First Grade Friends 2

Dear First Graders,

I hope you are all having a great fall! Scotland gets very rainy and windy in the winter, but we don't have any snow yet!  What weather do you have in Lowell?
Last week my friend Audrey came to visit from Ireland.  Ireland is an island very close to Scotland.  We decided to go exploring, and we went to two special places related to some of my favorite fantasy books.  Fantasy is a type of story with magic, like the Gingerbread Man.  The first place we went was the Edinburgh Writers' Museum, which is in an old mansion.

The Writers' Museum has exhibits on three authors who were from Edinburgh, the city I live in.  Their names were Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Robert Louis Stevenson.  Have you heard of them?  Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a book that I really like, called Treasure Island.  Have you read the book or seen a movie of it?  When I was little, it scared me!
Treasure Island is about a boy named Jim Hawkins, who works at a tavern owned by his mom.  A tavern is a type of hotel and restaurant.  When he is working there he meets a man named Billy Bones, who used to be a pirate.  Billy Bones gets very sick, and Jim takes care of him.  One day while he is helping Billy, Jim finds a treasure map in Billy's room.  Jim ends up on an adventure on the Hispaniola, a pirate ship, to find the treasure!  Have you ever followed a map to get somewhere?

Robert Louis Stevenson grew up here in Edinburgh, and went to Edinburgh University-the same school I go to! Just like in Treasure Island, Robert Stevenson had his very own adventure in the 1880s, when he sailed to Hawaii.  Have you heard of Hawaii? Hawaii is made up of islands in the Pacific Ocean.  When Robert Stevenson went there, it was a country by itself, but now it is part of America, just like Massachusetts!

While he was in Hawaii, Robert Stevenson made friends with King Kalakaua, the King of Hawaii. (The two of them are sitting together in the picture.)  Robert Stevenson also made friends with Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani.  Princess Ka 'iulani's uncle was the King of Hawaii, and his sister was her mother.  Princess Ka 'iulani's father was from Edinburgh too!  Are you parents from different places? Where are they from?

There were lots of other authors who lived in Edinburgh, and they wrote all sorts of stories.  What types of books do you like to read, or have read to you?


I hope you are having a good week!  You can ask me any questions you want about Scotland, Edinburgh, or travelling.  I'll write back answers for you to read.

Bits and Pieces: Video Edition!

So the spanikopita is in the oven, and I've finally gotten my timing right to listen to WERS.  For those of you not in Boston, WERS is Emerson College's radio station.  Except for the few hours at night when the reggae show is on, WERS is by far my favorite radio station.  When I was little we used to listen to 'The Playground,' the kids' show on Friday and Saturday evenings, and Mom and Dad requested "I Won't Grow Up" from Peter Pan for me, then recorded it on cassette :)  When I'm within range, I listen to their Saturday and Sunday morning showtunes program, 'Standing Room Only' whenever I'm in the car or around the house.  Now, with the magic of the internet, I can listen to the live stream online from anywhere-even Scotland!  The problem us that it's on 5 hours later here...it's taken me a few weeks to figure out the timing on that.  Ok, I promise I'm done raving about the radio now, except that they're playing a song from Little Women which just seems kind of perfect.  Listen for yourself sometime: http://www.wers.org/

Anyways, while I'm waiting for the spanikopita to come out of the oven, I wanted to share a couple of videos.
This is from dancing at Bothwell Castle at Fresher's Weekend.  I'm dancing, so obviously I didn't take the video.  Also, we were dancing on partially-frozen mud, so that's why everyone looks a little stiff.  We were trying really hard not to fall.


And in my previous post I mentioned Samhainn, the pagan fire festival we went to on Halloween.  This is a clip of some of the performers doing fire work.  It was really cool, but unfortunately we were kind of far and it was dark...thus the bad quality.


And one last thing:
Here I am with some friends on our hike to the waterfall.

