Loch Ness and Inverness

There is so much to write about! This last weekend I visited Inverness with a few friends to explore Loch Ness and the city. Inverness is technically the capital of the Highlands and sits where the Moray Firth (which leads out into the North Sea) leads into the dart-like Loch Ness. Population wise, it is about double Pullman and is about a third the size of my city of Spokane, but boasts some beautiful architecture and a walk along the River Ness that was especially beautiful in the fall.

I took a 3 hour train straight from Stirling and was treated with my first views of the Highlands. Unfortunately the heather was not in bloom, but the sheep grazing on bare rolling hills was still very pretty to see out the window. 

The Highlands

The river in Inverness

Inverness Castle

All the buildings in the cite centre were amazing!

  Our hostel was a quick walk from the station, and we started off by visiting the crumbling Urquhart Castle just a bus ride away along the Loch. Urquhart was a fairly peaceful place until it took a beating in the late 1600s with the intention that it should never be repaired lest it fall to the Jacobites. Now it is a very photogenic ruin with views over the dark Loch Ness. The Loch itself is very pretty and the straight lines of whitewater made it look almost striped.

Loch Ness is in the background

Walking up to the Castle

View from the tallest tower

 I also explored the small town of Drumnadrochit very extensively as we waited for a missed bus and bought a pot of tea and some candy in local shops. On the bus ride back a full and brilliant rainbow appeared out the window and seemed to dissolve right into Loch Ness! I have seen more rainbows in the past few weeks then I would in a year at home!

Drumnadrochit

 In town that night we walked around looking for a place to sit and eat and came across Smith and Jones Pub, a classy mixture of antique and modern décor with fun music and inexpensive food. We had a good night in Inverness Tourist Hostel and left the next morning for a walk along the river, which led us to the Ness Islands, which were like long parks covered in paths and trees that you could reach by footbridge. I was surprised here by the number of well-trained dogs that walked around without leashes – this was very common in Inverness.

We made a loop around the top of the trails (eating some blackberries along the way) and stopped for directions in a convenience store. In another show of Highland hospitality, the woman behind the counter was so nice that she ran back to print us a map, and later helped us out again making our way back into town. We found some walking trails in Craig Phadrig forest that looked out over a body of water that may have been Beauly Firth. While walking back into town after asking directions from nice locals, we passed through a gorgeous neighborhood and over the river before stopping in a place called JD Whetherspoon Pub (a chain) for fish and chips. Unfortunately that menu item was so hot they were out and I got haddock fishcakes instead. I can’t wait to try more fish here! The ride home had us change trains in Perth and we were in before 11.

I loved the cat in this window!

 It was wonderful to experience staying however briefly in another city in Scotland and I feel like I could go back and do even more. Traveling on a Sunday was difficult because many places were closed and the bus schedule was very limited, so I will have to keep that in mind next time.

Yesterday I had a great time getting to know members of the Media Societies on campus during a Harry Potter-themed pub crawl (people here are surprisingly in to Harry Potter; I thought it would be passé or annoying but people love it). As a member of the radio station I was in Hufflepuff house, and my friends and I spent a while in a nice pub and later a club with some 50 other members. It was fun to walk around the streets with such a large and strange-looking group! I met some very nice people. “Pub crawls” are often carried out here in “fancy dress,” which does not mean suits and ties but rather costumes!

As of today I have officially attended every type of class I will be having for the rest of the year. My psychology class has practical labs (only 4 per semester) in addition to lectures (three times a week); my English studies class meets twice a week, once for lecture and once for a small group seminar; and my cinema class meets just once for a couple hours. My psychology class is introductory level and full of students normally in their first year who intend to follow the psychology track. While the system is similar to WSU, from what I understand students here would choose a degree programme like Psychology and follow it through without anything like a minor, although they can choose a complementary second “major” to study as well. Something else different from courses at home is the number of professors that take turns teaching during the semester. I have six different instructors that will rotate lecturing in PSY911, usually in groups of three days each; for EUC9C5, a class on global cinema and culture, I will have three different lecturers; for ENG9HE, on modernism and modernity in literature and art, I will have (only!) two professors! This is consistent with friends’ classes as well and seems to be unusual for most universities in North America. It seems like it would be difficult for the professors to work their schedules out – I thought I had it bad!

