Heffalumps and Wormits

So I thought Wormit was just an Elmer Fudd word but it is apparently the name of the bay on the other side of the Tay that I can see from my window. My Geology class went there Tuesday and while the landscape wasn't as striking as the cliffs of Arbroath it was still pretty spectacular, check out the pictures. But before I get into that some random updates:

-Re:my pinky toe. I wasn't so worried that it fell off as that it ruined my pedicure and I have no nail polish remover. Luckily it is now turning a nice deep purple color like the rest of my toes.

-Perth... which I haven't written a post about, I know, and I should because it was awesome. We saw the palace and it was a good thing too because while I was waiting for history lecture to start yesterday BBC news reported that a service van knocked out the ancient gate (clearance issues apparently) that generations of Scottish kings walked through on the way to their coronations. I have a picture of it a week before it fell.

they say they are hoping it can be repaired but doesn't that defeat the purpose of having an ancient gate?

-Sarah loves HIMYM as much as I do! so we now have roomie TV night.

-It has only taken me a week to sniff out the on campus Film society and where their weekly viewings are so "Trainspotting" tonight!

-I should totally be writing essays so be thankful I am entertaining you instead... I could totally be using my procrastination time on Battle Star Galactica (because being in Scotland doesn't mean I'm not still me;)

So yesterday at the bay or Wormit was mildly depressing... the weather was constantly threatening all out downpour (and it's our last field trip before going back to real labs) but I'm all for seeing more of Scotland and I had a chance to scope out a possible, cheap weekend trip for the future... there is a hike to a cool old Abby ruin and like I said it's only across the bridge.

This was a more geologically serious trip so I didn't have time for a ton of pictures (mostly rocks) and my new friends weren't there to shield be from being the crazy person taking pictures of stupid every-day Scottish things. Not that that stopped me, I assure you. My inner Magpie was also unable to resist all the Shiny on the beach (Aunt Sis I blame you for the ingrained instinct to always have my pockets full of shells when walking near water... Mom the rocks are your fault).

But I found a geologically relevant piece of Agate and even learned how they are formed. While lava is cooling bubbles of gas from the eruption slowly rise to the surface so the rock generally cools with bubble holes in it (we all know what lava rock looks like) and the Agate is silica that grows in that space, which is why Agate is usually round.

Geology fact of the day complete.

I think the other side of the river is the good side of the tracks. There were some stunning stonework homes that looked old as the hills with '10 'vettes in the driveway. I was equally enamored of both. Well maybe the houses were a little cooler... they all had these amazing sun rooms. Some were even completely detached from the house so you could see adorable little breakfast nooks just sitting in peoples front yards facing the river.

(Martin has informed me that my blog has too much text, which I have understood as the definition of a blog, so I am attempting to accommodate him by adding pictures ;) 

Sarah, Daniela (our downstairs German neighbor) and i are meeting Danika and Robin in Isle of Sky on Saturday. We are moving Roomie diner night to Thursday and going to a burger joint called ketchup that gives student a 2 for 1 special (Danika and Robin are joining roomie dinner). And Friday night I am going to the Scottish play "The Not-So-Fatal Death of Grandpa Fredo" a semi-true dark comedy. I'm stoked to see Scottish dark comedy, something tells me they'll be brilliant at it.

Of Injuries and Victories: Or Hiking Glen Orchy

I meant to post this Saturday night as soon as we got back but I was so exhausted that I fell asleep and spent all of Sunday recovering. It has been a seriously long time since I went on a solid hike and this was so much more, but totally worth it. As evidenced by the rocky pose.

I look like crap but I *earned* looking like crap.

Anyway so here's my story.
I wake up at 5:30 Saturday morning (after skyping the lovely Sarah & Karis until 1am, totally worth it) and get a cup of tea and make peanut butter toast. I then promptly fall back to sleep and have to scramble to get out the door at 6:30 with the rest of my flatmates. So Kaia, Kristine, Martin, Emanuele and I set off for the art building where we are supposed to meet the rest of the Rucksack club to head to the Bridge of Orchy. Everything goes to plan... sort of, Kaia's seat in the van is literally no longer attached to the floor and after Emanuele has spent 15 minutes attempting to beat it into submission Martin switches seats with her. But then we are on our way. It's actually a huge nice Mercedes van that seats us the driver, Thomas, and one other girl.

The drive alone is spectacular. I've been taking trains and buses the whole time I've been here so I've only really seen main roads but we were way out in the sticks of Scotland and it was amazing. There was, of course, the scenery as well as random huge, beautiful, stone homes.

