Roadtrip!

The past seven days I mostly spent driving. I needed to get an apartment lease before actually relocating to a new state, and this week break between Finals and Graduation was the best time to do it.

The stats went something like this:
~1500 miles (hmm, time for an oil change?)
-7 states
-9 state border crossings
~$20 in tolls
~50 gallons of gas
-4 audio books
-17 apartment viewings in 2 days (13 on Monday, and I finished ahead of schedule! If you can believe it)

It was fun!

There were two short adventures of note:

-Rt 23 from Toledo OH to Ann Arbor MI was a cute little road. For about 15 miles I was confronted with many signs: "State Prison in Vicinity. Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers."
Indeed.

-I stopped for gas and lunch in a little WV town just outside of Charleston. In fact, it may have been the outskirts of Charleston, I forget.
I was innocently washing my windshield when a Marine recruiter approached me and asked if I'd ever thought about joining the Marines. (I didn't know their recruitment policy involved patroling the gas stations.)

I didn't know how to tell him that I am really not the person they want enlisting, so I blinked at him a few times before I finally just said, "Erm... no..."
He then asked if I had any friends interested.
So I wished him good luck. I didn't know what else to say to a Marine recruiter.

More pictures!; Easter

I just added about 15 photos to my photo album, mostly of my winter travels, check out the link to the right.

This year has gone by so fast. Easter snuck up on me, and now I have only two more weeks left of school before Exams (I have one final, and one project). It's really hard to believe how little stands between me and the end of my undergraduate career.

I was sick all last week and still catching up on my health this weekend, so Saturday night I watched the first 3.5 hours of "The Ten Commandments", the 1956 film starring Charleton Heston. It went on for 5 hours. Sadly that meant I actually watched the entire beginning, with Moses building cities and falling in love with the Pharoah's daughter, and then starting falling asleep by the end of the Plagues. I was unable to watch Charleton part the Red Sea. But the special effects were kind of cool, for the 50's. The Angel of Death was depicted as the billowy green fog of Pestilence, and it crept through the town; also, the Burning Bush had a glow to it, it was definitely not real fire.

My parents visited this weekend and brought me a little mini Easter basket, and Girl Scout cookies! Which made life okay when I could not find discounted Cadbury Creme Eggs on Sunday afternoon.

Monticello Madness!

Every year on July 4th, Monticello (home of our esteemed TJ) has an Independence Day celebration and Naturalization Ceremony. I've always heard it's a nice ceremony and well worth it, but have never gone.

I just found out this morning that President Bush will be this year's featured speaker, replacing filmmaker Ken Burns. I'm kind of tempted to go, although there are only 1,000 tickets available and I'd have to drive out to Monticello early tomorrow morning to get a chance at any. The tickets are free, but the crowds might be a hassle. Hmm. Decisions!

oh yeah....

I forget why, but we were talking about babies in the shop last week, and the manager used only the word "bairn". Which is the Scottish for baby, which I knew, but it still struck me a little bit.


Happy Mother's Day!

At least in the US.
In Spain, Mother's Day was last Sunday (May 4) which I think is the day for most of Europe. Not so for the UK, where it's always the third, or fourth maybe?, Sunday of Lent.

It's refreshing not to be surrounded by Hallmark adverts.

Nuremberg 1

As hinted in my last post, I had a wee trip this weekend, to go visit Nurnberg (Nuremberg). I'll probably make a series of small posts about it as I remember things to write about. So, to begin.

Nurnberg is an old, old city. It has a center well-defined by the old city walls: within lies all the medieval architecture, including a castle known as the Berg and several old churches. Outside the wall looked to me like a fairly typical suburban-metro sprawl, though with some German-style architecture mixed in with all the glass office buildings and plain hotels. But within were houses painted white with brown shutters, Gothic churches, narrow covered footbridges, clocktowers, and extremely strange bronze statues. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera every time I passed by one of these statues, but when I post my pictures you;ll be able to see a few. Nurnberg was beautiful.

I wanted to see the courtroom of the famous Nuremberg Trials, but it is actually kind of far out of the city and the car was a manual, so we didn't make the journey to see it. I'm sure it's a boring place anyway, right? Just a courtroom!

