Burns Night and other Adventures

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Burns Night was last Thursday and it was amazing. Burns Night is a celebration for Scotland's favorite things... things that come from Scotland. It's on Robert Burn's birthday and he was some fancy poet back in the day. You eat haggis, neeps, taties, and a dram of whiskey and dance the night away while wearing the strangest things you can possible find. At first I thought this was all a joke or at least something that wouldn't really be celebrated. How many times do Americans celebrate poets birthdays... that's right, never. But I forgot the key thing, that Scottish people love Scotland and things from Scotland more than any other people I've ever met. They don't actually brag but some how Scotts always slip great Scottish advancements or achievements into conversation. I went to the Ceilidh at Uni and was in total shock from the moment I got there until I left. It was in one of the Student Unions, Teviot, which is this old looking gothic building that is three or four stories high and full of places to drink and play poker and dance. It's a normal hang out for lots of students on any given night. My friends and I first realized something was amiss with the night when there was a hot air balloon torch sitting in the square in front of the building. I guess it was the equivalent of fireworks. Throughout the night some guy lit up the torch and you could see the giant flame from everywhere.

Most people from my program were at the Ceilidh and it was one girl's birthday so we all got together before going in. We decided to get dinner first. The haggis was way better than before. I really liked it and would definitely get it again. The neeps (radish puree) wasn't too good and neither were the tatties (mashed potatoes). I'm not a big whiskey person so I gave my little bity shot to the birthday girl. The tickets for the Ceilidh were only 4 pounds and at that point I was already impressed. While we were at dinner we met a nice German couple that seemed equally confused as the 20 Americans that they were sitting with. We all went up for some dancing and this is when the night really turned bizarre. You might think that kilts really aren't worn, especially by the 18-23 crowd. Well apparently every Scottish guy has one in the specific pattern and style of his clan. Yes every single one of them and they were all wearing them. The dancing (the actual Ceilidh) was in a large dance hall in Teviot and I don't think there could have been more people in this room. Hundreds of boys in kilts were swinging girls wearing fancy dresses around while a live band played tradition (yes, bagpipes) music. There were even two girls that looked like they had just stepped off of the braveheart set, one wearing a very old style outfit (kilt, skin vest, fake dagger in her boots) and the other had a fancy dress with a tartan sash.

Scottish dancing is basically square dancing but with funny music and clothes. Thankfully my wonderful square dancing skills that I learned in high school gym class pulled through and I could at least keep up. The band taught all the dances at a slow pace before we actually did them. There were couples dances but a lot more group dances and almost all of them involved switching partners and smashing into people and spinning/running around so much you thought you might die. But of course there were in breaks between songs for about an hour and half at a time so you had to keep up or be lucky enough to get a table at the beginning. It really started to get crowded around 11 so my friends and I left shortly after but overall it was really great.

Today I went on a field trip! Well sort of. For one of my classes I'm supposed to write a paper from three options, one of which is a self guided tour through a medieval town outside Edinburgh! The town of Haddington is only 16 miles outside the city but a 40 minute bus ride. As a side note, I found out why everyone here doesn't use the metric system! Apparently the UK used the American system of measurement until the 70's and then decided to switch over. However all the signs were in miles, yards, etc. so the government decided to save money and not change any street signs but use the metric system everywhere else. Well it never really caught on so that's why everything is in miles! Anyway, Haddington was this town that was the most prosperous Burgh (town like area, it's not really a town but it's not rural either, more like a trading center where people had laws and sometimes lived) in Scotland before it went into decline and never really came out. So me and two of my American friends form class and a Scottish boy and girl (she had just come back form 4 months of working at Martha's Vineyard) hopped on the bus after class and headed off into the wilderness. We had a map and very detailed tour outline the professor mad yet we still managed to get horrible confused. The problem is that most of the old stuff may be there but it's under grocery stores and my prof hadn't been there in a few years. It took us about 3 hours to find all 32 sites marked out for us but it was well worth it! We had to find the old wall which was probably the hardest part because there was a stone wall everywhere you looked. We had to find all burgess plots which are like big stores that these rich merchants owned which were in the middle of the supermarket parking lot! It was funny because Tesco (the store) had left the old walls in place and made the lot around them. There was also a giant church (way bigger than the big fancy St. Guiles church of Edinburgh) that was beautiful. Luckily it was a great day so we got to walk along the river and town without normal Scottish hurricanes. At the end of the day we were pretty hungry so we went to a little place that said catering on the sign but were really a place that sold amazing pastries! My and Gus (a guy from class) got this soda called ginger beer which is kinda like a very unsweet gingersnap smushed into sour soda. It was pretty bad and actually hurt my throat so bad that I couldn't drink it. But you have to try it once! After the ginger beer I tried to tell Gus and Emily about birch beer but they had never heard of it, too bad for them. We got back on the bus but lost the Scottish kids so hopefully they're not still in Haddington waiting.

In other news, my school email is being changed to a new system so I get emails either way after people send them or not at all. Uni email is just as bad so there is no sense giving out that address but if I don't respond be patient because it's probably because my email isn't working! But I did get all my packages! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I am certainly the envy of my flat this week with two packages coming in two days. The best was the one from my mom, Lorenzo (out apartment coordinator guy, he's a little odd) left it in front of my door while I was in Haddington so everyone go to see it hahaha. I will email thank yous when I can log into my email long enough to send them! Also, I'm going to send out my first wave of post cards! I think I have lots of peoples addresses (I have family and pi phi is on list serve) but if anyone else wants one email me your address! In other news I found a winning lottery ticket in my room but I can't cash it in because I'm not British. I'm totally serious too. I'm not sure how much it's worth because it's one of those scratch off ones (but it did win for the highest prizes) and I think someone must have left it on a table in class room because it was mixed in with some of my school work. I'll definitely have to work on doing something about it though, I'm going to see if it's my flat mates' first but then I'm not going to run around campus seeing if someone lost a lotto ticket. Maybe I wont a million pounds (probably not though especially if I can't cash it in)! Maybe I'll give it to someone??? I also have great new decorations for my room so it finally feels like home! I love Ikea. And I found a really good record store but there weren't any new records there so I'll have to keep looking. I was a little upset that most of the concerts I wanted to see while I was here are already sold out. Granted most of them happen within a month but it's really hard to get tickets because you have to run all over the city to get tickets to anything in the UK. It's a weird system, you can do it online but you usually have better luck at ticket booths. Also Emily went to pizza hut buffet. Who would have thought that there would be pizza hut buffet in Scotland. They have all you can eat ice cream sunday bar (oh Friday Sunday Bar at Towers) for a pound fifty but there is no dessert pizza so it's not really worth it in my eyes. Other than that, no news here. But of course I'm about to write another journal about what you've all been waiting for, my home stay weekend in England! So get ready for another informative and slightly humorous entry brought to you by yours truly!

PS SISTERS AND TEKE BROTHERS, GOOD LUCK WITH RECRUITMENT THIS WEEK I WISH I WAS THERE!!!! GO PI PHI! AND TEKE IF YOU'RE A GUY! Shameless advertisement, I know.

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Comments

[Aunt Joan]

Burns Night
Here in Punta Gorda, Florida they have a Burns Night celebration every year with lots of poetry, singing and haggis. No drinking because this year it was held in a church. We did not attend this year, but we did two years ago and Uncle Terry tried the haggis (I did not)