Then we got to the glen Orchy/Glen Lochy region and it was heart-stopping. It reminded me of Utah and the area around the grand canyon in that there was stone looming everywhere but it was all green scrub land with Highland Sheep all the way up the mountains. I hesitate to call them mountains because that to me means jutting rock covered in pines... they were that tall but they almost look like grassland all the way up like if someone took a patch of the great planes and just yanked until they were as tall as some of the smaller Appalachian mountains.

So we get to the meeting point and wait.... and wait and wait. Everyone has to put their number down and where they are going (because they just drop you off to find your own hike, which I like) and the color of your outer. All good safety things but couldn't we have just done that on the 2 hour ride?

I was not happy standing around in the freezing cold when I could have been hiking and warming up, but whatever. Kaia finds some guys that are club vets and know the area so we take another short bus ride with them to hike the Blacks. It would have been a spectacular hike all around if we hadn't been with these guys. They were all about A to B at a double march, which is fine but most of us wanted to just enjoy the spectacular scenery (not such a huge thing when you've done the hike several times but I wanted to absorb). Then we get to the base of the mountain and the guy stops and says "We are going up this way you can do something else if you like" and just heads up. Like any of use have been before and know where to go. Which granted I should have been responsible for my own route and I did have a map so I could have... and did later... find my own way but when someone who knows the area is like "this is the best way" it's usually good to follow. WRONG.

We scrambled (which is the official term for just hoofing it up a mountain at a random place without a path, which I was slightly uncomfortable with for ecological reasons) up what was literally at least a 70 degree incline (steeper in some places, we actually climbed this was no hike in some places) and had about a foot of boggy wet peat everywhere so it was like walking in sinking sand. I feel like my calves should still ache (kind of proud that they don't, actually). Danika (we met her and her friend Robin recently, they're Canadian and  live upstairs) and I lost everyone on the first leg. During this hell of a boggy hill my freshly waterproofed shoes proved themselves incontinent and we saw a switchback on the hill next to us that was the *actual* path we were supposed to be taking (I was too determined to beat the fraking hill to be angry at our guides).Robin and our driver Thomas waited for us (he may have been worse off than us). Then Robin took off while we rested to find every one else and we caught back up to her with Martin an Emanuele on the next plateau. Just before we got to them it turned into a real stone mountain and was a completely fabulous hike. With the our guides long gone and Martin pushing to climb the next peak (we weren't really at the top at this point just a sort of leveled off bit that connected to other peaks)  we were told that Kristine and Kaia had headed across the ridge to the switch back we had seen. After momentary deliberation Danika and I decided this was the most sensible thing we had heard all day and followed.   The way to the top was rocky and nice but the wind was absolutely *howling* (I was using my bandanna as an ear-band) and we could see this idyllic, sun soaked, sparkling pool dotted paradise just a bit below us the way the other girls had gone so it was a no brainer.

Best decision all day. As soon as we tuned to follow Kaia and Kristine it was one of the best hikes of my life... I'm still fascinated with the vegetation and how the  little pools of water formed with absolutely no edge.... it was grass then water, no transition. And the sun was out. That's the best part of Scotland one minute you can be frightened for the continued attachment of your ears and the next you are stripping back down to your sports bra in the sun.

So we tra-la-la-ed along in the sun and ran into an older couple that helpfully pointed out the switch-back and found Kaia and Kristine lounging on the grassy side of the mountain munching lunch. Then followed the path (which was kind of treacherous but nothing after the hike up) the rest of the way down and back to the original drop off (we didn't want to wait for everyone else to get down the mountain to get back to the drop point, which had a hotel with a bar ;).

Actually now that I think about it the hike was a perfect microcosm of Scottish weather in general... hellish to Idyllic almost instantly and without warning.

There were a few other bureaucratic bungles on behalf of the club (the police were called from Denmark) but I want to remember the hike, not the drama.

And you can see why...

Almost forgot the injury report: 

        -Hit by falling rock on the way up, I now have a tiny annoying scab on my cheek that I kept picking in Lecture

        -Knee gave out on the way down, my knees never do so well with down

        -When I got home and took off my shoes my entire right pinky toe-nail was hanging by a corner so I yanked it off

...not too bad off for a hike like that

Physiology is fun!

...no really. I had one of the best labs of my life today and the subject matter was mind numbingly boring. We analyzed past data on the effect of salt water on urination (so in general just good for some giggles until everyone comes to terms with their twelve year-old selves) for a group lab write-up (yes, the dread group project). But for the first time in my life there was both proper explication and proper free-reign.

