I love my town!

Today was __ ________'s Day and so the cathedral, the tower and the castle had free admission. A friend of mine from the department and I decided to be tourists and wander around (we're students and so free admission is always a bonus). The museum attached to the cathedral has tons of tombstones and fragments of Celtic crosses so I had a great time wandering around looking at inscriptions and the iconography. Brought me back to the days in Ireland recording gravestones. This picture is taken from the tower and you can actually see my house! Yes, this is where I live. What a wonderful place.

Another friend told us that on this day, the Freemason lodge opens its doors to the community. J and I decided that this would be a pretty cool thing to see. The people were super friendly and even let us take pictures inside. Of course, I have no idea what all the symbols mean but it was cool none the less. There was a great deal of tradition there and it was really neat to look at the pictures and all the paraphenalia. Plus it was nice to get out of the wind and the rain.

J had to be back for class for 4, but before we went back to the department, we headed to the castle. The castle is really just the shell of a castle but there are still some neat things associated with it. First, some of the little rooms associated with the outside walls are still standing (ie kitchen, guard rooms, etc), there is one room that contains a bottle-neck dungeon (a dug out room that is almost like a well. One would assume that prisoners were dropped in by rope?), and there are some tunnels that were false-started during a raid to try to head off tunnels that were being dug from the outside before they hit the inside. The coolest thing associated by far are the mine and counter-mine tunnels. These are long tunnels which did in fact head off the tunnel being dug from outside the castle. You can go down into them and wander around (if you are claustrophobic beware, I had to bend down pretty far to get through them). It was great. Really spooky since they aren't really well lit, and since it was rainy today there was water dripping down the sides and from the roof.

A great day all around. It's fun to have adventures in your own town and I'm definitely look forward to exploring more of the cool stuff we have here.

Glasgow

On Thursday, a friend of mine (here after referred to as F) and I went to Glasgow to go see Angela Hewitt play with with BBC scottish orchestra. When we got into Glasgow it was absolutely miserable. It was pouring and super windy. It was like having icicles shot at your face. F and I made our way to the hostel, dumped all our stuff and then decided to explore Glasgow (since we had a couple of hours to kill before the concert). It was actually quite fun. We wandered around aimlessly taking turns holding our super umbrella and taking pictures. We made our way down to the cathedral (unfortunately it was closed) and wandered around the necropolis. By this time (around 4) it was already getting dark so we figured we should start heading back and go grab something to eat before we had to get ready to go.

F took me to this restaurant that he had come across during his time in London called Wagamama. It's a noodle house and yes, I am starting to become a little more adventurous during my time here in Scotland. We ended up getting dumplings and green tea and I had a chicken and pork soup with ramen, spinach and bamboo. Very tasty and was definitely a great choice considering the weather that we had just come out of. And the best part is it's actually quite cheap for a British restaurant.

So, after getting warm and partly dry, we headed back out into the storm to get back to the hostel and got ready. In my dorm I ended up meeting 2 other Canadians who were in Glasgow on work holidays. Kind of fun to hear about their experiences here. F and I then ended up getting a taxi to the concert, although when we got into the cab we actually had to give directions to the cab driver which was a little odd. But we made it safe and sound to the concert. The seats Angela had reserved for us were the best seats in the venue. Front row balcony, just slightly off to the left so that we could see her hands as she was playing. It was quite amazing really. I wasn't quite sure what going to the symphony in Glasgow would be like (and how dressed up people would be) so F and I just figured that we would go all out (afterall, how many times does one get the opportunity to dress up). However, apparently going to the symphony in Glasgow is completely different from going in Canada. I think F and I were the best dressed people there (people's attire varied from suits to jeans and t-shirts). We had fun anyway and felt very posh, looking all fancy and sitting in our amazing seats.

