5:20 p.m. UK time - Sat., October 22, 2011
Hi friend! How are you? I hope you are well! I feel unusually close to you at this moment because....I FIGURED OUT HOW TO LISTEN TO THE HAWKS LIVE ONLINE!!!! So, it feels like I'm just down the road listening to the same radio program as opposed to thousands of miles away. I don't really think I should admit how much time I spent searching for this radio station - it was more than worth it though...obviously. Go Hawks!!
So two Fridays ago I traveled six hours by train down to the upper southwest part of England to visit a rural development/land use contact I know through a contact in the States. Richard and Susan had kindly invited me to stay at their 17th Century home (so cool huh?!) for the weekend. It is situated in Winchcombe, which is close to Cheltenham in the Cotswolds region. The night I arrived Richard had to give a land use presentation at a local meeting called Friends of Winchcombe. It's a surprisingly large local group formed in the 1950s to protect the character of the town, so since its inception they have basically not been keen on new houses added to the town. The local planning board was recently told they have to accept 100 new houses to accommodate growth, so his angle was to convince them they should be proactive about considering how those 100 new houses should be integrated into the town structure and design instead of complaining about an ugly new development that doesn't fit with the town. The most interesting difference to see from an American perspective - he spoke about climate change and how they needed to keep an awareness of the strong UK carbon emissions reduction policies when creating their plan for the community. Mind you he was speaking to a group of people who were all 65+ years old. Love the lack of denial factor about scientific consensus on this side of the pond! I also love the fact that after this meeting they had a wine social with "nibbles" (that is literally how snacks were labeled in the budgets provided on every other chair at the meeting = adorable). I love the conversation that probably happened in planning for a community meeting - "what type of refreshments should we provide afterward? Alcohol, duh." Are you kidding me?! Brilliant.
The following day we hiked along the Cotswolds Way in sort of a triangle. We started at Stanway, which is the beginning of a huge estate, aptly named...the Stanway Estate :), that was owned by an abbey for 800 years and now the Tracy family has owned it for 500 years as the Earls of Wemyss (I have no clue how this royalty stuff works). Its owners insist upon sustainable agricultural practices by their tenants, which is good since it's situated in an area of outstanding natural beauty. So hiking along one of the bridle paths, we walked straight up through the woods until we emerged onto tilled wheat fields and pasture land stretching for miles. It was so strange to literally open the gate of a farmer's field and walk through right next to his sheep. But that's part of the beauty of UK property law - you cannot restrict people from walking on your rural lands. In England you can designate a path they should stay on, as opposed to Scotland where they can walk anywhere as long as they don't cause any damage, but there is no concept of no trespassing just because it's your property. You would have to apply for special permission from the local authority to be able to actively keep people off your land. Interesting huh? So we tromped through multiple fields until coming to the road that led us to Snowshill. A National Trust manor is located there, meaning the owner deeded what is usually a historical property to a national organization that maintains it for tourism through the support of four million members throughout the UK (myself included). This property included a manor and gardens totaling about 16 acres I think, but the former owner, Charles Wade, never actually lived in the manor. He lived in this tiny little cottage off to the side. He literally purchased the manor around 1920 for the sole purpose of storing thousands of antiques since he was a self-proclaimed collector. His family was very wealthy, so what that translates into: he got to travel all over the world and buy whatever he wanted that struck his fancy. So the house contained 15+ Chinese cabinets with all sorts of knickknacks inside, an entire room dedicated to ancient Samurai suits of armor, a musical instrument room, coats of arms all over the walls, an assortment of old wooden bicycles in the attic, weaving looms, an antique laundry contraption, decorated chests, clocks....you get the point. Amazing amounts of random shhhtuff. Too much time and money on his hands is sort of the thought running through my head the whole time, but it was really interesting to see.
So that was my weekend in the amazingly beautiful Cotswolds. I was so fortunate to get to experience that scenery, have good conversations, sleep on a mattress that felt like a cloud, and eat the most amazing food (Susan is the most UNBELIEVABLE cook - homemade curries, Thai soup, Japanese miso soup...ooh, my stomach was in heaven). If you ever have the opportunity to travel over to the UK and are wondering whether to carve time into your schedule to visit the Cotswold region - DO IT!!! Enchanting is the only way to describe that place. Absolutely enchanting landscape. See it here: https://picasaweb.google.com/100003400901805538894/TheCotswolds?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPvhzrGsvdWRrwE&feat=directlink
Let me preface your viewing by a little disclaimer though....I am a land use and farming nerd, so I may have gotten a little carried away with landscape pictures. oops :) But, fortunately for you, I have included a lot of descriptive captions so maybe it won't just look like the same bit of beautiful hillside and trees and stone houses over and over again.