Seriously, it was amazing. I know that doesn't sound like much but usually the lab TA (also the doctor heading up the module taught it... no crappy grad student TA's here) spend an hour or so wasting  you time reading the instruction page that they have just handed out aloud and it is so mind-numbingly dull that you surmise that there must not be 8anything * difficult about this lab. Then as soon as they are gone you run into some seemingly insurmountable issue that they never saw fit to mention. All in all even simple labs are usually very stressful. This one was well explained both in the practical "this is what you need to do to get the grade" sense and the scientific "this is where the knowledge you should take away is" sense... and then most astoundingly we were left to actually *do* it. No TA's hovering uselessly or inexplicably absent depending on the opposite of your needs.

I don't think I'll be able to go back to the other way.

Arbroath and the silly Scotsmen

So now that I've posted the pictures I figured Arbroath needed it's own post... or something like it.

First off the weather was amazing. Doctor Milne kept reiterating "Wear your boots," "Bring a waterproof," "An extra jacket wouldnae be amiss" (yes that's a quote!...sheesh, doubt me) and BBC reported rain but it was fantastic ( I took *off* my "waterproof" thank you very much, I can already handle the climate ;).

Whoah that sentence is a mess, moving on...

The weather was spectacular so were the lecturers ( the classroom setting didn't hurt) but while we were in the tidal area studying the world famous geological unconformity in the cliffs I couldn't help but focus on the marine life. I have a newfound fascination with geology but I couldn't resist a type of habitat I haven't explored. So in the Arbroath album there is a picture of the unconformity but all around it are microscope pics of the balloon weeds, snails and crabs. I would have liked an hour or two just there to explore. It was an incredibly rich environment for being anchored on solid rock in the North Sea. And as I've said I've never been to a bedrock beach like that so I was fascinated to the exclusion of geology until we walked up into the cliffs away from the shore.

The cliffs themselves were spectacular the photos don't do them justice. From a scientific standpoint I can tell why they took us there just about every type of text book hydraulic weathering is displayed at least once in about a three quarter mile stretch (some twice) plus the unconformity which is rare to find displayed plainly. From a tourist's standpoint they were just stunning plain-and-simple. The path that we took along the top of the cliffs was usually only a few feet from the edge with the ocean one your right then directly to your left was a waist high mound, covered in wild flowers and other flora of northern Scotland, and topped with a fence surrounding fields all the way along. The compete landscape change just turning your head right to left, wave battered red cliffs to tranquil fields surrounded by wildflowers, was... an adjective I can't think of/articulate at the moment, but it was neat.

And I made friends two funny/dorky guys at the back of the bus (my Scotland substitutes for Brad and James, anyone?) they started showing me caterpillars and slugs to take specimen pictures of when they learned that I'm really a biology student that's why I'm taking pictures of seaweed, thank you very much.

Ohh ohh ohh I almost forgot I SAW DOLPHINS IN THE NORTH SEA!!! It was so cool my James sub (Bren) had never seen them before so we stuck around and watched them till they left.

But yeah I had a great time with Bren and Craig (I think was his name, I feel terrible now). They were astounded that we have guns and that I've fired them. We had a great Scotland vs. the US talk and Scottish humor is hysterical (silly but subtle just the way I like it).

Well more adventures later.

The Daily Grind

So, as you may know, I started classes last Monday about 9 hours after I got back from Paris. Which wasn't as bad as it sounds. I am taking 3 classes that equate to about 14 or 15 hours in the US. The Schedule here is crazy I feel like I'm never in the same place or time slot one lecture to the next (it is slightly more ordered than that but not much). And labs are just impossible, it's been sheer luck that I've made it to any.

The Breakdown:

Early Modern Europe- My requisite History-from-a-different-perspective class while studying abroad. So far it's been good, we're sarting with the Renaissance and moving on from there. The doctor that does my lecture group is umm... enthusiastic so that's fun.

Comparative Physiology-My actual useful class of Biology related-ness. It's actually pretty cool (amazing what a Scottish accent can do for a subject)

Environmental Management and Modeling- the first section of which is a geology class with Field trips! Today we went North to Arbroath (which is easier to get your tongue around if you think of it as Arberoath). I took a bunch of pictures that will be up soon (got a Picassa account). There was some fascinating biology going on down by the shore I've never been on a rock beach like it. So i had fun with microscope mode on the balloon seaweeds and snails. I've found that my camera is spectacular for close range shots but all the ones I got of the Scottish countryside were underwhelming... possibly because I had the real thing staring me in the face. But anyway suffice to say this is my favorite class. A fact which has nothing to do with my young professor with an adorable accent who walked in the first day, while I was contemplating our antique lecture hall and wondering just when professor McGonagall was going to walk through the door, and told us he felt like he was guest lecturing at Hogwarts. It's a good class. I spent the first lab discussing the finer points of David Tennant vs Matt Smith as Dr Who with a Scottish girl named Lucy.