After the concert, we met up with Angela and ended up going back to her hotel for drinks. It was really great to hear what she's been up to. I can't imagine living the way that she does (she's insanely busy and doesn't really take any time off from her performance schedule), however, she does get to travel all over the place, doing what she loves. She's doing some really amazing things over the next couple of months and I should be able to go see her in Glasgow again soon. We had a great chat and I think F was pretty excited to get to meet her since he is a pianist himself and got to talk "shop" with her. It was just really fun to get to go to the symphony again (it's been a really long time since I've gone) with someone who actually appreciated it as much (if not more) than I did.



Yesterday, we woke up early so that we could see a bit more of Glasgow before heading home. Unlike the day before, it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We wandered around George Square (right by the train station) and took pictures of the cool buildings and random people. Then we got back on the train, headed to Dundee, wandered around the christmas market, ate bratwurst for lunch and then took the bus back home.

All in all, our trip was great. No big mishaps. It was a great break from all my reading and school work. I got to go to another city and explore more of the scottish countryside. Everyone has told me all these bad things about Glasgow but besides the weather, I really enjoyed the city. It has some beautiful buildings and the Christmas lights were already out, giving the city this fairy-castle feel. I look forward to more opportunities to travel around and see stuff because after all, everything here is really close and easy to get to so why not see some of this stuff while I'm here. However, I am trying to finish my PhD so now it's time for more reading.

Foam fights, haircuts, and drowning

So this week has been a little crazy. Our school has something called "Raisin Monday" where the first years get adopted by 3rd or 4th year students into an academic family. It involves pretty much partying the whole day Sunday and finishes with a big foam fight (with shaving foam) in the quad on the Monday. As a postgraduate, we do not technically have to get involved although I did have some friends who decided that this would be fun. I got to follow a couple of them to their academic family party. It was a little crazy and definitely not my scene. It's weird partying with a bunch of first years again. Made me feel old.

On monday, I ended up being a "model" at one of the hair salons in town. On mondays, they book appointments for some of the students to learn new, challenging techniques and need hair to practice on. I signed up for one of these and ended up with a really excellent hair cut (it pretty much looks exactly the same as it did when I first chopped off all my hair in June, except more shaped). The woman who runs the salon, comes over and asks what you are thinking about getting done to your hair, and then suggests a style that the student needs to practice. She then goes through it step by step showing the student what to do and then having the student finish the section. It's a pretty good deal because the woman who owns the salon is pretty much doing the hair cut (and fixing any mistakes the student makes) and if you were to get an appointment with her it would cost you 80 pounds. However, because I was a teaching tool, my haircut was free. Can't argue with that.

Today, I had a meeting with my supervisor and had another small mental breakdown. My new analogy is that I feel like I've been put in a boat and taken to the middle of the ocean. Then I'm thrown overboard and told to swim. (and then my supervisor comes by and offers me a little rowboat with a small hole in the middle). So that's how I feel. Kind of lost but I figure if I already knew everything I wouldn't need to do the PhD. I have a paper to work on for the next 2 weeks which will hopefully give me some direction. I'm really looking forward to it. Should be really interesting.

Well, better stop procrastinating and finish my reading.

A Big Adventure to York and Manchester

I realize it's been a while since I've done something really exciting... I've been mostly working on school work and such but this past week was READING WEEK and so I figured I really should go on some sort of an adventure. A classics buddy and I were planning on attending a postgraduate conference down in Manchester and I decided to head down early and stop off in York to visit all those crazy archaeologists I met in Wales in 2005.

So the friend I was staying with in York came and met me at the train station and we walked around the city walls in order to drop my stuff off at her flat before going off exploring. As we rounded the corner by the castle, I was faced with a small field full of Canadian geese. Medea, being very confused, wonders why there would be Canadian geese in England, after all, it's not really on their migration path (unless they got really lost and headed east instead of south). Apparently, a university professor brought them over as an experiment. After watching the Geese for a bit, we spent most of the rest of the day wandering around the walls of York, stopping off at a couple pubs along the way.

