In the land of Ewan McGregor: Inverness and the Orkney Islands

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Hello friends and family! I hope you're all having a superb start to your weekend and for all my Winston-ites, I hope you're all enjoying the graffiti cruise! It's weird to miss so many things this summer, but I'm seeing a lot of wonderful things so I only feel a wee bit bad. Sometime on Wednesday, I managed to catch a cold. For those of you who don't know me, I used to get colds and strep throat basically with the slightest change in the wind before I had my tonsils taken out a little over 2 years ago. Since then, I have magically managed to avoid any sort of cold and I thought my troubles were over. So I'm unhappy that I've managed to get sick now. It has gotten progressively worse over the past few days and I think that my flatmates are growing tired of my constant sniffling due to my nose being plugged (sorry flatmates). However today has been a rather dreich day, as it is 99% of the days, so it's been a good day to do nothing and try to get over my cold. Dreich is the Scottish word for dreary, so now during our rainy winter months in Oregon you can all say that it's a dreich day and no one will know what you're talking about, but you'll know and that's all that matters. Anyways, onto my adventures for the week! Actually (tricked you), before I get started here's a fun fact for all of you. I have always loved a song called Skye Boat Song and it was always a song that I wanted to perform back when I was singing, but never got the chance to. I was informed this week that that song is actually about the Isle of Skye, which I visited last weekend and absolutely loved. You'd think I would've put two and two together before this point, but college has actually taken away most of my common sense. This is even more proof that this is my homeland. It's a beautiful song and I encourage you all to give it a listen. Ok, now I'll get started! This week was the last week for the first block of our program and since one of my flatmates and I were both done with classes on Tuesday, we decided to take a trip up to Inverness and take a tour of the Orkney Islands, which are a large group of islands that are up north above mainland Scotland. We got up bright and early Wednesday morning and headed to the bus station to catch our bus that was supposed to arrive around 8:15, and when it didn't show up after about half an hour someone informed us that that particular bus was between 20-50 minutes late every day. Which meant we could have slept in. The bus finally arrived and we set out on our 3 and a half hour ride up north. It was a very long ride on a bus with cramped seats and it's always hard to sleep going down a bumpy road, but I think that we managed. Once we got to Inverness we found some food, checked into our hostel and that was basically it for the night given that we were both exhausted. I had never stayed in a hostel before this, so it was an interesting experience for me. A hostel is basically for travelers and while they are non existent in the US they are very much a thing in basically all other parts of the world. You pay per person, per bed and there can be anywhere from 4 to 20 beds in a room depending on the hostel. It's a lot like living in really big dorms with a lot of people. They give you free tea and coffee, so that's always a bonus. By the way, given my love for tea I'm very happy to be in a place that actually has a tea time and where people drink tea at all hours of the day simply because that's the cultural norm. Anyways, we were sitting in the common area of the hostel and a large group of french students came in and started watching Harry Potter (in english with english subtitles, but I'm not sure that many of them even spoke english). I was excited because given that I've just finished my last year of french in college and my sixth year overall, I was hoping that I'd at least payed enough attention in any of my classes over the years to get the basics. I've been proud of the fact that over the past two years in my college classes, when my french professor would speak to us that her french would automatically translate to english in my head. I thought it would be the same in this case, but they talked incredibly fast and I only caught a few things here and there (mostly about the movie), so that really deflated my french-speaking ego. After sitting in the common area for a while we headed up to bed around 10 or so and found that we weren't the only ones headed to bed so that made us feel less lame. The next day we once again got up bright and early to head for the bus station to catch the once again long bus ride to the Orkney islands. I think at this point we were wondering why we did this to ourselves two days in a row and questioned if it was worth it. The bus ride was maybe 2 hours and stopped in John O'groats. For those of you who don't know, Ewan McGregor once did a show with a friend of his where they rode motor bikes from the top of Scotland all the way down to South Africa. The place that they left from was John O'groats, and since I love Ewan McGregor I was super excited that that's where we were stopping. Even though we were only there for 5 minutes it was totally worth it. From there we caught a ferry that took about 45 minutes to get to the Orkney Islands. Given that we were so far north, it was freezing cold and windy and I was not prepared for such an occasion. Even though I much much prefer the winter and the cold to the summer and the heat, I get cold very easily and so it seems illogical. My theory is that when you're cold, you can always add more layers until you get warm. When you're hot, you can only take off so many clothes until it's considered public indecency. Thankfully I brought 2 jackets with me, so it helped a bit especially when we were on the ferry. I had never been on a ferry before this, so it was a freezing fun experience. We got off of the ferry and onto a coach which drove us around the islands. They are gorgeous, by the way. I've decided that I'm going to move to an island in Scotland and live the island life (sorry mom). I knew nothing about the islands, but apparently a lot happened there during both WWI and WWII. It was interesting to hear about the history. We stopped in various places on the tour, a couple of them being Skara Brae and the Ring of Brodgar. Skara Brae is a cluster of Neolithic houses that were discovered some time in the past (I didn't pay attention to exactly when the tour guy said), and they are now a world heritage site and it is the most well preserved site in all of Europe. There is no re enactment of how they could have been or things added to make them look more authentic. They are just as they were when they were discovered, and it was incredibly interesting to see and to see how well preserved they all were. We then stopped at the Ring of Brodgar, which is sort of like Stonehenge except it's free to look at which is always a bonus. They have actually discovered some more Neolithic buildings and houses around the ring, and while we were there they were in the middle of an archaeological excavation of the surrounding area. I felt like I had stepped into Josh's world for a bit. We stopped at a few more small places on the islands before we were taken back to the ferry to begin the long journey back to Inverness. The day had gotten progressively nicer and warmer, so the ride back was much more pleasant. We rode the bus back and once we got back to the hostel we again basically went straight to bed around 10 because we're such party animals. The next day we checked out around 9, but our bus back to Stirling wasn't until 6:15 so we had the whole day to explore. We decided to do the hop on/hop off bus tour of the city and see the things we otherwise wouldn't have known about. We then decided to take a bus (because we apparently love riding buses) to Urquhart castle. Don't ask me how to pronounce it because I've probably been saying it wrong the entire time, but I think it's urk-hart. It's not a whole castle, it's actually just the ruins but they're quite something to look at, and it's right on Loch Ness. I didn't jump into Loch Ness because I figured that wouldn't help my sickness and I would probably just catch an even worse sickness and then my mom would be mad and it just seemed like a bad plan. We walked around for a while and then sat down to watch a sort of re enactment/history lesson from two men and it was very entertaining. One was explaining what Scotsmen would have fought with and worn during battles a long time ago and then he talked about how Mel Gibson dressed in Braveheart. Somehow, I got tricked into being a volunteer and I was then dressed up in said clothing and given a sword that was taller than I was. It was mah wee weapon, as the man said. So that's something that I'll always remember, regardless if it was actually voluntary or not. After spending a while there we made our way back to Inverness to catch our bus back to Stirling, and we arrived back around 9:30 or so on Friday. And that was my adventure for the week! It's hard to believe that the program is already half way over and that we'll be starting our new classes on Monday. Well, I only have one class which is only on Tuesdays from 1-4. So I'd say my schedule is alright. I hope to make a few more travels while I'm here. I was telling my parents that it's amazing that I've seen more of Scotland in 4 weeks than I have of my own country in 22 years. Granted that Scotland is much smaller than the US, but still, the principal applies. I've been told that it's getting a bit cooler at home, so I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend and I will think rainy thoughts for you all!

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