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.

New photos!

Oh, and I've put up a few photos from this past semester, see the link to the right.

I think I had something of interest to write about last week, but I've been having some computer issues and was therefore unable to update with whatever it was. Hmm.

On the plus side, 'laptop troubles' has been a good reason to do a lot of work on the Year Abroad scrapbook I decided to do. I am really not very far in, but it's been a lot of fun. More importantly, I suppose, it's a good way to reflect on my time away and to remember the things I saw and did. It's strange how organizing words and photos can refresh memories and even reorganize them: I feel like the thinking I've done for scrapbook pages has helped to wrap-up the experience. Which is great.



This weekend I drove out to a small town halfway between here and Staunton, to go bowling. It was a tiny little town with many churches and many more ice cream shops. Who would have thought?

Photos!

Lakes photos up, see the new link.

Check out my Spain/Gibraltar photos!

Nuff said. Link to the right, there's 57 of em. Two blog entries on Spain below, if you haven't seen them already.

Ireland Photos Up!

Once, when I was about twelve maybe? we took a long weekend trip to Kitty Hawk, NC. Actually to Kill Devil Hills, but that is actually not an important part of the story.

We rented an apartment-style accomodation for the time there, and this place happened to have a sofa. The first night I was sitting on the couch and noticed something poking out between the cushions.

A small Swiss Army knife, about an inch long and quarter-inch thick, pretty small, but one of the three tools on it was a miniature pair of scissors. This is pretty darn useful to have, especially when one is travelling around with embroidery projects (as I am keen on doing). I kept it clipped on my key ring for the past few years, you never know when you'll need a small blade for opening packages, etc.

This knife, I had for eight? years maybe. It has passed through I don't know how many metal detectors. Once I visited the UN in NYC and they took my knife from me, and I collected it out of a gigantic manilla envelope. It went in and out of US security and customs without a problem. In and out of Edinburgh at least three times, through Nurnberg, the list goes on.

It was Shannon Airport, a tiny tiny airport, that finally caught my little pocketknife. RIP.


In more important news, Ireland photos are now up!
I pared the original 161 down to 59 for y'all at home, count yourselves lucky.

Nurnberg 2; and photos!

Just added about 30 photos from Nurnberg, so check 'em out. More will be up later/soon, whenever Rashmi emails hers to me.


I forgot until I exited the Underground in Nurnberg---yes, they call it by the English word 'Underground'---that most places in continental Europe drive on the right-hand side of the road. That's nice, I suppose, but not when you've watched drivers use the left for the past seven months. That, and the fact our hotel was situated at a strange intersection of about six-and-a-half roads plus two sets of trolley tracks, made me confused every single time I had to cross a street. Which way to look? When I started to figure it out, I'd come across a one-way street with cars approaching the direction opposite from what I expected, and I had to start back at square one.

Everything was less expensive in Germany, though, because the pound is stronger than the Euro. Still expensive for the US Dollar, but I was converting every price into pounds, so it didn't bother me too terribly.

The airports were interesting. The Edinburgh airport is tiny for a city of its size, with only about 15-20 gates. Possibly because the Glasgow airport is huge and only about an hour away by car. The Nurnberg airport is also pretty small, of a similar size, but even less busy when I flew in and out. It was one of those airports where the planes can't actually taxi directly to the gates. Instead we queued to get onto one of those bus things, which drove out to the plane, and we queued in the wind and cold to climb up the stairs.

It was pretty cool to climb down the stairs, though, I'd only seen that done on movies and in newspaper pictures of famous people like the president, when they go to visit foreign countries and are greeted out on the runway. The pictures always show the Famoso looking worried as he descends the stairs. Yeah, I felt like that, and was glad to not be surrounded by papparazzi.
Still, I don't understand, can't they arrange for Air Force One to disembark directly into the airport, or with a slide into a limosine, or whathaveyou?

The Amsterdam airport, on the other hand, was HUGE. I may not have ever been in an airport so big, not to my knowledge anyway. They seemed to have arranged layovers in seperate concourses on purpose, so that the center of the airport was permanently marked with the most gigantic of gigantic security queues. Approaching it from one of the concourses was like finding a wolf spider on a trail out hiking. Or maybe Shelob.

After going through that mess the first time I realised the restaurant choices were better on the first side, but too late, I wasn't about to go through again twice. It was only in Amsterdam that I got my passport stamped, each way, then through the metal detectors again.

I suppose the Dutch are extremely concerned about security, when I first came into Nurnberg and Edinburgh airports the security guards looked bored and probably didn't even glance at my luggage going through the machine. Or at me, for that matter.
Leaving Amsterdam back to Edinburgh, we had to queue to use a metal detector special for our gate, then queue to get our tickets checked, then queue again to get into the plane, in no particular order.

I thought a lot about entropy while waiting through those queues onto the plane.
Also about filling quantum energy levels.

I also two entire books on my two days of travelling through airports. Two long books. And I knitted a hat. Not sure what that's meant to tell you.

more photos.

Added some photos from my Royal Botanic Gardens excursion, check out the new link.

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.

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!