6:15 p.m. UK time - Sun., October 23, 2011
This morning I woke up at 7:15 a.m. to go to a pub with an outside courtyard fully stocked with picnic tables and a big screen to watch the All Blacks New Zealand rugby team win the Rugby World Cup 2011!!!! They beat the French (yes!!!) 8-7, and while I was engrossed in the game most of the time, the people watching was beyond priceless. The guys with their faces painted black and white shouting incomprehensible noises along with the New Zealand haka before the match, the women who looked like they had taken four hours curling their hair to come watch a rugby match, the older French gentleman who was sporting a navy blue plush velvet coat over his bright daffodil colored hoodie sweatshirt, the French girl who I'm sure had dyed her hair a cranberry color in support of her team (at least I hope that was the case - incredibly unfortunate if that is her normal style choice). What might surprise you though is the relative civility with which all these fans mingled. I thought rugby fans would be the rowdiest (let's pause and appreciate I worked for the Raiders though....stiff competition for that title), but apparently soccer fans are way worse. Someone explained it to me that there is so much violence on the rugby pitch itself that nobody finds it necessary to punch each other out in the stands. Fair enough - but my jaw literally dropped when all of a sudden during halftime I looked over and there was the French girl with the tricolor wig and another with a French flag in the form of a cape taking a picture on the laps of the All Black face-painted guys. Perhaps gender had something to do with it, but still, shockingly civil.
I hope you have a great week and Halloween festivities! They actually celebrate it here (hoorah!!! you know how much I love Halloween), so I'm most likely going with a repeater - Dodgeball. Hope all is well, take care, and I'll write again soon!
Cheers,
B
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Turkey Day the Canada Way
Hi friend! How are you? I hope you are well......and enjoying college football (you don't know how lucky you are being able to enjoy football Saturdays). I heard the weather is starting to turn back in Iowa. It is rainier and colder every day here as well, so my big purchase of the day - Wellies (Wellington rain boots since I refuse to have my feet soaked and freezing any longer...I'm putting my frostbitten foot down).
I have a ton to catch you up on - so here goes nothing.
My Scottish friend who lives just north of Edinburgh invited me out to stay with her and her family two Friday nights ago. The following day her daughter was having a 3rd birthday party, so they were so amazing to invite me to share in their family time. I can't tell you how nice it was to relax in front of the television on Friday evening. I don't really watch that much TV in the States (as most of my friends can attest to since I'm always hopelessly clueless on pop culture), but not having a television even available if you did want to watch it is very different than simply choosing not to turn it on. I don't know if this is available in the States, but if you can find Outnumbered - watch it. You won't be disappointed with this somewhat improv British comedy sitcom. The next morning I got to visit Perth due to a last-minute party shoe swap the birthday girl needed, so my friend's husband took the girls shopping while I toured the John Duncan Ferguson gallery. Without going into too much detail, he is the most famous painter from Perth and part of the Scottish Colourist group. His oil paintings are reminiscent of the impressionist style that he was exposed to upon moving to Paris around 1920. He was married to Margaret Morris, a dancer who became quite famous for her sort of new-age method of movement that honestly just reminded me of that scene in Music Man with "One Grecian Urn, Two Grecian Urn". The pictures I was allowed to take of the paintings I really liked...so a picture of a picture...after signing my life away that I am not going to commercially reproduce my shoddy copies of his works are on Picasa if you're interested!
https://picasaweb.google.com/100003400901805538894/Perth?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPWj0M7rnsbBKg&feat=directlink
On Sunday evening of that same weekend, my Canadian friend hosted Thanksgiving dinner for a bunch of people from my program. Now I realize you might be scratching your head saying, "Wait, I thought Thanksgiving isn't until the end of November?" Well, my friend, I'm not afraid to admit that I also had absolutely no idea Canada has a Thanksgiving. It's the second Monday in October. Apparently they have the same tradition of eating turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. as in the US, but it's to celebrate a good harvest instead of having any of the US historical connotation...obviously. So this was a new one for me in terms of celebrating T-day in October, but additionally in terms of the noticeable lack of meat on the table. My friend is vegan, so she and her family cooked a vegan meal for everyone that was delicious....just not quite as coma inducing as my usual tryptophan-laden turkey meal accompanied by excessive amounts of pumpkin pie. Enter Irish cider stage right. Clubbing after Thanksgiving dinner.....on a Sunday....the place was packed (?)....most unique T-day I've ever had. Well done Meghan.
https://picasaweb.google.com/100003400901805538894/ThanksgivingCanadianStyle?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCP3Q76TAtKCrgwE&feat=directlink
Now for those of you shaking your head in dismay at the thought of me perhaps not being prepared for or missing class due to clubbing on a Sunday, you'll be happy to note that my professor had canceled class for the following day. Which allows me to segue into a brief note about my program here! I really like all of the material we are analyzing and I am definitely learning something new every day. I'm embarrassed to admit this is the least amount of class I've ever taken. We only have three classes per week, each only two hours long, bringing me to the grand total of 6 hours per week.....cake walk I know. However, I have tons of reading per class - usually somewhere around 150 pages, so my off-time is spent preparing and hoofing it from point A to point B. Seriously, it's amazing how much time one can spend walking if you have no other option. The bus is not convenient to the Uni from my residence and would not save that much time - so, I walk. Everywhere. Anyway, my Monday class is International Climate Change Law with an absolutely brilliant professor, Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, who is teaching us about the complex climate change regime made up of treaties, Conference of the Parties decisions, and soft law instruments. Just this past Monday I had one of those out of body moments where your head feels like it's going to explode when he was taking us through the COP places and years and what each stood for in rapid succession. It's been incredibly interesting so far to learn about the different options available for carbon emissions reductions, and I think by the end of the course we will have studied the Clean Development Mechanism under Kyoto quite extensively - his major research area.
