - and then she always hands it back, which is also part of the ceremony. 

We also toured the Edinburgh castle after lunch and a World War I memorial within it, which made me very sad since there were books full of the names of Scottish soldiers that had died.  Some of my peers spent more than an hour in that part of the castle alone since the memorial had so many details and things to look at. By the time we had finished touring all of those places it was 4 in the afternoon and some of us headed back to the hotel to rest for about an hour. Then we went to a coffee house to study and straight to dinner afterward. I enjoyed a glass of Rose that went straight to my head... sometimes it's a genuine pain not being able to act normal after drinking one glass of wine. However, the trip has been fun so far and tomorrow we have to be up and out by 8:30. Goodnight!

Dear Will, this picture is just for you as it is stained-glass of William Wallace fighting in battle!

Meeting the Group (Day 2)

Today I got to meet the rest of the group from SPU that I'm traveling with! The day was full of walking, exploring, dinner, and cider (which I tried for the first time). We also got the see "the elephant house" which is where J.K. Rowling started writing Harry Potter - I got pretty excited, not gonna lie. I'm excited for tomorrow as we will be touring Edinburgh as a whole group. Goodnight!

My 30-Hour Day (Day 1)

Let me start by saying I can't believe it's already September - except I can because in Edinburgh it's freezing compared to Denver.  Going from 90 degree weather to 60s and below is a little bit of a transition, so thank goodness I packed warm clothes.  Yesterday I spent my time walking around Edinburg and familiarizing myself with the city.  By the end of the day my West had once again become a West instead of a North or East (directions in a new city are always challenging). And I eventually figured out that street names are put on the corners of buildings, not on signs, which is why for a while in the morning I had absolutely no idea where I was.

After I checked into my room in my hotel and cleaned up from my plane rides I met up with my friend Alec. We went to a Halberian football match, which ended up being a draw.  I don't think I've hear more f-words ever said in my life. Europeans in general are extremely passionate about their football, and Alec and I experienced it first hand.  If one of their players made a bad move it was f-word worthy, if one of the other players tripped one of their players it was f-word combined with other words worthy, and god forbid if the ref make a bad call... every Scottish man would be on his feet swearing in a combination of f-words and everything else he could dream up. Me? I think I just watched and laughed at the whole spectacle, while I tried not to fall asleep at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

We walked back into town after the match and found a pub called "The World's End" for dinner.  I had Scottish Black Pudding... after Alec told me what's in it I nearly didn't order it (the main ingredient is actually blood). But I decided to try it anyway and it was delicious! I also ordered a half pint of beer... and I'm glad I only ordered that much because any more would not have been a good combination with the jet-lagged state. By that time it was almost 8 o'clock and I had been awake for 30 hours. The turbulence on the plane had been so bad I probably slept less than two hours of it, so my day in general had been way too long.  I now understand why people go crazy after they don't sleep for days because I was starting to feel it after only one.

I went back to my hotel and slept for about 11 hours straight, woke up at 9 and checked out by 10. And now I'm sitting in Starbucks (because wifi is always available) and in an hour I'll be meeting up with the rest of my group. That's all for now! I've posted photos of beautiful Edinburgh below - more will be coming soon!