Hi friend! How are you? I hope you are well! I'm sorry it's been awhile since I've written. Starting to get into the busy part of the semester with final essays, etc., so that's why I've been MIA.
Okay, chronologically speaking - the end of October/beginning of November has been interesting.
One day my flatmate walked in and asked if I was going to see the Olympic Torch. What? The Olympic Torch is in Edinburgh? The Olympic Games are over 6 months away? Not only was it here, they had set up this gigantic Coca Cola bus in the middle of our student union square with a little tent where you could actually hold the torch and get your picture taken with it. Upon rounding the corner to the square though, we literally almost bumped into the last person in what was an interminable line. It was ridiculously long - thus, there was no chance I was going to wait. But we did get some good pictures of the scene. Unfortunately, none are of people taking pictures with the torch, which of course turned into - what's the silliest pose I can do with this huge gold thing? If you want to see them, go to my Picasa album! https://picasaweb.google.com/100003400901805538894/OlympicTorchHalloweenAndDiwali?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIKslci5o9eGXg&feat=directlink
This unexpected visitor was soon followed by the Diwali celebration I got to attend with my flatmate. It's the Hindi "festival of lights" so they had Indian food (I was in heaven until the sheer quantity I had consumed started to sink in), traditional dancing (which I sucked at), and saris everywhere - they were so beautiful! I even got my hand henna painted!!!
Halloween was next, which turns out is incredibly popular over here. I thought maybe they didn't celebrate it, like it was only an American thing. Nope, dead wrong. They do wear significantly scarier costumes though, so that was different. The default was putting black circles under their eyes and playing a plain-clothes zombie (lazy) or drawing red lines from the corners of their mouths as vampires. Mine was always going to be a hit or miss if people had not seen the movie Dodgeball, which upon studying its box office results here in the UK I realized might be very few people as opposed to the US, but I got a few positive responses aside from the Americans I met up with. Mostly I was just gawked at as some crazy person with bushman eyebrows and ugly circus red lipstick by people on the bus. Eh, you win some, you lose some.
The real Halloween celebration in Edinburgh is actually ON the 31st of October though, which this year happened to be on a Monday night. The pagan tradition of celebrating harvest leads into this end of summer celebration, called Samhuinn, where they have a parade and this group called Beltane Fire Society literally has flame throwers, drum corps, and street theatre. Of course it was a torrential downpour right at 9:00 when the parade started, so my flatmates and I didn't go out until 10:00. We caught the end of the drumming and saw some terrifyingly scary red-painted demonic people, the other drum performers, who had finished and were headed to the bar. I couldn't believe how many people were out that Monday night though and appeared to be in it for the long haul - it was raining and I'd already exhausted my costume on Saturday, so it never occurred to me people would actually go out on Monday as well. Clearly I was mistaken. Very cool annual tradition to catch though.
Last Saturday was Bonfire Night. This annual celebration on Nov. 5th, where there are fireworks set off all around the UK, is in honor of Guy Fawkes. He was part of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 due to continuing intolerance for Catholicism under the British monarch. When you are plotting with 12 other people, however, make sure nobody rats you out by sending a letter directly to whom you are trying to blow up. Apparently, someone in the plot folded like a lawn chair and notified a member of the House of Lords that Nov. 5th was the day. Not only did Guy never get a chance to ignite the 36 barrels of gunpowder stored in the basement of Westminster, but the guards stormed in while he was down there, captured, tortured, and killed him for treason. Talk about a plan gone wrong. So on that Nov. 5th night in 1605, people around Britain lit bonfires to celebrate the safety of the King and the tradition continues today. We got to see the huge amount of fireworks set off in the soccer stadium from Holyrood Park, which sits at the base of the extinct volcano Arthur's Seat where people hike up with torches or flashlights and set off fireworks as well. That was cool to see from the ground - I'd be willing to put money on it that it was F.REE.ZING up there!
I hope you are doing great! It's quite unseasonably warm for Scotland, apparently, so we'll see how cold it starts to get here in the next couple of weeks.
Thanks for reading and take care!
Cheers,
Beth
No comments:
Post a Comment