Wow, week two! Still seems crazy. I think this week, the fact that I am actually living here and going to school and not just on vacation has definitely set in. With homework and struggling with every day tasks, it's definitely been an eye opening week.
Unfortunately, I didn't accomplish as much over the weekend as I had hoped. We were going to go on a ghost tour on Saturday night, but the weather got bad so we didn't make it. Sunday I spent the day reading for my Subjectivity, Modernity, and the Novel class. I didn't realize that one of the readings was 95 pages. Oops! I didn't have class until Tuesday morning but I had to have the reading done by Monday to be prepared to meet with my ALG group. There is 13 people in the class and we were broken into groups of four and five. Each week the lecturer assigns each group questions to answer before class to help start discussion in class. This past week's readings were John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners and extracts from The Life and Death of Mr. Badman.
Monday morning I went to the library to finish reading before I met up with my ALG group. I came out of my dorm and it was SNOWING! I thought that wasn't supposed to happen here! Haha!I was pretty disappointed. It was a really thick slushy snow too so it made for a pretty miserable walk to campus. Luckily, none of it stuck. After finishing up the readings, I met up with my ALG group which consists of two girls and one other guy. One of the girls is a visiting student from University of Washington who is studying here for the year. She also happens to be in my ethnology class. The other girl is from Edinburgh and the guy is from Newcastle. We answered our questions and then talked for awhile. Everyone seems really nice which is cool. They all had some horror stories to share about their previous ALG groups for other classes. Afterwards, I had my ethnology class. That night, I spent some time catching up with people from home through Skype (one of the best inventions ever!) I was also able to talk to my friend from camp who lives in London. I'm hoping I'll be able to visit him sometime in February! Maybe even have a mini camp reunion of international staff from the UK?
Tuesday we had our first real Subjectivity, Modernity, and the Novel class. It wasn't too bad. Two straight hours of discussion was pretty intense, but I think I was able to follow everything pretty well. After class, I went to go talk to the visiting students office to see if I could drop my history class to get into the sociology class about popular music. they said since it was a third year class, I didn't have enough previous sociology classes to take it. So therefore, I'm staying in my history class. Hopefully it will pick up. I had history and then ethnology and then I rushed over to Teviot, one of the student unions, to watch Obama get sworn in and deliver his inauguration speech. They were showing it on big screens in one of the bars. I got there and the place was pretty packed. It was exciting to get to witness the inauguration in a foreign country. Everyone seems very optimistic and eager for change. It is cool to see how decisions like this effect not only our own country but others as well. After the speech, I met up with some friends and we got some pizzas and went back to one of their flats to hang out.
Wednesday, I didn't have class but I had to wake up early to straighten up my room for the maintenance man. Once a week, a maintenance man comes to clean my bathroom, vacuum, and give me clean sheets. It's pretty nice, but I wish he could come on a day that I have class so I could sleep in! Later that afternoon, I went into town to go see an exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland for my history class. The exhibit was called Scotland: A Changing Nation. It was pretty interesting. It explored the change in Scotland since the World War I, talking about everything from industry to pop music. Not knowing much about Scotland, I thought it was pretty informative. I thought it was interesting to compare and contrast the growth of Scotland with that of America at the same time. My favorite part was this video they had interviewing Scottish natives and how they felt about being Scottish and different things about the country. It was cool to see all the different kinds of people and how proud they all were to be Scottish. On the way back to Pollock I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some laundry detergent. Unfortunately Tide has not made it over here to Scotland, nor has any other laundry detergent brand I've ever heard of. So, after standing in the aisle trying to decided between sizes, prices, bio, non-bio for a good 20 minutes, I finally just picked something.
Thursday was probably one of the most difficult days since I've been here. I had a few hours between breakfast and my first class so I decided to do laundry. Little did I know it would be so difficult! Basically, my stuff took much longer than planned to dry so I had to leave it in the machines to finish while I sprinted to class. I was nervous leaving it, worrying someone would just throw it on the floor in order to use the machine, but when I got back from class, it ended up being fine. With having to get change, and tokens, and drying taking so long, it ended up being very frustrating. I definitely have to remember to leave plenty of time the next time. The class I had to sprint to was my first history tutorial (the discussion portions of lectures). I'd say there were 11-12 people in the class. I was the only guy which was kind of awkward, but women definitely seem to out number men by a large amount in the student body here so I guess it's not all that surprising. My tutorial leader seems very nice, so hopefully it won't be too bad. That lasted for about an hour and then I had history and then ethnology after that. After class and laundry folding, I met up with some friends and we went to the grocery store and got all the fixins for a Mexican fiesta of tacos and chips and salsa. Haha, it was really good! Definitely better than the dorm food which seems to get worse and worse. And pretty cheap, only 3 pounds when split between the 6 of us. After dinner, we went on an underground city/ ghost tour. It was pretty cool! The guide had a lot of cool stories and it was very spooky! They do another tour of a graveyard that seems pretty cool. I'd definately be interested in checking it out. When the tour ended, we got a pub recommendation from the guide and went to have a pint. The pub was pretty small, but they had a guy playing live music and it was nice.
Fridays a bunch of us don't have classes so Kendall and Ashley (both from Iowa as well) and myself decided to climb Arthur's Seat, the remains of a 325 million year old volcano. It was a pretty difficult climb, rocky, muddy, and windy, but definitely worth it! We made sure to try and go earlier in the day because the weather seems to start off sunny earlier in the day and then get progressively worse as the day goes on. The whole climb we were able to see awesome views of the city, especially from the peak. I think its the coolest thing I've done since I've been here! After reaching the peak and taking a bunch of pictures, we saw some clouds rolling in so we wanted to get down quickly before the rain came. Making it down wasn't easy. There was a lot of slipping a sliding but we made it before the rain came. Kendall went back to her flat and Ashley and I got lunch from the Pollock store. We ate in her dorm and watched a professional bocce ball tournament, haha! I definitely did not know that even existed as a professional sport! I also tried Irn Brun for the first time. It's a soft drink that's even more popular than Coke here. It's orange but tastes like bubble gum. It's pretty sweet and kind of strange, but interesting. Later today, I discovered a place in Pollock to rent movies. With your student card, you can rent DVDs for only 50 pence! I don't have a TV, but I figure I can watch them on my laptop. It hasn't been too bad not having a TV, but it's nice to have some form of entertainment that's cheap and good for nights when you just want to relax.
Overall, things have been going pretty well. Getting acclimated to the new school system has been difficult. There is a lot to do, but no real schedule set in which to do it, so it's difficult to stay on top of things. For example, for my history class, we were given a packet of documents to read for the tutorial each week. Along with those we are given a secondary reading list which you read however much or little of it you like. My tutorial leader suggested I just read enough to feel like I'm prepared enough for class. With so much going on, it's difficult to do reading you're not technically required to do! I think the more I get used to it, the easier it will get to figure out a schedule.
I've started an online album of pictures. I haven't taken many yet, but there's some pretty good one's from Arthur's Seat. Check them out! http://picasaweb.google.com/NedPix/NEDINBURGH02?authkey=Xk_DqPcaT3c#
Hope all is well with all of you!
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