It was really nice to stroll through the open-air market in the plaza of Lorenzkirche (kirche means church), which was open every day, although pretty empty when we first visited in the rain. Many of the stalls were exactly like the German Market I saw in Edinburgh around Christmas time, with the same roasted/sweetened nuts and heart-shaped biscuits, but the other stalls had different kinds of jewelry, or clothing, or cooking utensils, or whatever was being sold. Although most of the Germans we ran across seemed to have a good knowledge of English, the venders in the markets were more difficult to communicate with. We bought sausage sandwiches by pointing at what we wanted and holding up fingers; this procured us something called the Nurnberger Snack though we didn't know it at the time. Three small sausages on a hard roll, pretty tasty.

It was more difficult perhaps when we asked the fruit sellers what certain fruits were, or when we wanted a fruit in the center of the display. The stands were so huge it was pretty impossible to get close to a fruit if it wasn't placed in the front, but we made do and had some delicious grapes, strawberries, and dried apricots. At one stand there was dried ginger next to the dried apricots, but the vender spoke very little English. We asked what it was, still, because the label 'Ingwar' sounded like 'Ginger' but we weren't sure. He picked up a nearby ginger root, and then offered us to try a piece of the dried ginger. A lot of the venders let us sample what we were about to buy, except for things that were prepackaged, like the strawberries. The ginger was stronger than I expected, and he mimicked the 'whoa' sound I made with a laugh.

I have developed a strong appreciation for people who visit a country without knowing the language, it's difficult. Luckily the venders and waiters we came across had a good sense of humor about it and were very patient and helpful. Some seemed to enjoy the chance to practice their English with us, and for some others we found it easier to communicate in Spanish, although one waiter first switched to Italian when we obviously didn't understand German.

Other people were at least completely bilingual, and I'm sure this is a great asset to any employer. The hotel staff were fluent in both, as well as the every grocery store clerk we bought from, and the waiters at the higher-end restaurants. Nurnberg hosts a lot of fairs and conventions, so presumably they see a lot of English-speaking businessmen all year round.

Mothering Sunday

In case you didn't know, today is Mothering Sunday.

This day has apparently been celebrated ever since the Medieval times, and is always the fourth Sunday in Lent.

Basic Information

I believe that Father's Day, on the other hand, is celebrated the same time in Britain as in the US.


Happy Mothering Sunday to any and all mothers out there!

Stirling

I'm not quite sure I can do a history lesson on this one. You might be better off looking up a brief history of the town of Stirling online somewhere. But the important parts are these:
Sometime in the 1100's Stirling was a very powerful little town, considered the stronghold or the heart of Scotland. It was said "He who holds Stirling, holds Scotland." The town figured very prominently in two battles. One was at the end of the 13th Century, in which William Wallace (you might remember him from "Braveheart") held off the English at what became known as the Battle of Stirling Bridge. It is named such because, according to local legend, Wallace had a builder sit underneath the bridge until the English army came marching along, then he knocked out the pins, leaving half the army on one side, half on the other, and quite a few drowning in the river. What is definite is that the Scottish Army attacked while the English were still partly across, a nice little bottleneck.
The second battle here was the Battle of Stirling, in 1648. Don't ask me about it, I don't know anything, only that this was also the time of Cromwell.

Stirling has, at times, been a capital of Scotland and been home to the King of Scotland in the era of James IV (so, early 1500's) and before him. Thus, Stirling has a Castle, which--like the Edinburgh Castle--is seated at the top of an old volcanic plug overlooking a mostly flat terrain. It's weird, because in one way if you've seen one Scottish castle you've seen them all, I guess. A sharp incline to the Castle, even once within the Defences. No moat here, just perfect geography for a castle and a lot of stone walls.

A few things surprised me about Stirling Castle. There were a surprising number of little gardens and plazas, one that was named the Lion Square---perhaps named for the lion that was exercised there. Who would keep a lion in an enclosed castle? Must have been crazy. The site used for the chapel was the oldest building site on the hill, though the one standing there now was built by one of the Jameses in the style of a French chateau. The Great Hall was constructed with much lighter-colored stone than the rest of the castle, so it stands out, and the upturned-boat design for the roof was inspiration for the roof in the Edinburgh Castle.