So those are my classes and I promised to introduce the people in the flat across the hall. There is Dun Jack from Denmark (both parents from China) who lent my his converter when mine didn't work for my computer and hung out with me while I was waiting for my flatmates to get here. Pia who is German and really sweet.... she made us all rewatch Brave heart the other night because she'd never seen it though (not that I really minded I've been meaning to get an accurate body count for ages). Caroline from France and also very nice, though I would kill her in a heartbeat for her wardrobe (JK she's awesome...maybe the boots...). Addy from Nigeria is pretty awesome but I have only hung out with him one or two nights, but definitely cool (getting back to food he made chicken curry, Dun Jack also made fish and garlic mashed potatoes so he gets creds as well). And Puniit (not sure how to spell it) is thier Indian roomate though I've only really seen him in passing though by all accounts he's a really nice guy.

So that's basic introductions and things out of the way i'll start telling you about my adventures as they occur from now on.

Green Underwear and Other Adventures in Food

Which is mostly and introductory post that I would like to preface with the following. Any blog of mine WILL contain run-ons, comma splices and overuse of parentheses and ellipse. So Sarah, Jules, Harder and any other classically trained grammar-Nazis-that-love-me out there...deal.

I figured to start off my Tales of Scotland I should introduce the players (namely my flat-mates) and as an amusing anecdote admit to committing a customary college faux-pas that I had previously avoided.

I did my first load of laundry on Friday night after a lovely meal of Burgers, Corn on the Cob, and Mac&Cheese. My roomie, Sarah, from Minnesota and I made an "American" meal at the request of our international pals and decided that that was the meal least a bastardization of some other countries cuisine and there for the most (or least depending on your perspective) American. So I was doing my laundry and very proud of the fact that I had fit all my dirty clothes plus my brand new sheets, that I had already slept on for a week without washing, and mattress pad in the washer (I had to leave out one sad lonely towel, Arthur Dent would have been proud). I promptly forgot about my clothing in the dryer as we ate our semi-delicious meal (as we could only semi-acquire the correct ingredients) and ran down in a panic once I remembered. Lucky everything was still there and not strewn across the laundry floor (score Scotland one for laundry etiquette). The problem arose while folding in the living room when I discovered my pillowcase and all of my white underwear is a delicate shade of mint green matching the color of my apple green sheets if bleached perfectly.

So successfully contaminated white laundry, Check. It actually turned out rather pretty.

Now on to introductions. In my flat we have Kaia and Kristine (who made me rolls and promised me julekaka) from Norway both blonde, slim and sweet as pie. Also both hikers so we have joined the University Rucksack (read hiking) club together along with martin. martin is our German roommate he made me Turkish coffee his first day here so we'll list him as passing muster. Emanuele is from Italy and burned water when he promised us coffee so the jury was out until he made pasta. Sarah is the other American she actually made the mac&cheese for our dinner, it was ridiculously amazing.

I plan to win them all over with Pie.

So those are all my flatmates, all food trials aside (however important they are) they really are great.

I'll tell you about the people in the flat across the hall tomorrow. I actually got to know them first because none of my flatmates were here yet when I arrived.

Paris

I know everyone wants to hear about how Scotland is going and my classes and things but I feel like I need to get down my experiences in Paris first then i will back track and tell you about my first couple weeks in Scotland. Hopefully now that I actually have a blog up and running it will be easier to keep up with (oh and in case you were wondering pure dead brilliant = super cool in American). 

So, Paris. My weekend started early Friday morning. my Alarm had been malfunctioning so I was super paranoid that i would miss my bus to Edinburg, this was compounded by the fact that I *thought* I knew where the bus station was (turns out I did). So after about two hours of sleep I walked to the station, rode the bus, transferred to an airport ferry, checked into my flight, and waited. For like two hours...but at least I was there.

I actually sat next to two american girls on the flight (one was from Rockhill, NC) which was sort of surreal. I then preceded to follow the signs that I though led to the train station (by virtue of context clues, yay french nationalism) had the girl at the Info booth point out my stop and bought a ticket... which took forever because the touch screens were terrible and this little old German couple a few people ahead of me couldn't work it. But anyway I got a ticket hopped on the train and made it to the stop in about an hour.