Unfortunately, everyone that I know in York was working this week, so I took the opportunity to explore York on my own, trying to fit in as many touristy things I could. The picture here is Clifford's tower, part of York Castle. It was a gorgeous day for walking around. I went to Clifford's tower first, climbing up to the top where one gets a fantastic view of York. I then headed off to the Castle Museum. It's a random collection of all sorts of different stuff, starting with period rooms (like 17th century dinning halls and such), then as you turn the corner you come face to face with a hoover display (that's vacuum cleaners for my North American audience). Kind of catches you off guard. It has a rebuilt Victorian street, the history of the hearth, a jail, and all sort of other stuff. Quite a fun little museum to go to. I'd recommend it to anyone heading off to York for the sheer randomness of it's displays.

In the afternoon, I headed off to York Minster. You can see it from almost everywhere in the old city and I was quite excited to get a look inside. It was truly amazing. I took tons of pictures inside (which I can't post all here, it would just take up too much space) and even paid the extra money to go down to the crypt and the treasury. I'm slightly torn though, since it takes 2 million pounds a year to keep the place standing. As much as I am a historian at heart and hate to see old buildings become ruins, it pains me to think that the money to keep this building looking pretty could really be used to help people who really need it. So frustrating. I don't really know what to think.

Since the friend that I was staying with works for the archaeological research council in York, I got to go to some other tourist places for free. York has "Jorvik, the interactive viking centre" which has a "sights and smells" tour through what York was like as a Viking town in the 10th century. Quite fun. They've done a neat job of laying out the town with all the artifacts they'd found from the excavations. However, it is pretty cheezy with these moving robot vikings and random sounds. I then got to go to DIG which is where the archaeological research council has more artifacts from their digs around York as well as an area set up as an archaeological site where kids (and adults I guess) get a plastic trowel and can learn how to dig. There are different boxes for different time periods, with a bunch of artifacts glued to the bottom just waiting to be discovered. I ended up being the only "customer" in the building and so got my own private tour. It was quite fun playing in the fake dirt (it was made up of little pieces of rubber) although I was definitely not using proper archaeological technique. We then moved on to the bone trays which I absolutely loved and ended up actually teaching my tour guide something about bones since he hasn't really done that much work with them. All in all it was a great time.

York itself is a great town with a huge amount of history. It is however, very touristy and so has a lot of really cheezy stuff as well. I can't even imagine how much history is still in the ground that hasn't been found yet. Recently, one of the pubs in town decided to expand its cellar and ended up finding the ruins of a Roman bath. I loved being there and just being about to wander around the town taking in the sights. It was definitely a great little holiday.

On Saturday, I got on the train to head to Manchester. It was definitely a little bit of a culture shock since I have been in such a small town for the last 2 months it was very weird to be in a big city. The conference itself was great. I got to meet some really interesting people and heard some really interesting papers (which weren't presented well), some boring papers (which really weren't presented well), and some fantastic papers. I guess that's why it's good to participate in these postgraduate conferences. Since it is all students it's a less intimidating experience and a good way of getting more experience in presenting papers.

I apologize for the length of this entry but hopefully that will keep you all going for the next little while as I am now back into crazy work mode (I have a paper to present on Thursday and have to have a preliminary plan for my PhD for my supervisor next tuesday). Hopefully, I'll have time for some adventures but for the time being, I'm back in the library, hanging out with my books.

Winter is on its way

It is starting to get quite chilly and the days are getting significantly shorter (it's dark by 4:45 now). Winter is setting in. I went for a walk today because the sky was so clear and it was absolutely beautiful out. I went down to the beach to find some crazy surfers out, enjoying the waves. A little too chilly for me, I'm afraid.

On a completely unrelated note, I've been attending a church here called Holy Trinity of the Church of Scotland. I've been quite enjoying it, although I do find the assistant minister to be better than the head minister. It's a fantastic building that takes my breath away everytime I walk in. I love the organ and the choir there and the accoustics are excellent. So all in all, I've been enjoying myself in my mundane everyday life (however, it's still awesome that I live in such a great place). I've still been doing tons of reading and am starting to get a feel for what I'll be working on for my dissertation. I'm hoping to go on some crazy adventures over the next month so hopefully my entries will become a little more exciting.