There were draperies with unicorns on them everywhere. I mean it.
They are currently undergoing a project in which a set of seven tapestries that show a unicorn hunt are being commissioned to hang in the Great Hall, as they once were 500 years ago. Down the one side of the Castle, past the Powder Magazines, is the Tapestry Studio. There was one woman working at a gigantic loom with about three guards... to make sure we don't distract her? Tapestries are woven on their side, left to right not bottom to top. You can do postgraduate study in West Dean College, in West Sussex. It takes a year, apparently. You have no idea how much I want to quit physics and take up tapestry weaving.

Anyway. So the last main building is the Palace, which housed the King's Apartments and Queen's Apartments, where visitors would be received, dancing and dining hosted, and the royalty slept. While I was visiting these areas were being excavated and restored. Sounds bad, maybe. But I really liked the unfinished look, it felt more realistic than any color matching could have done. It was here that I saw a short dramatisation of the murder of the 'Black Douglas' who refused to pay fealty to King James II. I think. Hey, there were a lot of details to remember today!

-I also saw a really cool exhibit of the Great Kitchens, which had fake food and plastic cooks to show how the kitchens looked and ran back in those days.
-It must be a requirement for every Castle to have a museum for the local regiment of the Highlanders Army, this one was dedicated to the Argyll and Sutherland Regiment.

My entrance fee to the Castle included Argyll's Lodgings, a mansion located right across the street from the castle, owned by Alexander, and passed along the various Earls of Argyll. Though small, everything recreated a 1670's noble townhouse. Actually I was impressed with it a lot, even though there were only three or four display rooms, and everything was in the same shade of purple. Everything. But a really beautiful house.

On my walk back down to the town centre, I stopped by the Smith Art Gallery, though I saw very little art. The first, small room housed a temporary exhibit about printing in Scotland. The second, larger room focused on Stirling History. It started off fine, with archaeological artefacts from prehistoric times, then things got a little confused. They jumped from that to the role of area men in the Napoleonic Wars, to the 1297 Battle of Stirling Bridge and William Wallace, to a miners' strike in 1979, then back to the 17th century. I have never appreciated proper chronology before today, though I did learn a lot about the area's history.

Other than that, there isn't much in Stirling. It seems to be mostly a little commercial hub for the region.. one of these places that is central to everything and so it houses the main mall, even though the town itself is definitely not big enough to support so many shops.

That, and I put up about 30 photos from today, so go on and have a look.

Scorraig photos up!

Check the Edinburgh Uni Nov-Dec link for 15 new photos, those that Flora took while I was at Scorraig. Only two months late, but gives you an idea of some of what I wrote about, especially since I didn't take photos of my own.

Amendments

So I guess you shouldn't believe everything you read on my blog.

I did a little research just now about Shrove Tuesday, because it seemed too similar not to be related to Lent... and of course it's the British equivalent of Mardi Gras. Now it's just a very secularised holiday of pancakes. Similarly you could say Mardi Gras festivals in New Orleans bear little as the day before Ash Wednesday.

---
Moving on. Football:

Also today I watched the Super Bowl. Because it was shown on one of the BBC channels, I could stream the entire thing legally, at high quality. As a government-funded institution, BBC channels don't have any commercials ('adverts'). When the US side took a commercial break, they cut back to three sports commentators to explain the game to British viewers. Two were British, and at least one was a rugby commentator; he was the one asking questions like "I don't understand, why did the Giants just do that?" The third was, I believe, once an NFL player himself and he did most of the explaining, though he had the unenviable task of debunking Rugby Guy's babble. I have the distinct feeling he wasn't affiliated with the BBC at all, just some NFL guy they hired for the event.

The explanations the less-confused BBC sports guy gave were pretty bad, but not nearly as confusing as those found on the BBC American Football page.
Highlights include:
-"The attacking team, or offence, needs to move the ball forward in chunks of at least 10 yards, which is why the pitch has yardage markings."
-"[Plays] are the complicated movements involving all 11 players teams use to move the ball downfield."
-"Plays are called by the head coach or quarterback, who is the attacking lynchpin of any team." (The attacking what?)
-I might as well have quoted the whole page. Go read it if you're interested, it's pretty short.

The three BBC sports guys were pretty annoying, I was glad to skip through their talking bits, and the 4.5 hour feed only took me about 2 hours to get through. During the actual gameplay the announcers were the same NFL guys you all had in the States, what a blessing.