So what I'm trying to illustrate is that travelling in Europe is easy and sensible enough that it doesn't matter whether or not you speak the language as long as you are possessed of some common sense.

So I find the hotel, after being brushed off by the information booth at the station in Paris, and somehow walk right past Aunt Sis who is sitting outside waiting for me and Uncle Claude has to come to the lobby to rescue me.

Then I see Paris. We ate at the now famous Place-where-Ma-ordered-steak-tartar which was amazing and everything you would expect of a French dinning establishment.

We followed up our meal with the Road Rage Tour commercially known as Paris By Night. Most of the commentary consisted of "CRAZY DRIVE-AIR! CRAZY DRIVE-AIR!" which was at least an accurate description and more than I can say for the rest.  Apparently Marie-Antoinette was the Spanish Queen before she married Louis XVI and Notre Dame it a whopping 100 years old. the best part was when he spent five minutes making fun of the place we had just had an amazing meal at.  It was a pretty hilarious adventure all in all.  Oh I almost forgot since we were all Americans he took us to a super out-of-the-way part of town to show us a statue of George Washington. Great Night.

The next day we finally got Aunt Sis the l'orangerie to see Monet's waterlilies. Which were incredible I could have sat there all day in a content meditative state and stared at them. They were as much of an artistic religious experience as the Sistine Chapel. And Aunt Sis got me a lily pad ring based on the painting so I feel like I have a physical link to that experience.

She told me it was my birthday present, like meeting her and Uncle Claude in Paris wasn't one ;)

The rest of the day we spent hitting most of the major Parisian landmarks and eating my now requisite beer and pizza (beer and pizza in every country is my new life goal) but my pictures tell the story better. I have them mostly on facebook but i'll have to put them on Picassa so I can link them here. Notre Dame is stunning, the Eiffle tower is massive on a scale that no photograph can convey and the Louvre and it's gardens are like nothing I've ever seen.

We spent part of the evening trying to follow Alyssa's directions to great place to eat near Champs de Elysee but as they were turn left at the Arc de Triumph and walk until you see a cafe that's not like the rest we ended up getting Italian. I had beer and ravioli this time. And the GAP was closed just as we got there (another road rage tour lie, the shops along Champs de Elysee do not close at midnight).

Since this post is getting long and I lazy I'm going to cannibalize part to the message I sent Aunt Sis about my adventure on Sunday after they left.

I took the metro to the Eiffel tower to try to get some morning shots but it was cloudy and didn't work. It was still cool to see the tower one more time and I walked down the river to the next station so that was nice as well.

I got to the Louvre a few minutes after opening and only had to wait a few minutes to get in. I started out with the notion that I could take the whole museum systematically wing by wing. *lies* maybe if I'd had three days and a surveyors map. That place is a maze especially when you are trying to follow the audio guide instructions. The audio guide was pretty cool though especially or some of the paintings that I knew existed but didn't really know much about, like four seasons. I went through the antiquities wing first which was spectacular. I had no idea that that many Mesopotamian artifacts still existed and of course I had to see Hammurabi's code and the winged bull sentinels. The egypt department was spectacular (though the audio guide was sure to tell me that Napoleon had nothing to do with that). Then I broke down and did the masterpiece tour with venus de milo, mona lisa and the winged victory of samothrace. I honestly think the victory was my favorite it was just so well presented and stunning in it's own right. I love da vinci but it was just too hard to get a feel for the mona lisa with the crowd, the same for venus. So i spent the entire day there (probably cut it a little close for my flight but only because I didn't know the blue line to CDG was under construction and you had to take a bus part way). My knee actually gave out for a second walking down a marble staircase but it was totally worth it. The coat room wouldn't take my little leather bag (people were leaving big hiking packs with them) so I had to carry it.

I even bought the extra ticket to the arts of arabia exhibit even though I really didn't have time and had to rush a little but it was beautiful as well as really well set up. It followed the entire arabian peninsula (partially in english) from the advent of archaeological history to how the modern day country was created.

I could have spent the week there. Even the gift shop had old texts and amazing (read expensive) replicas. I ended up getting the biggest english version of the museum guide that they had (to read on the way home). When we were in Rome all of us got post cards of our favorite works but they didn't have a huge selection just real prints. I do wish I had gotten one of the victory of samothrace. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in there though. too many other things to see. All in all it was a great day now I just need to go back and finish exploring. Somehow I missed psyche and eros.

Anyway I think that was my day other than the trip home and subsisting off those little bread things (they were yummy) because I didn't want to stop to eat.

So that was Paris... I'll tell you about my classes and flatmates and the trip we took to Perth yesterday soon.