The work load is light so far for me, although others are already preparing for essays due in the next couple weeks. As I mentioned in a previous post, there is very little to be graded in each class, so every assignment can count for 25%-50% of the final grade (if there are assignments at all – I believe someone told me they have exactly one final exam to determine the whole outcome of the course!). Directions for what to read to prepare for class are open-ended and many suggested readings are listed in addition to required readings. A few friends have no set list of what to read but are expected to search the library for relevant material to prepare for a research paper or essay. I am grateful for the structure of my psychology class, which takes material from specific, assigned book chapters for the exams. I am not sure if I am doing anything to prepare for my other classes since I am not sure what to expect! Things will get clearer as classes progress, though.

It seems to be a tradition now to end with a story about food, so here is the latest of my taste-testing adventures. I purchased a Cadbury Wispa bar the other day, which was delicious, as well as a pack of soft cookies with jam in the centre endearingly referred to as “jammy biscuits.” I also purchased a harmless-looking Tesco-brand dessert the other day called “fool” and found it was actually very delicious, like a sturdier, creamier whipped yogurt with a strawberry flavor. Unfortunately I peeked at the ingredients – the standard yogurt cup-sized batch of fool had 12 grams of fat and 8 of them saturated. Definitely not like yogurt at all – I’d say I had been fooled, but I only had a couple bites! Still, I love trying grocery-store desserts. I had a restaurant dessert in Inverness called “sticky cake” (imagine cake completely soaked in sweet sauces- yum!) that was toffee flavored and served warm with ice cream.

Until next time!

Oh- did I mention I found Nessie? (just kidding... it's Photoshopped. Or is it?)

What's Happening?

In my second week of school I am still experiencing things for the first time – the joy of finally receiving my debit card in the mail and the wonder at the weather that seems to change every time I look out the window (the saying here goes “if you don’t like the weather in Scotland, wait 5 minutes”).

WSU’s Cougs Abroad Blog prompts me to select a picture which best exemplifies my experience and emotions thus far. 

 The picture here is of an oxbow in the River Forth as seen from a lookout on the Wallace Monument, with a field of green neatly separated from the block of houses on the other side. I’ve discovered the green, lush, “bonnie” Scotland of tourism is not as clearly divided from everyday life. With all the beautiful scenery and history I have had the opportunity to be surrounded by, I realized I must also take the realities of living: draining my bank account the first week I arrived to pay for books, groceries and items like dish towels and pots, lugging heavy groceries for the week through the rain onto public transportation, fending off bees and squirrels from my screen-less window, cooking everyday for myself, paying the equivalent of $6 to do laundry in a facility down the street, and other miscellaneous activities I had never considered when I pictured myself in Scotland. This is not meant to be a complaint, but rather a reflection on my own naïveté; my living conditions are excellent and I enjoy many of the same amenities as I do at home, and it is this clash between real life as a student and the Scotland of travel guides that surprised me so much when I first began to live here. But like how the houses opposite the river bank are beautiful too, I am learning to appreciate both my somewhat dated residence hall and the lush forest trails behind it!

On a tourist train of thought, however, I finally took a few hours with friends to explore the inside of Stirling Castle, an interesting mix of architecture from different Stewart kings – the gothic Royal Palace and the white-gold Great Hall are built right next to each other inside the defenses! 

The Great Hall built by James IV

The Royal Palace by James V

Interior of the Great Hall - no floating candles or Dumbledore, but still very neat!

The smell in the Great Hall was amazing, as the wood work on the ceiling is made of oak from Scotland and held together entirely by wooden pegs and not nails as it would have been constructed initially. The Palace was also beautiful and had many interesting ceilings!

The "Stirling Heads" are historical figures and were arranged in this room to show off the king's lineage and inspirations

A friend and I in the Great Hall

And to end again with food, here is a picture of crisps in a Scottish grocery store. Notice anything familiar?

Walkers is actually owned by Frito-Lay, although Mr. Walker began his hand-sliced potato crisp business much earlier in the 1880s. I bought a bag but haven’t tried them yet – it will be interesting to see if they taste any different.

My First Week

I have now been living in Scotland for a little over a week, and yet in that time I feel as if I have been here much longer and spent more money on food and supplies than I could have imagined. The Scottish accent is becoming more familiar (just in time for lectures) and while I haven’t traveled far out of the Stirling area, I have had a few adventures over the weekend!