My Tuesday class is Comparative Environmental Law, so looking at different national laws for Protected Areas, Environmental Impact Assessments, Land Use rights, Forestry, etc. and international treaty provisions that may be applicable or mandate national law-making in that area. I loved the land use class in which we had a guest speaker from the International Institute for Environment and Development. He sparked interesting thoughts about land use rights from a developing country, primarily those in Africa, perspective that are involve customary collective rights and communal management - very outside the realm of normal for registration/ownership-obsessed westerners. Hopefully I can do some work with this organization next semester or in the summer. And finally, my Thursday class is International Environmental Law with Alan Boyle - human rights expert and international lawyer who argues in front of the International Court of Justice quite frequently. How the judges understand him is beyond me though thanks to his thick Northern Irish accent - I had to move to the front of the room so I could hear him fully and watch his mouth shaping words after missing an inordinate amount of content in the first class. It's shameful how many people I still can't understand sometimes given the fact that I'm a native English speaker - my Turkish friend laughs and thanks me for making her feel better that it's not just her who can't understand the thick brogues, but I'm sure she is beginning to wonder what's wrong with me....as she should. Pathetic. I'm going to blame it on my bad hearing....Grandpa Toby's legacy lives on....
So there you have it. I won't write any more about my program since I'm only a month and a half in, and my program director basically looked at me like I was insane for already having ideas about my dissertation topic. On par with what seems to be a pretty relaxed pace in comparison to the States, people don't really start thinking about what they want to write until very late Dec./early second semester....which makes me light-headed and nauseated with anxiety at the thought of not having my ideas in line by then. So I'm just going to keep talking to agricultural/environmental/land use/rural development people and try to figure out the narrow scope I want to pursue next summer. More to come on that front.
For now, I have to sign off as it's very late here. Very quickly though, funny story about applying for a job. So I was toying with the idea of picking up a part-timer at a pub close to my house. It's a busy pub on the Royal Mile, so I went there one Tuesday night to check it out and ask if the position was still open. So I order a pint and sit down at the bar to watch the Scotland v. Spain soccer match, and as sports will do, I am soon agonizing over missed goals and wimpy Spanish attempts at getting fouls with the guy to my left. In chatting with him, he and his wife were down from the Highlands for the week on holiday but had to return by the end of the week because he is a Gaelic singer - how cool is that? Well, since he knew I was a student he bought me a pint in his next round, so I was now two pints in and hadn't asked about the job yet. I was just about to finish and make my inquiry as the game ended (Scotland sadly losing), when all of a sudden this gigantic horsefly swoops in and lands inside my pint glass. Staring at this monstrosity with a horrified look, the bartender catches my gaze, deftly takes a coaster and slips it on the top of the glass to take it away. Then of course, he pours me a replacement pint. So Gaelic guy leaves and I'm now three pints in when the traditional music starts. Wonderful accordions, hand organs, violin, etc. It was very stereotypical Scotland, and I was loving it. So in watching the band to my right, the couple on the right starts chatting with me. Turns out they are from Ireland, over on holiday, and in finding out I'm a student, the guy insists on buying my next two rounds of Guinness. So there I left, five pints to the worse, too embarrassed at having been there for so long to even think about talking to the bartender, and no job.
Hope your week is going great! Take care, will write again soon!
Cheers,
Beth
I have a ton to catch you up on - so here goes nothing.
My Scottish friend who lives just north of Edinburgh invited me out to stay with her and her family two Friday nights ago. The following day her daughter was having a 3rd birthday party, so they were so amazing to invite me to share in their family time. I can't tell you how nice it was to relax in front of the television on Friday evening. I don't really watch that much TV in the States (as most of my friends can attest to since I'm always hopelessly clueless on pop culture), but not having a television even available if you did want to watch it is very different than simply choosing not to turn it on. I don't know if this is available in the States, but if you can find Outnumbered - watch it. You won't be disappointed with this somewhat improv British comedy sitcom. The next morning I got to visit Perth due to a last-minute party shoe swap the birthday girl needed, so my friend's husband took the girls shopping while I toured the John Duncan Ferguson gallery. Without going into too much detail, he is the most famous painter from Perth and part of the Scottish Colourist group. His oil paintings are reminiscent of the impressionist style that he was exposed to upon moving to Paris around 1920. He was married to Margaret Morris, a dancer who became quite famous for her sort of new-age method of movement that honestly just reminded me of that scene in Music Man with "One Grecian Urn, Two Grecian Urn". The pictures I was allowed to take of the paintings I really liked...so a picture of a picture...after signing my life away that I am not going to commercially reproduce my shoddy copies of his works are on Picasa if you're interested!