I've never been one of those people who watched the Super Bowl just for the commercials, but I must say it was weird not to have them.

It also surprised me that even though I knew the final score, and thus could deduce what would happen for each drive, more or less, I was still pretty emotionally invested in the game. I think it's hard not to be with a game that was close. I knew the Giants would score a touchdown before the end of the game but I was still mentally pushing them through their two-minute drill. Intense.
Also: Tom Petty :)

Burns Night

Once upon a time in Scotland there was this guy named Robert Burns. Actually this was around the later half of the 18th century. Robert Burns was a poet, but not just any kind of poet. He mostly wrote his poetry in the Scots dialect, although there are some written in English.

Because no one else was creating literature in Scottish, Burns is seen as the one man who legitimised the dialect, who brought poetry to the average Scot, and is Scotland's national poet.

Some examples of his poems (the really famous ones):
Address to a Haggis
To a Mouse
A Man's A Man For A' That
My Love is a Red, Red Rose
Auld Lang Syne

I especially recommend this site, which has the complete works of Robert Burns:
Robertburns.org

Every year on or about Burns' birthday, January 25, Scotland celebrates Burns Night. This is a time to gather all your Scottish pals together. There are a set of rituals performed, beginning with a performance of "Address to a Haggis" and a few toasts, then a lovely dinner of haggis, neeps, and tatties, with whisky. After the meal, there are more recitations of Burns poems and finally every sings "Auld Lang Syne" together.
The fact that UVA's fight song is to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne" is bothersome.
Also, once upon a time someone told me that "Auld Lang Syne" was Latin for "Happy New Year's".

Little known facts about Robert Burns:
-Abraham Lincoln was an avid fan of Burns' poetry and had much/most/all? of it memorized.
-There is a bust of Robert Burns in the home of Abraham Lincoln today
-There is a statue of Abraham Lincoln in a cemetary somewhere in Edinburgh.
I need to find this statue, maybe around February 12?
No one told me these things!

There is also a link between Burns and the Revolutionary War (known here as The War With America or.. something):
Ode For General Washington's Birthday

-----

Last night Physics Society had a Burns Night, where literally everything was delicious. I had the best haggis, neeps, and tatties I've tasted yet. The host was surprised I'd had haggis before, but I genuinely love it, and it was the first time I've been able to stomach neeps. Extremely good quality whisky, five kinds of dessert (nothing particularly Scottish about them though).
At the beginning no one wanted to perform the Address To A Haggis, so the eight-stanza poem was passed around with one person reading a stanza each. Those eight people were allowed first go at the food.
Theoretically the eight most Scottish people were to read, but I was handed the poem during the passing about. Maybe an American is less offensive to read Robert Burns than an Englishman? All the same I absolutely butchered it.

holidays

Oh yeah...

so if I hadn't talked to my parents yesterday afternoon, I would have no idea that today was the observation of MLK Jr's birthday. Not that it surprises me, but it is a little strange to think about going my day as normal knowing that back home everyone has the day off.

In fact, the placing of "bank holidays" confused me for a really long time before I realised that the US has them too... we just give them fancy names to commemorate something. The UK has these bank holidays scattered throughout the year at regular intervals, I think it's one every two or three months.

The difference is, all through this term (just like last term) I have no days off. None, zero. No MLK Jr Day, no Presidents Day, no spring break thrown in the middle of term, no reading days after a month of classes. Just eleven straight weeks of lectures, tutorials, and practicals, then that awkwardly-placed break before exams.

Different countries, different systems.

Salisbury Cathedral

The Cathedral completely dominates the town of Salisbury. It's hard to imagine how a town so small could support a cathedral so huge, but I suppose without it the tourism industry would be a lot smaller, since there are plenty of other towns in the area to use as a base for moving on to Stonehenge. And anyway, without the cathedral, the history of the area would have been a lot different.

When the cathedral was originally built over 700 years ago (I think it just celebrated its 750th anniversary?) it did not have the gigantic spire on the top, but that was added in almost as soon as cathedral construction finished. The plan is not the usual cross shape but a Lorraine cross (has two transecting parts), which was interesting to see.

