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August 23rd 2006

Published: August 27th 2006

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Kelvingrove Museum

The museum is huge. They just reopened it very recently after some major renovations. I still can't believe it's free.

I can’t believe I’ve been here for almost one week now. I’ll try to do a brief synopsis of what I’ve done since I’ve arrived. With a lot of help from the extremely friendly Scottish people I made it to the school campus safe and sound.
On Friday (my first full day in the city), I went shopping for groceries and had a general roam around town. The campus I live in is right downtown (city centre). The campus I go to school in is about a 30min bus ride from downtown. The school provides a free bus service going to and from the two campuses everyday. The city is so old looking compared to Vancouver. There’s a lot of construction going on everywhere and you can see very new buildings right beside very old ones.
On Saturday I went to the amazing Kelvingrove Museum. It is three stories high and probably the size of one of our parliament buildings. In other words, it’s huge. It took us 5 hours to walk through it and we still didn’t see everything. They had exhibits of dinosaur bones to endangered and extinct animals to local children’s art to Scottish history and local Glasgow

Picture op before going in

Thats me after walking 50min to the museum from the school. It was my third day in Glasgow.

history. They had actual mummy tombs and art paintings from Salvador Dali. The most amazing part of the whole experience? IT’S ALL FREE! The free museums and attractions in this city is not an unusual thing. Surprisingly most of them are free and they don’t try to get donations or overcharge you for a coffee once inside.
On Sunday I went for an unsuccessful hunt for the elusive Chinatown. It turned out to be a small warehouse looking building that had a bakery with stale looking pastries, an abandoned looking variety store and a food store the size of my living room which sold really expensive and dusty packaged foods. I almost picked up a couple handfuls of bok choy for $7! I ended up only buying some Chinese cooking sauces. There is supposed to be a large Chinese supermarket around here somewhere but I’m not getting my hopes up. In the meantime I’m using a lot of Indian cooking sauces.
I’ve noticed one major difference between here and Vancouver. There is definitely a more relaxed attitude about everything, including traffic, line ups, and organization. The rules for when to walk across the street are not so clear here. There

Weird greeting display at the entrance

I can't remember what that lizard man thing was supposed to be but it was surrounded by chinese fans and crows.

are times when all four corner walking signs will show “walking man” and other times where you stand at the corner for 10 minutes waiting for the “walking man”. People seem to just walk when there are no cars and cars will stop for pedestrians when they see a small build up of people waiting to cross. The streets are narrow and the light signals confusing. Having a traffic system based almost on an honour system could only work here. I haven’t been to the rest of the UK yet but I’d like to see if it is UK wide. I think people back home would be too much in a hurry and preoccupied with themselves to let a system like this one work. Keep in mind too that Glasgow isn’t a small city.
I have yet to master understanding the accent. Some are easier to understand than others. I had one lecturer today who sounded like she was definitely speaking a different language. It’s a little hard right now trying to pick up the content of the course and understand their English at the same time. Luckily, I have a translator. Her name is Jeanette. She’s one of my

Huge taxidermy display

That's an elephant with a small plane hanging behind it. Not an elephant with weird things sticking out!

roommates and she’s from the borders of Scotland. She introduced me to a Scottish soap opera based in Glasgow called River City. She had to turn on the subtitles for me.
Well the adventures have only begun. In two weeks I’ll be going to my first placement at a primary school. I still have to go to a chippy and get drunk at a pub. And hopefully coming soon….. Hot Scottish men stories……

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