Bits and Pieces

It's funny how even though I've been in school for most of my life, I still manage to forget how crazy things get during the major grading periods.  There are usually two: one towards the middle of the semester and one at the end.  It's slightly different here, because I had one set of essays for each class and then nothing until exams in December...but the past few weeks have been insanely work-heavy.  Needless to say, I'm enjoying the lull between study periods!
As busy as I've been, though, I don't have a ton of exciting information to share (although stay tuned for my First Grade Friends post about the Writers Museum!).  Mostly I go to class, dance, eat, and hang out with my friends.  To give you an idea of what I mean, here's my typical weekly schedule:
Monday
History, 10-11am
Studying in the library, 11-12pm
Gaelic, 12-1pm
Lunch over a textbook, 1-2pm
Psychology, 2-4pm
watching BBC with Ailsa and dinner, 4-7pm
Cardio Hip-Hop, 7:15-8:15

Tuesday
Gaelic, 12-1
Lunch/study break, 1-3
History, 3-4
Reading and dinner, 4-6
Dance, 7-9:30

Wednesday
Gaelic, 12-1
Errands, language study session, lunch, etc., 1-5
Kickboxing, 5:30-6:30

Thursday
Gaelic, 10-11
Library, 11-1
Lunch/home studying, 1-3
History, 3-4
Baking and Dinner, 4-6
Dance, 6:30-10
Post-dance social, 10-1am

Friday
Gaelic, 12-1
Lunch/studying, 1-2
Psychology, 2-4

Obviously, things come up and fill in the gaps, but basically that's how my life looks right now.  I absolutely love dance.  In fact, tonight I'm going to my first 'real' dance of the season! There will be people from groups from all over Scotland, and it's semi-formal.  There are also dance cards (although they're called something different), just like balls at home.  The dance is also a pot luck, so as soon as I finish this I'm going to dash out to the store and pick up supplies to make spanikopita.
Since nothing particularly exciting has happened, I figured the best way to fill you in was with pictures.  I don't have a ton, but I'll post more as I steal them from facebook...(disclaimer: these are not in any particular order)

 New Lanark, the mid-nineteenth century mill town where my dance retreat was.  Outside the mill-buildings-turned-hostel was a nature walk through the waterfalls the mill was powered by.  It was beautiful but really cold!

 This is a terrible picture of me, but I just wanted to show how into Rocky Horror we got, even though we just watched it in the kitchen.  This is my flatmate Leah.

 For the Bongo Club halloween party, I went as a princess and both of my flatmates went as zombies O.o They looked very scary, though!

 On Saturday night, I went to a friend's Star Wars themed birthday party.  There are very few Star Wars costumes easy enough to throw together to work at the last minute!  My friend Emma and I went shopping for supplies that morning.  She went as Leia and I went as Padme (from the prequels).  Those pellet guns were so much fun!

 On Sunday we went to see the Samhainn festivities, the traditional pagan holiday Halloween comes from.  It was freezing, so I wore my winter coat.  A lot of my friends joke that I look like Samantha from the American Girls series, which is where this came from:

 Turns out Samhainn is full of fire :)

 At the beginning of October my flatmates and I went to a residence event at the Indian restaurant on the ground floor of our building.  They had a henna artist, and my flatmate Jessie gave it a try!  Here our Leah and my finished hands, and Jessie doing Leah's flower.  The food wasn't as good as Curry Spot, our take-out place at SLC, but it was still delicious.

 More dance retreat! The Saturday night dance was a 'fancy dress', or costume, dance.  I hadn't really been able to find anything to fit the mythology theme, so I went as a forest nymph and wore a dress with flowers (which, by the way, I made this summer!).  My friend Melissa had a similar problem, and decided face paint was the way to go.  I twisted plastic flowers into her hair for added effect.  We looked pretty spiffy!

OK, I'm on a time crunch and need to run to the store.  As soon as my videos upload I'll post them!

School-sick

I'm due for a real post (or several!), and they're coming as soon as I finish my essays.  I've been feeling a little bit homesick today, partially because usually my essay-writing process involves a lot of other people excitedly sharing research...and no one really does that here.  I'm watching Whip It with my flatmates tonight and making spinach cheese pie for dinner, though, so it'll be fine.  In the meantime, here's the best SLC internet thing EVER.

Sarah Lawrence Girls: a tumblr (a type of blog consisting of found pictures and excerpts) about SLC back in the day.  It's definitely a great reminder of why I have so much school pride.

And so it begins...

Happy Halloween, everyone!  My official Halloween celebrations started off last night with a flat viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show since none of my flatmates had seen it.  We invited some of the neighbors as well, and it actually turned out to be a lot of fun.  I'd forgotten how ridiculously long the movie feels though-maybe because usually there are so many people yelling at it I can't be bothered to pay attention :)
Anyways, celebrations continued today with a batch of pumpkin bread (Mom mailed me the Trader Joe's Mix) to which I added chopped apples.  I'm taking it to dance tonight, because I could actually just sit and eat the whole loaf for dinner.  Tomorrow I have a test on the human brain, then we're going to the Halloween party at the theatre down the street from us, called the Bongo Club.  Saturday is still a little up in the air, but this is the advert for the school's party.  It's the freshman mascot, Robert the Moose (I took a picture with him during orientation) performing the Thriller dance.  I'm actually pretty excited about the party, because Teviot, our student union, looks like Hogwarts.

