Finally! Done with coursework! It's 60 degrees and sunny outside. Wonderful day.

Thinking of you all today.

Crunch time. Two essays due Monday, oral presentation Thursday, essays due the following Monday and Thursday. Then, 4 weeks of freedom, 2 weeks of studying, a week of exams, and two weeks left to enjoy. It's all going by very fast.

My first Six Nations match, Scotland v. Wales, 12 February 2011, 17:00

Yup, that's the view from our seats.

Even though Scotland lost, this made for the beginnings of a wonderful birthday.

One more post for the day, because I think it makes for a fun update.

In coming to Scotland, I saw a really great opportunity to play some rugby with people that actually knew the game. I was hoping to play as much as possible and learn as much as possible, in the hopes of improving my game and learning enough to help make my team at Bates a better team when I get back. So, I decided to try to find out about the University team. Now, the University of Edinburgh has quite a good reputation for rugby. Their First XV are a very strong side, and they also have a Seconds and a Thirds as well. I knew I didn't stand a chance at playing with the Firsts, so I thought I'd play a bit of Thirds and learn a lot along the way. I went to the first training session of the semester and was proven right - I would indeed learn a lot, simply by way of being around players who were better than I was. It was a hard training, but great fun. I was told the next training would be a few days later, on Thursday.

Now, this was at the beginning of the semester when Edinburgh was suffering from a particularly harsh winter (according to the locals at least - they don't know what a real winter is like). There was a bit of snow on the ground, it was raining frequently, and conditions were generally ugly. So Thursday comes around and I show up to the field complex where the rugby pitches are. There were a bunch of guys there tossing a ball around and wearing rugby boots, so I was comfortable with the fact that I'd found my crew. Only thing was, instead of heading to the pitch, the boys headed to a tennis court and began their warmups and practice there. When finally we slowed down and got into stretching, I asked one of the boys why we were on the court and not the pitch. His reply was, "Oh, the Uni is real particular about their pitches. Honestly, they're a bit soft about it. We could've run on it tonight, but they're a bunch of..." You get the idea. This made sense to me until I realised what exactly he had said. "Wait, you mean this isn't the Uni team?" "God no. We have more fun than those boys anyway." "So what team is this then?" I asked. "We're the Vets," was the answer I got.

It turns out, I had found the R(D)VCRFC - the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College Rugby Football Club. The Dick Vet, as it is commonly known, is the University of Edinburgh's veterinary school, and among its students there are apparently twenty or so goofy men that are actually quite good at playing rugby. Their normal game jerseys are patterned like a maroon-spotted cow, and they talk animals and laboratories all the time. In one game, though, our opponents had the same colours as us, so we wore an old set of striped uniforms, on which the team's nickname was printed: the Rectal Wanderers. Clearly these boys don't take themselves too seriously.

Anyway, I've been having a blast with the rugby and have definitely gotten better by playing with guys better than me. I can't wait to use what I've learned back in the States. From now until exams are over, though, I doubt I'll have much of a chance to play - there's too much work to be done, too much studying to do.

Speaking of which, back to writing...

Living in a city is a new experience for me. I enjoy it, but every once in a while I get the urge to get out to somewhere less busy, less populated, and less city-like. My first real trip out (other than for rugby matches) was to Linlithgow Palace, where most of the Stewart kings lived and where Mary, Queen of Scots was born. I went by bus with a few friends on a Wednesday afternoon, and it was fantastic. The palace is in a park, on a loch (Scottish for lake). The whole place was very pretty, and we had great Scottish weather: to quote the movie Braveheart, "The rain is coming straight down, or slightly to the side, like." There was fog and mist and rain, all of which added to a kind of eerie majestic feeling about the palace and its grounds. There were boats there, too, which made me happy and think of summer.

The Palace was a great experience (and free, thanks to Emily's thoughtful Christmas present!), and the town of Linlithgow a good change from the bustle of Edinburgh. My friends and I stopped in a nice little café for lunch and then poked around town a bit before catching the bus back to Edinburgh. All in all, it was a day well-spent; it also made me realise that there is much more to Scotland than the city of Edinburgh - a very important realisation.

Currently, I am writing an essay on how external factors (i.e., politics, current events, famines, etc) influenced Gaelic poetry. My essay is focused on the Highland clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (to make way for the more profitable sheep farms) and the ensuing waves of emigration from Scotland, events which sparked massive amounts of poems and songs, some of which are still sung today. It doesn't sound terribly exciting, but I love it. I'm hoping to finish this essay this afternoon so I can start my next one, a history essay comparing and contrasting the three types of Celtic peoples who lived in Scotland in the early medieval period - the Picts, the Gaels, and the Britons.

Sláinte mhath!

I wasn't planning on blogging while I'm over here, but I realized that I've been terrible about staying in touch with some people at home that I love very much and who I want to share my experiences with, so I figured I'd give it a go. There has been too much that has happened since I got here to go into detail about everything I've done, but I thought I'd send along some pictures I've taken to give you some ideas as to what I've been up to.

This is Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano in the heart of Edinburgh. It's also the view from my window.

This was one of the most magical things I'd ever seen. It was during the first month here, and I was still getting adjusted. I was walking back from class and happened to look up at exactly the right time. It was perfect. I took a lot of pictures of this rainbow, but I think this one gives the gist.

In these photos, I'm on top of Arthur's seat. A few friends and I hiked up it one (relatively) sunny afternoon. It's not a long hike at all, and as you saw above, it's literally right behind my dorm, so it made for a good study break. It's hard to tell because of all the fog, but below and behind me in these shots is the whole of downtown Edinburgh. It's pretty cool.

I've been to several castles and cool things like that as well, and I've dozens, even hundreds, of photos of them which you all will probably see sometime in the future.

Recently, the weather's gotten much nicer and I can actually spend afternoons outside without freezing or getting soaked. One particularly nice day, I discovered the walking labyrinth in the center of George Square (George Square is where many of the University's academic buildings are located). I really like walking labyrinths, so I hung out in here and read for much of the afternoon. It was really quite pleasant.

Well, I suppose I should get back to writing my (seemingly innumerable) essays, but I will try to make this a regular habit.

Cheers!