When first laying the foundations, they dug some four feet into the ground, hit the watertable, and laid foundations right on top. Of course in modern times they would have been able to get around the watertable, but not in the 13th century. The roof was originally a very rounded shape, but it was discovered later that the distribution of weight was pushing the tops of the walls outwards, and so the roof was reshaped from the inside to make a taller, pointier shape. On the Tower Tour I took, we actually went inside the roof, and saw the supporting beams. All were wood, but required wood of such thickness as cannot be bent, so the supports are cut out of massive branches--some a lot curvier than others. Also in the space above the arches lies the pipes for the sprinker system, in case a fire should hit the cathedral. Another English cathedral had a fire and the water became trapped in each dip between the arches, and the resulting weight brought the roof down. To avoid a similar fate, valves were installed at the bottom of the ones in the Salisbury Cathedral, which open if the sprinkler system turns on.

The spire itself was added on after the rest of the cathedral was finished. It actually lies off-center, as we saw inside the spire: the supporting cross beams met several feet along a diagonal in the square "tower" section, and of the balconies at the halfway-point up on the spire, one was extremely narrow and its opposite was much wider. The weight of the spire lies more heavily on the columns on the nave side of the tower, and down there one can see the half a foot or so that this side has shifted into the foundations.
Construction of the cathedral and the spire primarily relied on windlasses... and there was one actually inside the spire, original. It was so well-balanced that a nudge with one finger set the wheel moving, no need to act as a human hamster.

Going up into the spire was amazing. We saw the clock that operates the bells... I could have watched that thing run all day! there is no face to the clock, just a system of gears that lifts levers every quarter-hour to the same chimes as recognised from Big Ben. When the lever is lifted, it pulls down on the rope attached to the bell above. We watched the clock when it rang the hour, then watched the bells on the quarter-hour and the half-hour, then the clock again when the bells rang for evening prayer service.

The climb up into the spire involved a lot of narrow spiral staircases, so small I couldn't get half of my foot on them, most without handrails and made of stone. Up and up we climbed, and we could only actually go halfway--about 200 ft of the 400 ft spire. Above that only two can go at once, attached by harnesses to ropes and climbing a series of ladders connecting small platforms.

As mentioned before, the tour took us onto each of the four balconies, affording views of the cardinal directions. On a warmer day it would have been beautiful to behold. This day was below freezing, and the winds were 25-30 mph (they don't allow tours into the spire when the winds get over 80 mph).

The rest of the Salisbury Cathedral was of course fascinating. There was the original clock which rang the bells, dating no later than 1360, and is the oldest working clock in Britain--or anywhere, or something. A set of flags flown by the Wiltshire army regiments, the first two of which were about 200 years old and almost nonexistant, just a vague outline of a crown on what could have been fishing nets under other circumstances. The center of the nave had a Christmas Nativity scene, featuring the creepiest Holy Family and angels I have ever seen. The back stained glass window was dedicated to "Prisoners of Conscience", done in dark blue with scenes like the betrayal of Jesus by Judas.

But this was one of the most fascinating things I have ever seen..
Of the original Magna Carta copies, only four remain, and one of them is housed in Chapter House! Somehow the entire Magna Carta was squeezed onto a single piece of velium, about 18 in wide and 24 in long (my estimates). Of course it was completely unreadable... not because of poor condition (the condition was excellent) but because of the shorthand used to get it all onto that size. The document could have been almost anything.

Also while I was there an archaeological team was just beginning work excavating an area in the center of the nave, where a new fountain was to go. It's the sort of thing we learned about in Archaeology. Just before new construction can begin somewhere, they send in an arch team to excavate it and make sure that the building project won't destroy unknown evidence, and so rescue any artefacts before the work begins. Amazing to see that kind of work in progress.

Old Sarum

I walked up to Old Sarum the second morning in Salisbury. It lies about 1 mi north of my B&B, and about 2.5 mi north of Salisbury Cathedral, which is just south of the City Centre. So by my reckoning, Old Sarum is about 2 mi from the heart of Salisbury.

Old Sarum is a large, prominent hill, the only one in a very flat area of land. According to the information on the site, it was originally revered in some way by the mesolithic peoples who lived nearby. In the Iron Age to Bronze Age it was used as a defensive fort, converted to a Roman fort when the Romans came about 65? AD. After the Romans left Britain it was used by the British against the Saxons. Around 1070 or so, William the Conqueror brought his army there. Shortly after, a Norman castle was built on the summit of the hill.