https://picasaweb.google.com/100003400901805538894/Perth?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPWj0M7rnsbBKg&feat=directlink
On Sunday evening of that same weekend, my Canadian friend hosted Thanksgiving dinner for a bunch of people from my program. Now I realize you might be scratching your head saying, "Wait, I thought Thanksgiving isn't until the end of November?" Well, my friend, I'm not afraid to admit that I also had absolutely no idea Canada has a Thanksgiving. It's the second Monday in October. Apparently they have the same tradition of eating turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. as in the US, but it's to celebrate a good harvest instead of having any of the US historical connotation...obviously. So this was a new one for me in terms of celebrating T-day in October, but additionally in terms of the noticeable lack of meat on the table. My friend is vegan, so she and her family cooked a vegan meal for everyone that was delicious....just not quite as coma inducing as my usual tryptophan-laden turkey meal accompanied by excessive amounts of pumpkin pie. Enter Irish cider stage right. Clubbing after Thanksgiving dinner.....on a Sunday....the place was packed (?)....most unique T-day I've ever had. Well done Meghan.
https://picasaweb.google.com/100003400901805538894/ThanksgivingCanadianStyle?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCP3Q76TAtKCrgwE&feat=directlink
Now for those of you shaking your head in dismay at the thought of me perhaps not being prepared for or missing class due to clubbing on a Sunday, you'll be happy to note that my professor had canceled class for the following day. Which allows me to segue into a brief note about my program here! I really like all of the material we are analyzing and I am definitely learning something new every day. I'm embarrassed to admit this is the least amount of class I've ever taken. We only have three classes per week, each only two hours long, bringing me to the grand total of 6 hours per week.....cake walk I know. However, I have tons of reading per class - usually somewhere around 150 pages, so my off-time is spent preparing and hoofing it from point A to point B. Seriously, it's amazing how much time one can spend walking if you have no other option. The bus is not convenient to the Uni from my residence and would not save that much time - so, I walk. Everywhere. Anyway, my Monday class is International Climate Change Law with an absolutely brilliant professor, Navraj Singh Ghaleigh, who is teaching us about the complex climate change regime made up of treaties, Conference of the Parties decisions, and soft law instruments. Just this past Monday I had one of those out of body moments where your head feels like it's going to explode when he was taking us through the COP places and years and what each stood for in rapid succession. It's been incredibly interesting so far to learn about the different options available for carbon emissions reductions, and I think by the end of the course we will have studied the Clean Development Mechanism under Kyoto quite extensively - his major research area.
My Tuesday class is Comparative Environmental Law, so looking at different national laws for Protected Areas, Environmental Impact Assessments, Land Use rights, Forestry, etc. and international treaty provisions that may be applicable or mandate national law-making in that area. I loved the land use class in which we had a guest speaker from the International Institute for Environment and Development. He sparked interesting thoughts about land use rights from a developing country, primarily those in Africa, perspective that are involve customary collective rights and communal management - very outside the realm of normal for registration/ownership-obsessed westerners. Hopefully I can do some work with this organization next semester or in the summer. And finally, my Thursday class is International Environmental Law with Alan Boyle - human rights expert and international lawyer who argues in front of the International Court of Justice quite frequently. How the judges understand him is beyond me though thanks to his thick Northern Irish accent - I had to move to the front of the room so I could hear him fully and watch his mouth shaping words after missing an inordinate amount of content in the first class. It's shameful how many people I still can't understand sometimes given the fact that I'm a native English speaker - my Turkish friend laughs and thanks me for making her feel better that it's not just her who can't understand the thick brogues, but I'm sure she is beginning to wonder what's wrong with me....as she should. Pathetic. I'm going to blame it on my bad hearing....Grandpa Toby's legacy lives on....
So there you have it. I won't write any more about my program since I'm only a month and a half in, and my program director basically looked at me like I was insane for already having ideas about my dissertation topic. On par with what seems to be a pretty relaxed pace in comparison to the States, people don't really start thinking about what they want to write until very late Dec./early second semester....which makes me light-headed and nauseated with anxiety at the thought of not having my ideas in line by then. So I'm just going to keep talking to agricultural/environmental/land use/rural development people and try to figure out the narrow scope I want to pursue next summer. More to come on that front.
