'Dressed to Kilt' Charity Fashion Show

So, I didn't actually attend this.  It would have been awesome if I had, but I was unaware of it until just now.  But in addition to being a runway show of many kilts, there was also lots of tartan on display! yay!  Apparently the theme this year was 'Country Chic: Where Scottish Couture Meets Country Cool'.  Some highlight pictures from the wacky world of Scotland-meets-the-Wild-Wild-West, courtesy of Tom and Lorenzo:

New York Giants players Danny Ware and Ahmad Bradshaw

A funny kilt story:  I was showing a friend Edinburgh this week (upcoming post on that!) and while she was combing the tourist shops for something to bring home, she said 'I really want one of those fur bags we've seen everywhere...you know the ones with the tassels?'
I thought about it for a minute.  'You mean the ones with the ones with the chains...those?' I pointed to a display of sporrans (a bag that men wear as part of Scottish formal dress around their waist with the bag sitting at the pelvis).
'Yeah!' she replied.
I then explained what a sporran was, and teased her mercilessly.

Richie Gray

I just saw Richie Gray play in the Scotland vs. Italy match, and he was named one of the most attractive players on the team by a couple of my friends.  He looks better when he's not covered in mud, I'll admit.  He's known for tackling men by grabbing their shorts.

Tartan ruffles!!

Apparently the show is an annual event part of 'tartan week' in New York, which I mentioned in an earlier post about tartan.  It is accompanied by a pop-up shop, and each year has a theme.  Here are some more pictures from past years:

TARTAN CAR!

actor Ed Westwick in the 2009 show

Tartan Chuck!! He's on Gossip Girl, which is my favorite trashy television show.  Also, the tartan he's sporting is one of my favorites aesthetically, but it isn't as cool historically as Dress Stuart, which I've talked about ad nauseum.

Swishy tartan gown thing!

I'm on such a tartan overload I can't even function.  Plus, I need to pack!  I leave for the Isle of Mull tomorrow morning.

For more on the Tartan Army in NYC, check out the pictures from last year's show here or watch the video from last night:

Parades and Snow Days

It's funny the things I miss about the U.S.-none of them are things I'd thought about before I got here.  One of them, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, really bothered me.  It seems really silly, but watching the parade on Thanksgiving morning has been a tradition for as long as I can remember, as totally cliche as that is.  After a week, I've finally managed to track down a copy of the NBC footage online!  I am really excited to take a study break and watch some of it :)

Snow update:  After five days of snow, I saw my first city plow last night.  The roads are still a mess and a lot of my classes have been cancelled because our teachers can't get to campus...but for those of us who walk everywhere, we're still plugging away.

Thanks-sharing

Although Scotland doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, I still did!  We had our celebration on Saturday since I still had classes and dance on Thursday.  I usually help Mom cook, but this was my first time doing the turkey.  Lydie, who lived with my family for a year and therefore has some experience with Thanksgiving, came to visit for the weekend from England and was a huge help.  You can also thank her for all the pictures!

 Mom emailed me instructions for roasting a turkey-Lydie and I started early in the morning so that it would have enough time to cook.  I made sure to clean out the body cavity thoroughly...but it was really gross.  I don't think I could have done it if I hadn't aced my biology dissections last year!

 In addition to the traditional turkey, I was really set on having cornbread stuffing.  Unfortunately, cornbread isn't really seen here.  After a determined search, Lydie and I tracked down cornmeal at an Indian market nearby and I made cornbread from scratch so I could make cornbread stuffing (both recipes from Martha Stewart).

 My flatmates were very helpful taste testers :)  They also cleaned the kitchen and tracked down an extra table from a friend's flat.  It was definitely a family effort.

 We also borrowed a meat thermometer from a friend, so no one would get poisoned.  Unfortunately, it never went past 160.  After almost 5 hours in the oven, we decided to just cut it and see how it looked.  I guess everything was fine...or at least, no one's gotten sick yet...

 Being the strong independant woman that I am, I whined until Sean, the only boy and one of the only three Americans (including me), carved the turkey.

 Emma is moving to the states next year, and was eager to try making pumpkin pie.  Considering she'd never even tasted it before, I was really surprised how well it turned out.

All in all, it was definitely a success.  (And very, very tasty!)  One more thing to be thankful for :)

Turkey Time!

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Obviously it's not something we're celebrating here, but I'll be throwing my own celebration with some friends on Saturday.  I certainly have a lot to be thankful for: an amazing opportunity to explore, a wonderful family who supports me, and amazing friends on both sides of the Atlantic.  Now it's time to cook!
Of course, I'm also missing everyone a lot right now.  Hope your Thanksgivings are fantastic.