Even just the walk up the hill was fascinating. There were two moats, both extremely deep, and had normal-sized trees growing on the lower banks that barely came over the mound on the outside. The inner plateau was the site of the original Cathedral, used from 1080-1180, abouts. What lies in its place now is only ruins, the base of the walls, marks where the columns were in the nave, a little more structure on the basement side, underneath what was once the library. Just to one side stood the Bishop's Palace, but all that remains of that is a single wall, about six foot high and twelve feet wide.

Crossing the inner moat and up onto the very top of the hill brought more ruins in sight. On the north side were two connecting chapels, and behind them the location of the privvies and entrance hall to the castle that lay on the west. The area in the center was left pretty well open. To the south and east were functional rooms: a bakery, kitchens, that sort.

Old Sarum was used for about two hundred years. It was 1220 or so that the Church decided it wanted a Cathedral away from military influence and began building what is now Salisbury Cathedral 2 miles south of Old Sarum, around which the city, markets, and economy of Salisbury grew. Kings used the defensive castle on Old Sarum less and less, and in the 14th century it was considered uninhabitable. It was 1550 or so that whoever was king at the time allowed for the buildings on the hilltop to be dismantled for use as construction materials elsewhere. What remains on Old Sarum are the parts not taken away at this time.

The foundations left were buried by soils and sediments and it was only in the 1830's that people noticed the grass pattern that belied hidden structures. An excavation took place 1909 or so to uncover what is seen on Old Sarum today.

A shame that the buildings had been dismantled---imagine what a rich resource they would have provided to modern archaeologists.

Back from Salisbury

I really do not have enough energy to do justice to my fun, short little jaunt down to Salisbury. So look for a post on my travels shortly.

In the meantime, a preview can be seen! New photos are up. One album ("Salisbury") is devoted exclusively to my post-New Years trip. I also updated my Nov-Dec album, and just barely started a new album for the second semester, which currently holds six pictures from Hogmanay fireworks here in Edinburgh.

Happy New Year to all at home!

Coldstream

I spent the last three days visiting my friend Sandy, who lives in the Borders region--between England and Scotland. The small town of Coldstream lies right next to the river which at that point defines the boundary between the two. It was a quiet three days, full of home-cookin', card games, and walks around the town.

I had haggis for my FOURTH time! And it was better than any of the others. Mmm, homemade haggis!
Funny, my host-mum asked if I would eat haggis, but was not concerned if I'd eat turnips or pumpkin or any of that nasty stuff.

The Borders region is mostly pretty flat, with a few hills, and has an agricultural feel. In Sandy's area the farms are more of livestock, a little more south the farms grow more crops than animals. The open fields were a nice change, though it's not usually the kind of scenery I appreciate.

I've realised how weird it is to come back to Edinburgh after being away, even for just a few days. It's that feeling you get once you get to know a place well, it becomes a home at some point without official notice, just a feeling that creeps up unexpected.

Massive Christmas Update: Scorraig

On Thursday morning I left Katharine's, took the train to the city centre (Central Station), walked about half an hour to the bus station on the other side of the city centre, and boarded a bus heading to Inverness, which is in the Highlands near Loch Ness and the North Sea, with a quick change of bus at Perth. Then Flora and I went grocery shopping for some important Christmas essentials, and we made it to the 'mainland' side of Scoraig, which Google Maps tells me might be called Carnach, seperate from Scoraig by a sea loch, Loch Rum. I think. Pronounced "Room".

Scoraig is a peninsula in the Highlands, nearish to Ullapool, and isn't an island but might as well be. It's best to access via boat. On the 'mainland' side is a free car park and a 'pier', a slope of concrete for small boats, but no permanent place for the boats to go. On the other side of the loch is Scoraig, another concrete pier and a boathouse, and a system by which the boats can be let out to sea using ropes on the pier. It is difficult to explain with words alone so I won't try. Scoraig is also accessible by foot, on a long path around some large hills/small mountains but it's so steep a road may never be put in. Very large things can be brought to Scoraig by a large raft if it's calm and clear.