Courtesy of the university, exchange and international students were invited on a bus tour of Stirling and a small outlying town called Dunblane, where we were treated with brief stops in Old Town and the Stirling Castle, the gorgeous Dunblane cathedral, and the field of Bannockburn where Robert the Bruce (immortalized here as a massive statue seated on a horse) led the Scottish in victory against the English forces. While we had no time to explore the Castle or the heritage centre at Bannockburn, I was happy to have had the opportunity to visit a couple of historic places, and set foot inside the ancient Dunblane cathedral – a medieval masterpiece built in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, making it possibly the oldest building I’ve ever entered (at least on the trip thus far). 

Dunblane Cathedral

The interior

The outside

Later in the week my friends also suggested a trip up to the Wallace Monument, a short and serene walk in the woods to the base of the tower where we took pictures and got a little lost in the trails for a while before returning home. Unfortunately the monument was closed but next time I visit I will have to climb the steps to the top and see the view from there!

View from part of Stirling Castle

Cemetery from Stirling Castle

The Wallace Monument

 Just the other day I was also able to experience the Scottish wilderness on a hiking trip with friends from my hall. We traveled a few miles out of town by bus to the town of Gargunnock. While the name sounds like something J.K. Rowling considered for a Harry Potter goblin, the town itself was picturesque, with small white stucco houses lining a steep and narrow street. On our walk to the trail head we took pictures outside a small church with a large cemetery, asked a local for directions, and finally found ourselves on an ambling road through sheep pastures before finally being spit out on our own on the cliff-side with a vague idea of where to orient ourselves towards the waterfalls we were looking for. All over the hills are old mossy walls with gaps where the stones had tumbled down, and white sheep with bright spray-painted bellies or backs watched us from the lip of the cliff. We found our first waterfall (called Downie’s Loup) and then climbed up two more sections to reach the top where I was reminded how very much in Scotland I was. The view from the cliffs looked out over a basin with the tiny little Gargunnock houses, the mountains facing us from the other side, and a full rainbow touching the trees near where we had started the hike. A Scottish mist passed over us and the sheep we shared the view with before we started the trek down. Afterwards we stopped into a small pub afterwards for some chips and cheese and a half pint of something local. We were only wanting, as my Dad suggested, the sound of bagpipes to make it complete!

Cathedral in Gargunnock

The waterfall

Rock walls up on the hills

View from the top

Just today I also took a walk with a student from Norway to explore the wooded area just behind our dorm, which led to a beautiful field and snaked around towards a very old church (missing the roof and greater portion of two walls) and graveyard, then past the campus’ very own Airthrey Castle.

Old Logie Kirk

Airthrey Castle

The daily grind on campus and in the dorm is not as magical as the scenery, but I have had a good time in classes so far and am settling in to life in my hall. I really enjoy the company of my floormates and have often gone into town with friends to shop or see a movie. Primark, an inexpensive and high quality clothing store, is one of my favorites, where I picked up a pair of jeans, a top and boots for cheap the other day. I also went into a place called Argos, a store in which you order from a massive catalogue and the employees pull out your item from a warehouse in back. I’ve stopped in with friends at Costa Coffee, a popular UK coffee shop, and been to several different grocery stores (all of which stock a variety of digestive biscuits that never fail to amaze me – the Cadbury chocolate-coated kind are excellent!). On campus, there are no centralized dining halls that offer meal plans like at my home university, so I stock up on pasta, bread and deli meat for quick lunches and dinners in the hall. Just the other night I ventured to the other wing of my hall to have tea with an English and Scottish student and some fellow international students, and was informed on the proper way to put milk in tea and how to dunk biscuits!

Catalogues in Argos

My dorm room

My first week has been busy as I tie up odds and ends, like opening a bank account, getting registered with the doctor, buying creature comforts like towels and dishes, figuring out how to use the expensive laundry system, and doing my first readings for class. Already I have been to two lectures, one for my introductory psychology course and another for an English class that counts for a humanities requirement back home. The classes are located in only two buildings each about 5 minutes away, but Cottrell is deceptively large and complicated and Pathfoot (which looks a bit like a waffle fry from an aerial view) has several alphabetical corridors for offices and classrooms. The grading system at the university as it was explained to me is discouraging, as marks over 75% are not common (opposed to frequent instances of 80-100% marks in American schools) and I can expect to struggle for a high B in any of my classes. Often the grade in a class is divided between two or three large assignments, so that in one module I have two essays due in October and December respectively that count for 50% of my grade each, effectively eliminating busywork but also packing on the load of the class into two horrifyingly weighty pieces of schoolwork. It will be an interesting semester!