Immersion Therapy

This weekend I attended New Scotland Country Dance's "Fresher's Weekend" in New Lanark.  I had an amazing time, met a bunch of amazing people, and I plan to write out a full post with pictures soon.
However, meeting great people and going to sleep 2 hours before the 8am wake-up call by live bagpipes does not a good blogger make.  So in the meantime:

On Sunday we got to dance at Bothwell Castle, which dates from the mid thirteenth century.  That was very, very, cool.  One of the things I love about the type of dance I do (here and in the states) is that you become immersed not only in something really fun but in a tradition that's been around for a long time.  There's something especially magical about attending a ball, and doing the same dances, in a town hall where dances were held during the Civil War...or dancing in the ruins of a thirteenth century castle, doing the modern evolution of dances that have been a part of the social life here for centuries.

Also, it was just a blast!

Ok, I promise I'm done being melodramatic now.  Here we are in the castle grounds where we danced.  I'm wearing a white shirt and red mini kilt, just right of center.

Real post tomorrow.  There were waterfalls.

"Oot and Aboot" part 2: Food Edition

So as I was jokingly explaining to my parents earlier, my activities lately have fallen into three categories: studying/class, working out, and eating.  I've also discovered a setting on my camera that lets me take really artsy, professional-looking pictures of food.
So far I've been trying really hard not to eat out too much, since it's expensive and I haven't found a job yet.  Sometimes though, it's nice to get little treats.  To celebrate the end of the first week of classes, some friends and I went to dinner at Hispaniola, a restaurant around the corner from my flat that's Treasuer Island themed.

The building used to be Rutherford's Bar, which opened in 1834 and was apparently a favorite haunt of author Robert Louis Stevenson...thus the theme based around one of his books.  The inside was charmingly kitschy, and the food was really good (Italian).

These came out really dark...but here we are inside!  The antique pistols on the wall were really cool.

We also had some uninvited guests!

I've also discovered some cheap/quick places to grab a bite, but mainly my food adventuring takes the form of post-study treats!  Last night, I'd planned on going to a favorite, Chocolate Soup, after working on my paper.  Unfortunately, when we got there it was closed.  Nicolette ended up introducing me to Piemaker, which is down the street from my flat and has traditional British savory pies in addition to a few sweet offerings.  Plus, it's cheap and open until 2am, which is rare here!  Most things close at 5 unless it's a restaurant.

The name always reminds me of the TV show Pushing Daisies when I walk by.  On the back of my pie wrapper was printed "Piemaker and the Story of Pies":
Pies were first made by the Romans in ancient times.  They used to cook the filling and sealed it in a clay shell which could be reheated on their travels.  Later they introduced a 'paste' layer made from maize which could be eaten when moisturised and cooked. (The origin of the word 'pasty')
In Britain the Welsh miners introduced the famous double crust Cornish pasty, which was made with succulent meat, potato and vegetable fillings and puff pastry with a dough rim on one side.  As cleaning of dirty coal hands was a time consuming exercise, they held on to the rim while eating the rest and then discarded that.
During the industrial development and mechanisation of the previous centuries, pies lost the quality (which had made it food for Kings), when fillings were minced and liquidised to be able to fill inferior pastry shells.
Cute!  Of course, it then goes on to talk about Piemaker pies and why they're so yummy.  I'm not arguing-mine was really nice.

But even with that, I was still craving the hot chocolate Chocolate Soup is known for.  So today I went to the library and then headed over to the cafe for a late afternoon treat.

YUM.  I decided to try "Autumn Harvest," which was dark hot chocolate with whipped cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  Definitely worth the wait!

There are a few more places I want to try, including a Frankenstein-themed pub which reminds me of the Jekyll and Hyde Pub in NYC.  Seems like a perfect place to go for Halloween!  I also need to check out The Elephant House, which in addition to being the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter, is also supposed to have really delicious tea, which I've definitely been missing!
Hopefully I'll have gotten over my picture-taking phase by then...