About eighty people live on Scoraig (Scorraig is the local spelling, but one R is the official), though many were gone for the holidays. Flora divides them into the ones who are "creepy hippies" and the more normal. Most of the people came from England originally, and most are now in their fifties or older, though there are some children growing up there and a few people in their twenties escaping modern life. Everything is driven by wind power, which charges up the batteries used, with solar power secondary. Most people keep animals of some kind, mostly chickens, sheep, and a few people have pigs, cows, or horses. Most of the dogs are trained to be sheepdogs. Half the people are into drugs, some of the home-grown variety.

My first morning on Scorraig was the day of the winter solstice, so Flora and I joined the creepy hippies on the top of a hill to watch the sun come up. We arrived with an armful of fuel for the fire, and received brandy coffee and virgin hot chocolate at the top, shared amongst the dozen or so. The sky slowly lightened around nine, then we grew silent around 9:30 as the first rays broke over the hills. A low "ohm" began when the sun rose above the rocks. Some sort of crazy pagan ritual? Flora and I tried not to giggle. Our efforts were slighted when one of the dogs ran into our direct line of sight and squatted down, leaving its own offering for the solstice.
At that point giggling was guaranteed.

The rest of the time on Scorraig was relaxing and wonderful. What began as myself, Flora, and her parents for the first few days became eleven people in their large cabin. Eleven! During the few hours of daylight we went on walks exploring the area. About half a mile to the west was the end of the peninsula with beautiful views of sunsets, over the uninhabited islands. The mountains dividing Scorraig from civilisation were about two miles away, though I never went that far. One mile to the north brought one over the ridge and down to the other side, which was reputed to be amazing in the summer but muddy and desolate looking when we went over.

Our evenings were spent with large family dinners, games (including The Marble Game... Flora's young nephews, ten and eleven years old, asked me, "Does everyone play this in America?" Hah. Erm, no...) and talking.

Christmas dinner was the slightly untraditional roast beef, apparently most British people have turkey dinners, but it was accompanied by crackers (with crowns, jokes, and toys inside) and whisky---pretty Scottish! We followed the Bush family tradition of having our big dinner on Christmas Eve, and the opening of one present that evening, then a long morning on Christmas Day of presents after the equally-traditional breakfast of an egg and sausage sandwich (I did not partake). Because there were many crackers left over, we had more crackers with our Christmas dinner, which tasted surprisingly like Christmas Eve leftovers. The dinner, not the crackers.

I made friends with the two dogs belonging to Flora's brother, and became their primary caretaker for the almost-week I was on Scoraig. Mai (actually spelled My) was about ten, and her daughter Fati (actually Fatsy, but I felt that was too mean) almost a year old. Both were collie mixes, used as sheepdogs. Fati liked to jump up into laps and be cuddled though she didn't stay for long.

The day before Christmas I made my own contribution to the Christmas biscuits and baked a batch of coconut cookies that were more like coconut-hinted shortbread, as well as a batch of peanut butter cookies with Hershey's Kisses in the center, as Mom makes for Christmas. The Kisses baffled the other ten in the house, they'd never seen such a thing! Flora's "brother-out-law" told me, "I like the peanut butter shortbread biscuits, but what are these dodgy chocolates doing in the middle?" No one could understand how the chocolate kept the shape! I explained how the chocolates are made, and passed around the bag of unused Kisses, which did not impress our British friends. "It tastes like goat's cheese," Flora said. I suspect that British chocolate has different sweeteners than American chocolate. To me it was a bit like the taste of home.

Merry Christmas to all, and Happy Boxing Day!

Massive Christmas Update: Glasgow

So while I have internet back, it's about time I make an update on my life post-finals.

My last exam was Thursday, and I went to my friend Katharine's in Glasgow on Saturday. While there I pretty much recharged from the semester. There was a very large park across the street from her house. I'm bad at estimating areas, but to walk around the perimeter took me about an hour, and it had on the grounds a pond with pavilion and boating dock, walled garden, 'glen walks' that went through some heavier forest and around a waterfall from the man-made dam, a few large open fields, and a couple sets of children's playgrounds. Right next to the park was a train station, so a three-minute walk from her house and twenty-minute train ride got me right into the city centre, very convenient for visiting Glasgow. On my last two days I even took the train trip by myself, AND figured out the Glasgow Underground (a very simple loop with about a dozen stations).