 On a final note, I randomly purchased a food item called Lee’s Scottish Tablet, which came in a package like a candy bar but was actually a thick slice of something like sweet white fudge in a wrapper. After consulting Wikipedia, I learned that “tablet” is a real Scottish sweet – it is very good but incredibly sugary! It is nice not to be able to know how many calories are in something when they are expressed on the labels as kilocalories or kilojoules. Who knows what I’ve been eating!

Flights and First Impressions

Mine was a flying story with a happy ending – I arrived in all pieces with both suitcases, all the money I left with, and no horrific gate-switching incidents. Jet lag, however, managed to sneak in a visit over the Atlantic. When the plane became ambient and dark for the 8 hour passage to Amsterdam, my internal clock had a good laugh over my attempt at a 7 PM nap and I had officially been up over 20 hours with little more then 15-minute periods of light sleep. Interestingly, things seem to be balancing themselves out, and I have been enjoying the past few days without being too exhausted.

Scotland is beautiful. While descending into Edinburgh from the plane, the woman beside me pointed out a quintessentially Scottish castle-like mansion and a field dotted with sheep. My initial impressions driving from the Edinburgh airport to Stirling consisted of complete bafflement over driving on the other side of the road (I will not say it’s wrong, but it’s just not right. It’s left.) and how much the countryside resembled wetter, lusher areas of Montana, if the Big Sky Country had old, adorable houses with stone facades and decided to outlaw pickups. The majority of cars on the road were small, possibly two-door, with an occasional mini-van or small Land Rover, but I saw absolutely no SUVs.

It's like a parallel universe!

I later checked in to the front desk at my residence in Geddes Court, an architectural monstrosity that was, according to The Student Room, based on a Norwegian prison, and lugged my huge suitcases up the stairs with help from a hall assistant – one of four assigned to take care of over 200 students in the building! The building itself will take some adjusting to, but I was so surprised at how friendly and enjoyable all the international students are. I have probably tripled my knowledge of Canadian politics, lifestyle, and geography in the past two days thanks to some amazing Canadian friends, and have also met students from all over the States, Norway, Germany, and Australia, and more. I am really enjoying meeting new people and am so grateful for the community here that’s already formed in just a few days!

The Wallace Monument

There is so much going on it’s difficult to decide what to talk about next. I haven’t studied or traveled yet but I have become acquainted with the campus, Scottish transit and shopping, and the general atmosphere of my university. The campus itself is absolutely stunning – it can be crossed in just a few minutes, but the view from the bridge that stretches across the man-made loch is picture-worthy every time I walk by. Looming out from a massive stone cliff covered in deciduous trees is the Wallace Monument, a deceptively short tower with a beautiful design reminiscent of something from Lord of the Rings. It can be seen anywhere on campus and in downtown Stirling. Hopefully I will be able to provide more information about its background when I visit it myself! 

Airthrey Loch on campus is full of swans!

Monday I felt the remnants of Hurricane Katia, which hit the west side of England and Scotland and thoroughly doused Stirling with wind and rain. Some friends and I trudged through it from the bus stop to the grocery and back; while it was invigorating, it was with some relief that I heard this was not the usual weather, and that I would be able to walk most places without my umbrella twisting itself inside out and the rain dripping off my face in streams! The weather today was more placid, with rolling cloudy skies and a little mist now and again to remind me I am in Scotland. I don’t notice the cold much, and the moisture in the air makes it warmer, so I would highly recommend a nice light coat with a hood for anyone thinking of traveling here. 

On the top floor of the double-decker

The day of the hurricane the bus was so foggy with humidity that it was impossible to see out the windows, but today I was treated with the sights of downtown Stirling when we went to shop at Thistles, a large mall in the city centre. The buildings are gorgeous, with picturesque chimneys and dark brown stones brushed with moss, but the city is very modern. We rode a double-decker into town from the university and set up our phones with new UK numbers! (Unlocking your phone to use a UK SIM card is a snap if you have certain carriers, and it worked perfectly on start-up with my new pay-as-you-go plan from Orange.) The clothes and accessories in the mall are fantastic but perhaps deceptively cheap – Seeing £15 for cute shoes is exciting until you remember the 15 is truly $23. Poundland and Pound Stretcher, the UK’s answers to dollar stores, are much more rewarding and were a definite help in outfitting me with necessities. I feel so much more comfortable now that I have a phone plan and some utensils to eat with!  

Stirling homes

A Baptist church downtown

This has been a long post and I think I will stop here for now, but I hope to be back with more on my classes, which start Thursday.