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
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