I went to the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art, shopped a bit in the pedestrian area of Sauchiehall/Buchanan streets. I visited the museum of Kelvingrove, what used to be a huge mansion on a hillside in Glasgow, on the north side not the city centre---Kelvingrove was a bit of a mixed bag, by which I mean that the organisation was lacking. There were two open areas, one on the west end that had the taxidermy displays, and the one on the east had some really weird sculpture, including heads hanging from the ceiling with a range of emotions on their faces.

Right near Kelvingrove was the Museum of Transport, which included pretty much every range of transportation used since the invention of the steam engine---and the working model of the steam engine was so cool I could have watched it go for hours. I don't think I'd ever seen one before. The displays had: horsedrawn carriages, including gypsy 'caravans' (modern-day caravans are our RVs/trailers). Old cars, especially interesting because few were American and most were makes I'd never seen before. Some trams (still double-decker) back in the 1930's, before they had buses. Trains, which were boring except for the platform view of the engines. A large room of model ships, pretty boring except for the warships. And some bicycles and motorcycles, apparently the first bicycle is credited to a Scotsman!

Katharine's family was warm and inviting and I learned a lot of things about Scotland, some of it from her younger brothers who are both crazy about rugby. Their TV got a lot of channels, so it was pretty much my first experience with British television that wasn't set to a sports channel so that the pub-goers could watch the evening football match. I helped decorate the house for Christmas, and was asked a lot of questions about life in America. Her 16-year-old brother asked, "Is living in America like Laguna Beach?"
It was pretty cute.

Glasgow

For those of you keeping track at home, I've been safe and sound in Glasgow since Saturday, only I won't have much time to spend on the computer between now and Boxing Day (December 26), so don't expect any detailed updates until then. Maybe an occasional "Hi I'm still alive!" message like this one.

I am in Glasgow and it is freezing cold!

Love to all!

Christmas Dinner

Yesterday was exactly two weeks from Christmas. So despite being just a random Tuesday night, we were served Christmas dinner in the dining hall! How exciting is that?

There wasn't much selection, but we were served turkey, with "stuffing" and "sausages", roast potatos, vegetables, etc., as well as cranberry sauce--surprisingly good--and Christmas pudding, which I didn't eat.

On the way out to the tables there was a selection of free wine, which was undoubtedly disgusting so I didn't any, but there were also crackers! A genuine British tradition! Popping the crackers proved to be a distraction all through dinner, and inside each was a crepe paper crown, a joke (mine: "What runs but never walks?" (water) that's not a very good joke...) and a toy.

Best JMC dinner ever!

St. Andrew's

Yesterday was St. Andrew's Day. (St Andrew is, of course, the patron saint of Scotland, not that many are religious here, but it's like St. Patrick's Day only less internationally-celebrated.)

On St. Andrew's, Historic Scotland, which runs most of the historical museums/sites has free admission to something like 70 places in Scotland. Here in Edinburgh, the free thing was Edinburgh Castle. Four study-abroad kids from Caltech came up from UCL (London) to visit, so I accompanied them to the Castle. It was pretty cool, because although I went in the beginning of September, this time I had time to see all the things I didn't see the first time around: the Great Hall, as well as three different War Museums, two of which were dedicated to specific military groups. One was the Scottish Dragoons, or something similar. The other was the Royal Scots Army, or something else similar.

Also they completely redid the Crown Jewels part, so instead of climbing stairs and seeing the crown jewels (and scepter and sword and Stone of Destiny) immediately, there was a very extensive exhibition first that directed us through the history of the crown jewels, which was very interesting but a little long.

In the evening we had haggis (mashed lamb/beef/oatmeal/stuff), neeps (mashed turnips, bleh), and tatties (mashed potatoes). Actually I had haggis twice, and it was pretty much the same each time, and a wee bit too peppery.

We also attended a Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee, like the girls' name) at Teviot student union. It was a lot of fun, of course... everyone loves Highland Dancing, boys in kilts, and Scottish music! Even if the girls outnumbered boys by about two to one. And of course you don't get ceilidhs in London, so our visitors loved it... but were not prepared for the sheer exhaustion! If you've never been, you have no idea how hard it can be. But think about running in a circle for two or three hours and you might empathise.