For now, I have to sign off as it's very late here. Very quickly though, funny story about applying for a job. So I was toying with the idea of picking up a part-timer at a pub close to my house. It's a busy pub on the Royal Mile, so I went there one Tuesday night to check it out and ask if the position was still open. So I order a pint and sit down at the bar to watch the Scotland v. Spain soccer match, and as sports will do, I am soon agonizing over missed goals and wimpy Spanish attempts at getting fouls with the guy to my left. In chatting with him, he and his wife were down from the Highlands for the week on holiday but had to return by the end of the week because he is a Gaelic singer - how cool is that? Well, since he knew I was a student he bought me a pint in his next round, so I was now two pints in and hadn't asked about the job yet. I was just about to finish and make my inquiry as the game ended (Scotland sadly losing), when all of a sudden this gigantic horsefly swoops in and lands inside my pint glass. Staring at this monstrosity with a horrified look, the bartender catches my gaze, deftly takes a coaster and slips it on the top of the glass to take it away. Then of course, he pours me a replacement pint. So Gaelic guy leaves and I'm now three pints in when the traditional music starts. Wonderful accordions, hand organs, violin, etc. It was very stereotypical Scotland, and I was loving it. So in watching the band to my right, the couple on the right starts chatting with me. Turns out they are from Ireland, over on holiday, and in finding out I'm a student, the guy insists on buying my next two rounds of Guinness. So there I left, five pints to the worse, too embarrassed at having been there for so long to even think about talking to the bartender, and no job.
Hope your week is going great! Take care, will write again soon!
Cheers,
Beth
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
How many times?
It's funny how many new foods, drinks, stores, events, etc. you try for the first time when you move somewhere different. It may be a one-timer, as was the pickled herring I tried on Saturday, or it may, despite all your best efforts, be a multiplicitous occurrence. Allow me to elaborate.
1 - the number of times I've experienced a live rugby match now. Last Friday, my flatmate and I took the bus to the unnecessarily gigantic rugby stadium where Edinburgh was facing off against Munster (Irish team). Watching a sport where you don't understand the rules is pretty hilarious, especially when they do the craziest things - like actually kick the ball out of bounds on purpose. Turns out (based on seeing this happen repeatedly) that they mark where the ball goes out of bounds as where the team in possession throws it in bounds to restart play. I sort of missed that the first couple times around since was more focused on the fans almost getting taken out by the ball being punted right into the crowd ("now there's a souvenir for a lucky fan"), which I found out later one may have been my other flatmate's friend who was fiddling around on his phone and looked up only as she was diving out of the path of the oncoming ball. I have to say it was a great experiment in learning how to read social cues, such as when you should be either ecstatic or pissed about something happening on the field. All of a sudden there would be broad grumblings of "brilliant, that was fantastic" or the sarcastic "well done, Ref" by the guy immediately behind us in response to a foul call. Seeing as I couldn't tell one way or the other whether it was a good call or play, I would look around confusedly and try to clap or boo when the time was right. Turns out the guy behind us was for the Munster team....so I was actually cheering for the wrong team for a good chunk of the game. For how violent soccer (or football to the rest of the world - very hard to transition to using that label instead) matches get over here, however, rugby is surprisingly calm in the stands. An example, Munster scored a try (like a touchdown in football) and one out of their many incredibly vocal fans actually pulled out an Irish flag on a pole and started waving it around (Irish pride is huge throughout the UK)....having worked for the Raiders, I fully expected him to be mobbed and wheeled out on a stretcher circa the 2007 KC Chiefs game, but everyone left him pretty well alone. Maybe it's because there is so much aggression on the field they don't feel they need to knock each other out as opposed fans. While Edinburgh did pull out the win, I left disappointingly empty-handed thanks to the inept moose mascot in charge of the t-shirt gun. He sort of sauntered over after a hefty amount of halftime had already passed. His helper then spent half the time trying to stuff his oversized moose finger into the trigger of the gun, and then two out of the four he managed to launch before the team reappeared had been packed so sloppily that they unraveled and sort of fell onto the first three rows. Due to serious spatial misplacement by the moose, three of the four went to the far left side of the crowd before they figured out the projectiles needed to be packed tighter into the barrel, so I remember thinking, "oh my gosh, that one is going to peg me in nose" as the moose moved toward our center section. As I sort of half shielded my face in preparation, the moose let fire and the last shirt shot out, literally rebounding off the back wall of the stadium to either biff someone on the back of the head or unravel upon impact. I can't say for sure as I was still ducking up front.
2 - the number of times I have now taken a journey by train. The first was the Newcastle debacle, but this Saturday I took the train up to Dundee, north of Edinburgh by an hour and 15 min. ride. Infuriatingly, I almost missed my train again, but this time it was not my fault (other than not allowing enough time for me to be an idiot and not know where I was going). The sign pointing to where the travel & ticket center was said to go down this flight of stairs. So I went down. No sign at the bottom directing me further. I was hurrying at this point - I think it was 8 min. til my train was set to depart and I still had to get my tickets from the kiosk - and it appeared I had put myself squarely into the parking area. So I walked alongside the building that had all these doors with covered windows and no sign of life inside, thinking that maybe if I rounded the corner at the end the entrance would magically appear. No dice. So I hurried over to a woman in an official looking outfit (remembering to avoid scruffy commoners when asking for advice now), and she told me to just go back to where I came from and take a right. A right?! I walked back toward the stairs, saw a sign from that direction saying travel & ticket center with an arrow pointing ahead, but where the heck was I supposed to turn right? Turns out, you have to walk under the stairs and then it was literally a Harry Potter moment - this huge train terminal appeared out of nowhere. Thankfully, an orange vested worker was shouting for confused passengers for my train, so I made it after sprinting to the train at the far end of Track 16 (how I was supposed to know there was a difference between the train cars sitting at the front v. the back of Track 16 is beyond me). Dundee was charming - having planned to arrive a little early, I went to their museum that was premiering an exhibition of photos taken over the last century of Queen Elizabeth II. The whole royalty thing is just so interesting and foreign to me, so I wandered through the rooms progressing from her inauguration to pictures of her holding her newborns. Then, I was fortunate to have lunch with a rural development contact to talk about dissertation ideas, so it turned out to be a really great day. I'll figure these trains out soon enough.
3 - is the number of events I managed to see during the Doors Open Day two weekends ago. The City of Edinburgh obviously has tons of historical places that attract visitors from all over the world. But some of them are not open regularly for visitors or had maybe stopped after the summer tourist season was over. So this local group organizes this weekend for free entry at a bunch of locations. My flatmate and I first went out to the Water of Leith Conservation Trust educational center. The River Leith runs through Edinburgh out to the sea, along which a 12 mile trail has been maintained. We walked on maybe a mile of it and turned back...slackers. But in the process, we happened along what I immediately thought was a gypsy camp because of all the ramshackle sheds and tarps laying around in roughly sectioned off areas. In fact, it was a community garden where people could buy plots and store their gardening tools. Much more logical than a gypsy camp set in Edinburgh proper. We then tried to tour the John Knox House adjoined to the Storytelling Museum on the Royal Mile, but apparently "free entry" doesn't mean free entry sans ticket in some cases. Though they were free, you still had to call and reserve tickets to actually go inside the house - annoyed. So, we saw the gift shop and the outside, then moved on to the really important stuff, like eating fish & chips. The next day we toured these vaults that were built into the bridge joining Old Town and New Town back in the late 1700s. Originally, they were intended for storing shop inventory, but since they planned ahead so well and forgot to use leak resistant surfacing material, they were unusable by the above store owners and ended up being used as slum dwellings instead. Tiny rooms the size of a kitchen would have housed 20+ people, which led to rampant disease and death. The guide said if you went to live in those vaults, the average life expectancy was 18 months....not years, months!!! So after being abandoned for a couple centuries, an ex-international rugby player decided to restore the vaults for tourism and personally dug out 18 truckloads of stone and filth. They reeked of mold/dankness, and I totally fell for the cleverly placed scare props (rat and skeleton), but they were neat to see. Amazingly, or perhaps not, he was able to make a pub out of the ones closest to street level - The Caves.
5 - the number of times I had to repeat myself at the drugstore, every time changing what I thought might be the name of the chest cough medicine Lynn, our house cleaning lady, told me to get. The ladies just stared at me blankly, until finally the pharmacist came out from the back and was like, "do you mean Covonia?" He then laughed at me when I got excited that he had figured it out...I forgot that kind of goes along with his profession as a pharmacist, the whole knowing brands of medicine and which symptoms they match. Fail.
12 - the number of times I've almost stepped in dogshit. Excuse my language. It's everywhere. There is either no rule against leaving it in the middle of the very traveled sidewalk, or people just casually ignore the rule and there is not enough public consensus against it to shame them into changing. For a pedestrian society, it seems counter-intuitive and cruel as it is only a matter of time before that shit ends up on my shoe.
25 - how many times I've trudged up the hill toward school, pain in my chest and knee from the steep climb, and wished I had my car. However, I would instantly be killed in head-on collision since I still can't figure out which way the cars are going to be coming and which way to look when I get to the intersection. So I'm that really obvious, pathetic tourist who just keeps looking both ways frantically and doing that indecisive toe dance, one on one off back up back down, before making a run for it and inevitably almost getting clipped by a speeding car coming from the opposite way I thought it would be.
100 - the number of times I've wished I didn't have the world's most uncomfortable mattress and a bed frame that squeaks violently every time I even think about turning over, which unfortunately has to be a regular occurrence since my hip can only take springs digging into it for so long.
1000 - the number of times I have tripped on the uneven sidewalk squares, curbs, mini steps into offices/shops, door frames, winding staircases, the third flight of stairs to my flat. I've discovered I cannot do anything more complex than walk if I want to proceed trip-free. Texting - out of the question. I almost bit the dust one day on a relatively level sidewalk right in front of a busy cafe window. I resisted the urge to look back at the culprit and pull the whole "where did that giant cavern in the sidewalk that made me trip instead of my own clumsiness go?" routine. Two days later I majorly biffed it coming out of a store carrying my new drying rack, which could have been really unpleasant seeing as it's metal and has all sorts of gaps where my various limbs could have gotten stuck. I didn't look down to see the mini step at the exit. Thus, my foot was only halfway on it, so when I stepped down my toe hit the ground three inches below and my heel sort of slid down to meet it, jarring my upper body forward slightly and causing me to let out a high-pitched, overly dramatic exclamation. These four old Scottish people standing to the side window gazing looked at me like I was insane, so I gave them an "oops" and scuttled off.
I hope you are well! Thanks for reading, friend! Have been battling this chest cough for over a week now, so sorry it's been awhile. This whole go to the doctor anytime, it's free thing hasn't really sunk in yet. If you want to see pictures from this post - go to https://picasaweb.google.com/100003400901805538894/DoorsOpenDayRugbyDundee?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCOeZmqi826-2eA&feat=directlink
Take care, will write again soon!
Cheers,
Beth
1 - the number of times I've experienced a live rugby match now. Last Friday, my flatmate and I took the bus to the unnecessarily gigantic rugby stadium where Edinburgh was facing off against Munster (Irish team). Watching a sport where you don't understand the rules is pretty hilarious, especially when they do the craziest things - like actually kick the ball out of bounds on purpose. Turns out (based on seeing this happen repeatedly) that they mark where the ball goes out of bounds as where the team in possession throws it in bounds to restart play. I sort of missed that the first couple times around since was more focused on the fans almost getting taken out by the ball being punted right into the crowd ("now there's a souvenir for a lucky fan"), which I found out later one may have been my other flatmate's friend who was fiddling around on his phone and looked up only as she was diving out of the path of the oncoming ball. I have to say it was a great experiment in learning how to read social cues, such as when you should be either ecstatic or pissed about something happening on the field. All of a sudden there would be broad grumblings of "brilliant, that was fantastic" or the sarcastic "well done, Ref" by the guy immediately behind us in response to a foul call. Seeing as I couldn't tell one way or the other whether it was a good call or play, I would look around confusedly and try to clap or boo when the time was right. Turns out the guy behind us was for the Munster team....so I was actually cheering for the wrong team for a good chunk of the game. For how violent soccer (or football to the rest of the world - very hard to transition to using that label instead) matches get over here, however, rugby is surprisingly calm in the stands. An example, Munster scored a try (like a touchdown in football) and one out of their many incredibly vocal fans actually pulled out an Irish flag on a pole and started waving it around (Irish pride is huge throughout the UK)....having worked for the Raiders, I fully expected him to be mobbed and wheeled out on a stretcher circa the 2007 KC Chiefs game, but everyone left him pretty well alone. Maybe it's because there is so much aggression on the field they don't feel they need to knock each other out as opposed fans. While Edinburgh did pull out the win, I left disappointingly empty-handed thanks to the inept moose mascot in charge of the t-shirt gun. He sort of sauntered over after a hefty amount of halftime had already passed. His helper then spent half the time trying to stuff his oversized moose finger into the trigger of the gun, and then two out of the four he managed to launch before the team reappeared had been packed so sloppily that they unraveled and sort of fell onto the first three rows. Due to serious spatial misplacement by the moose, three of the four went to the far left side of the crowd before they figured out the projectiles needed to be packed tighter into the barrel, so I remember thinking, "oh my gosh, that one is going to peg me in nose" as the moose moved toward our center section. As I sort of half shielded my face in preparation, the moose let fire and the last shirt shot out, literally rebounding off the back wall of the stadium to either biff someone on the back of the head or unravel upon impact. I can't say for sure as I was still ducking up front.
2 - the number of times I have now taken a journey by train. The first was the Newcastle debacle, but this Saturday I took the train up to Dundee, north of Edinburgh by an hour and 15 min. ride. Infuriatingly, I almost missed my train again, but this time it was not my fault (other than not allowing enough time for me to be an idiot and not know where I was going). The sign pointing to where the travel & ticket center was said to go down this flight of stairs. So I went down. No sign at the bottom directing me further. I was hurrying at this point - I think it was 8 min. til my train was set to depart and I still had to get my tickets from the kiosk - and it appeared I had put myself squarely into the parking area. So I walked alongside the building that had all these doors with covered windows and no sign of life inside, thinking that maybe if I rounded the corner at the end the entrance would magically appear. No dice. So I hurried over to a woman in an official looking outfit (remembering to avoid scruffy commoners when asking for advice now), and she told me to just go back to where I came from and take a right. A right?! I walked back toward the stairs, saw a sign from that direction saying travel & ticket center with an arrow pointing ahead, but where the heck was I supposed to turn right? Turns out, you have to walk under the stairs and then it was literally a Harry Potter moment - this huge train terminal appeared out of nowhere. Thankfully, an orange vested worker was shouting for confused passengers for my train, so I made it after sprinting to the train at the far end of Track 16 (how I was supposed to know there was a difference between the train cars sitting at the front v. the back of Track 16 is beyond me). Dundee was charming - having planned to arrive a little early, I went to their museum that was premiering an exhibition of photos taken over the last century of Queen Elizabeth II. The whole royalty thing is just so interesting and foreign to me, so I wandered through the rooms progressing from her inauguration to pictures of her holding her newborns. Then, I was fortunate to have lunch with a rural development contact to talk about dissertation ideas, so it turned out to be a really great day. I'll figure these trains out soon enough.
3 - is the number of events I managed to see during the Doors Open Day two weekends ago. The City of Edinburgh obviously has tons of historical places that attract visitors from all over the world. But some of them are not open regularly for visitors or had maybe stopped after the summer tourist season was over. So this local group organizes this weekend for free entry at a bunch of locations. My flatmate and I first went out to the Water of Leith Conservation Trust educational center. The River Leith runs through Edinburgh out to the sea, along which a 12 mile trail has been maintained. We walked on maybe a mile of it and turned back...slackers. But in the process, we happened along what I immediately thought was a gypsy camp because of all the ramshackle sheds and tarps laying around in roughly sectioned off areas. In fact, it was a community garden where people could buy plots and store their gardening tools. Much more logical than a gypsy camp set in Edinburgh proper. We then tried to tour the John Knox House adjoined to the Storytelling Museum on the Royal Mile, but apparently "free entry" doesn't mean free entry sans ticket in some cases. Though they were free, you still had to call and reserve tickets to actually go inside the house - annoyed. So, we saw the gift shop and the outside, then moved on to the really important stuff, like eating fish & chips. The next day we toured these vaults that were built into the bridge joining Old Town and New Town back in the late 1700s. Originally, they were intended for storing shop inventory, but since they planned ahead so well and forgot to use leak resistant surfacing material, they were unusable by the above store owners and ended up being used as slum dwellings instead. Tiny rooms the size of a kitchen would have housed 20+ people, which led to rampant disease and death. The guide said if you went to live in those vaults, the average life expectancy was 18 months....not years, months!!! So after being abandoned for a couple centuries, an ex-international rugby player decided to restore the vaults for tourism and personally dug out 18 truckloads of stone and filth. They reeked of mold/dankness, and I totally fell for the cleverly placed scare props (rat and skeleton), but they were neat to see. Amazingly, or perhaps not, he was able to make a pub out of the ones closest to street level - The Caves.
5 - the number of times I had to repeat myself at the drugstore, every time changing what I thought might be the name of the chest cough medicine Lynn, our house cleaning lady, told me to get. The ladies just stared at me blankly, until finally the pharmacist came out from the back and was like, "do you mean Covonia?" He then laughed at me when I got excited that he had figured it out...I forgot that kind of goes along with his profession as a pharmacist, the whole knowing brands of medicine and which symptoms they match. Fail.
12 - the number of times I've almost stepped in dogshit. Excuse my language. It's everywhere. There is either no rule against leaving it in the middle of the very traveled sidewalk, or people just casually ignore the rule and there is not enough public consensus against it to shame them into changing. For a pedestrian society, it seems counter-intuitive and cruel as it is only a matter of time before that shit ends up on my shoe.
25 - how many times I've trudged up the hill toward school, pain in my chest and knee from the steep climb, and wished I had my car. However, I would instantly be killed in head-on collision since I still can't figure out which way the cars are going to be coming and which way to look when I get to the intersection. So I'm that really obvious, pathetic tourist who just keeps looking both ways frantically and doing that indecisive toe dance, one on one off back up back down, before making a run for it and inevitably almost getting clipped by a speeding car coming from the opposite way I thought it would be.
100 - the number of times I've wished I didn't have the world's most uncomfortable mattress and a bed frame that squeaks violently every time I even think about turning over, which unfortunately has to be a regular occurrence since my hip can only take springs digging into it for so long.
1000 - the number of times I have tripped on the uneven sidewalk squares, curbs, mini steps into offices/shops, door frames, winding staircases, the third flight of stairs to my flat. I've discovered I cannot do anything more complex than walk if I want to proceed trip-free. Texting - out of the question. I almost bit the dust one day on a relatively level sidewalk right in front of a busy cafe window. I resisted the urge to look back at the culprit and pull the whole "where did that giant cavern in the sidewalk that made me trip instead of my own clumsiness go?" routine. Two days later I majorly biffed it coming out of a store carrying my new drying rack, which could have been really unpleasant seeing as it's metal and has all sorts of gaps where my various limbs could have gotten stuck. I didn't look down to see the mini step at the exit. Thus, my foot was only halfway on it, so when I stepped down my toe hit the ground three inches below and my heel sort of slid down to meet it, jarring my upper body forward slightly and causing me to let out a high-pitched, overly dramatic exclamation. These four old Scottish people standing to the side window gazing looked at me like I was insane, so I gave them an "oops" and scuttled off.
I hope you are well! Thanks for reading, friend! Have been battling this chest cough for over a week now, so sorry it's been awhile. This whole go to the doctor anytime, it's free thing hasn't really sunk in yet. If you want to see pictures from this post - go to https://picasaweb.google.com/100003400901805538894/DoorsOpenDayRugbyDundee?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCOeZmqi826-2eA&feat=directlink
Take care, will write again soon!
Cheers,
Beth
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)