Photos Up!

Oh yeah, so I posted some photos from my trips to Glasgow and Scorraig.

Also make sure you see my two super-de-duper-ly long posts written this evening, just following this message.

Love to all.

Seven Hills of Edinburgh

First, and most importantly, I added a few new photos to my album. Hooray!

On Friday I took a hiking study break. Sort-of hiking. It took much longer to get to Calton Hill, on the east end of Princes St, than it did to climb the hill. At the top is the unfinished National Monument, dedicated to those fallen in the Napoleonic Wars. (The actual road the hill is on is aptly named Waterloo Place.) There's the Nelson Monument, and a few other buildings I'm less sure about. I was absolutely fascinated by a set of columns on the very top of the hill.

Another quick walk, this time through an old residential area and past the Scottish Parliament building, brought me to Holyrood Park. Rather than climb Arthur's Seat, as Ive done every single time I've gone climbing, I went up the Salisbury Crags, which curve around the west/NW side of Arthur's Seat. A short hike, but tougher than I thought it would be, especially with the wind!


You might think that having been here for three months I would no longer be surprised by language differences, but I found a new one last night. Shirts are called different things here, and the whole time I never knew---even working at CHSS I haven't been able to figure this one out.
I think "tops" are usually dressy tops. A "shirt" is a button-down shirt, but I suppose t-shirt is still a t-shirt. How "blouse" fits in here, and what one would call a normal shirt, I have no idea.

I also like the phrasing one uses to go over to someone else's house/flat/home/room/etc. Rather than specify what type of place it is, you drop the object entirely. So I might say,
"I'm going to spend Christmas at Flora's." Flora's what? It doesn't matter.
"Zach is coming over to mine to revise maths." What is mine? Doesn't matter.
Ambiguous, yes, but also eliminates confusion on what to say.

Happy Thanksgiving!

First, to everyone at home, Happy Thanksgiving!

A pretty low-key holiday here... it's just not thought about. Not in their consciousness, really. My friends knew, of course, that it was Thanksgiving, but initially I had to explain it, there's just no parallel. At first I got asked questions like "so, ehm, is that actually a big deal in America?"

Tonight Sarah and I had turkey sconewiches, because: A. the dining hall didn't have turkey, B. we couldn't be bothered to pay money in a restaurant, C. pubs had weird things like roast duck, but no turkey sandwiches. What!
So to the grocery it was, for... organic turkey, since the normal stuff was dodgy-looking. "Mature yet Mellow" cheddar cheese, because it was pretty much that or shredded mozzarella. Scones, for a British twist on the traditional turkey sandwich. Hence a sconewich. They were pretty sweet, actually maybe too much so? But tasty!
(Pictures over in the links, to your right!)

Other than that, everything's been pretty normal. I've been told that up until now I've been lucky with this Scottish weather. Well, no longer. It's raining pretty much every day from now until forever, with temperatures hovering around, 40F? Or so. It's a little miserable. To be honest.
-I spent another day on the Shop till.
-Monday night I made Thanksgiving apple crisp! And I was so proud of it I ate the majority, the rest was consumed by my kind kitchen-lending pal Zach.
-I successfully donated blood here! Weird to do it on Thanksgiving but that's how it worked out. Some parts were kind of weird, like how they didn't take my temperature, heart rate, or blood pressure, but it went easy enough. They say they take a pint but really it's 465 mLs, slightly under. They also offer a local anesthetic, which I declined because I'm tough, don't have nicely coloured bandages, and won't give hot drinks to first-time donors. I went out the door after being watched like a hawk by the nurses, laden with the extra chocolate biscuits they forced into my hands.

A pretty good Thanksgiving if you ask me.
Lots of love to all.

Remembrance Sunday

Remembrance Sunday is always held the second Sunday in November, this year it actually fell on the day in mind---November 11. It is like Memorial Day or Veteran's Day, a day in which the people are asked to remember those who died in World War Two (as the date would imply) as well as all other conflicts. For a week or two beforehand, most shops have small plastic poppies to pin on, and ask for a donation for a Scottish Fund, although I forget the actual name. The poppies are of course for Normandy. The donation to go towards the Scottish military and veterans thereof.

We went to a non-denominational service this morning held jointly by the four universities of Edinburgh, attended by groups from several different military branches. It was short enough that everyone was assembled in the Quadrangle of the Old College well before 11, so the customary two minutes' of silence could be observed.

Then they had a laying of the wreathes... I'm not sure exactly what the wreaths were to symbolize, possibly one for each major war? one for different military groups? And some military or traditional songs on the bugle/trumpet and a small bagpipe corps.

I brought my camera but decided, upon seeing the ceremony, that picture-taking would be disrespectful, so I don't have any pictures of this event. I did, however, update my albums... see links to the right. For ease, I started a new one for the second half of the semester.

Photos Up

After wrestling with photobucket for weeks (okay, two weeks, it's still plural) I am finally confident enough to post links to my images, which you can find to your right. Also I hope my archival format is easier to use.

If you have any problems with the links or with anything, please let me know and I can fix it.
Well, I hope I can fix it.