Dancing and other Shenanigans

Last night I went to my very first (Scottish) ball, which had a very different dress code then nineteenth century balls at home.  I had a blast-learned some new dances, got to try dancing some of the ones I've been practicing in classes, and hung out with some wonderful and hilarious people.  Best of all, while there was a wide age range, in general the average age was early twenties.  There are very few dance events at home right now where this is the case-vintage dance isn't a part of the culture for uni kids the way it is here.  Also, I got to do Mairi's Wedding, which is at this point my favorite dance.
Here are some pictures from the EUNSCDS Beginners' Dance, plus a few other pictures from classes and general social time :)

At Chocolate Soup, which is a favorite for cold days

At Thursday classes.  We ran out of chairs...

In the process of acquiring the above picture, I gave the camera to Emma...

...who proceeded to play with it.

Obviously, we all dressed up a bit more for the ball.  Someone (I can't remember who) made the comment last week that "dance is a contact sport," and I really like that.  Which is why we're all shiny in these pictures. And why a few of them have kind of an ethereal glow.  While I would like to just say we're that angelic, it was actually so hot in the hall we fogged the lens!

Socializing during the raffle.  I just wanted to demonstrate the amount of tartan present.

some of my friends-I took a bunch during intermission so that I would have some pictures to post, since I was too busy dancing the rest of the night!

forming sets for a dance, with the band at the top

My dance card! Which was really more of a book: in addition to listing the order of dances, it also had four pages with all the dances written out so we could cram in between!

This is a little unrelated, but I'd been hearing about it from some of the experienced dancers.  A few years ago they did a performance piece to a Sound of Music medley...and I found it on youtube!  It's actually really neat:

"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...

Cheerio, Y'all!

Had my second culture shock moment.  I'm starting to recognize when they happen, because they're the only times I feel down and ready to cry.  I decided to stay in tonight and process for a bit, since I think part of the problem has been too much stimulation and not enough sleep.  Cue a mug of my new strawberry-banana tea and Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
I went to my first Ceilidh (pronounced "kay-lee") tonight, which is sort of a traditional Scottish dance.  We did figures, but no real steps (just skipping and spinning).  A lot of the kids had learned the dances in elementary school, which is still a lot cooler than the "Japanese Coal Miner's Dance" we learned with Mr. Banks.  On the other hand, since Scottish kids learn them, the calling was very brief and only really hit the front of the room. (Mind, the room was so full there was a line to get in, and every time a group left someone else could enter!)  Which still could have worked, but the proportion of Scottish students to international students, given that this is "international day" and this was a free Scottish culture event, meant that there weren't enough Scots to drag the rest of us through it.
It was still a lot of fun, but towards the end we did "The Virginia Reel."  Which was not like any Virginia Reel I've ever done.  But it was introduced as an American dance, and the caller had the room slap their knees and shout "yeee'haw!" several times during it.  I know there are tons of Virginia Reel variations, but I think what got to me was just how out of place the whole thing seemed.  Here was the one thing at this whole event I should be comfortable with, and it still threw me for a loop.  After sitting here processing this for a bit, I'm really just excited to chat with the New Scottish Country Dance Society and the "society fair" onWednesday, and to really learn some dances.

Not that I'm complaining mind you-there were very cute boys.  I danced with one during a mixer, and magically my dancing improved tremendously.  One of the girls watching nearby even told me I look very gracefully when I got flung! Amazing how that works ;)

Off to make more tea.  Be back with pictures soon.

Welcome to Edinburgh!

So, here's how bad I am at posting: I've been here for four days and this is my first post since arrival.  Oops.  However, I have TWO entries on the way tomorrow! I do have two good excuses for not posting sooner though:

1) Culture Shock:  Something everybody goes through, right?  I assumed it would just be little things, like when I started school in NY and tried to order a frappe.  Well, that might be true but it's also bigger things.  For example, the showers are electric and have to be turned on in order for the water to run.  As this has never been the case in one of my showers before, it took me an hour to figure out how to get water to come out of the shower head.  Turns out you actually can't google everything.  But I did eventually figure it out, and had a lovely rest of the day.  I'll post my pictures of Edinburgh Castle tomorrow.  Here's one for the meantime:

With one of my program friends in front of the main gate

2) Flatmates!  Ok, this isn't really an excuse, but the other people in my flat moved in today (except one).  So I went to the first year hall event with one of them, Ailse, and then hung out with she and our other flatmate Leah for the rest of the night.  About half-way through we were joined by Annie, the last one, and her boyfriend Ian.  They are both very nice as well, from a small liberal arts college environment as well.  We all spent the rest of the night talking and getting to know each other...which, as many college nights do, eventually boiled down into laughing hysterically at youtube videos.  Tomorrow, the first full day of Freshers' Week (essentially freshman orientation) is International Day.  Which means I have to be there by 10am and then have a meeting with the Director of Studies to officially register for classes.
I don't have pictures with any of my flatmates yet, but you all are with me here too!  Here's my picture-covered bulletin board: