A lot has been going on here, this might be a fairly lengthy post, and will include the last of the Skye photos. :)
On Friday I didn't have classes and felt like getting out of St. Andrews. I brought along The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne's work about Puritan New England I've been reading for the last week or so and took the bus to Pittenweem, one of the fishing villages I hadn't yet been to. I found the Cocoa Tree - a café that came highly recommended from friends who had visited - and enjoyed onion soup, delicious bread and a hazelnut hot chocolate which was so, so good. It began to rain quite heavily outside, and it was so cozy reading in the café.
That evening I went along with my friend Sheen to support Miriam in a performance she was acting in. Afterwards, a group of Miriam's friends and us went to a pub for a drink. While there, someone ordered the haggis nachos....the same haggis nachos I've avoided each time friends have ordered them. When they finished the nachos - leaving quite a few left - and welcomed anyone else to eat them, I thought deeply if I should. It was a challenging decision. But it was time. Three weeks left in Scotland. When else? I probably ate the tiniest morsels of haggis possible, but I had enough to taste it, and it was pretty good! I usually don't eat ground beef, but I would describe haggis (as a side note, haggis is chooped sheep lungs, liver, stomach and oatmeal (???) stuffed into an intact sheep's stomach and baked) as ground beef with a sweet cinnamon flavor.
On Saturday I spent the morning at the Botanical Gardens. I took the same woods trail I enjoyed on Thursday, and once there, I sat in a greenhouse for three hours. There were plenty of visitors walking the grounds and through the large greenhouses. Each greenhouse had a sitting area, and out of the choices of 'cool temperate' 'warm temperate' and 'tropical', all were very warm, but I went for tropical, the absolute warmest. While I half-feared a giant spider would sneak up behind me, the greenhouse was the perfect temperature and created such a relaxing morning. I finished The Scarlet Letter there and did a bit of grocery shopping before heading back to my residence.
Last night was our residence hall's annual ball. I had been to a couple of balls before, and while I did have a few large groups of friends going, for some reason I set my standards for the ball pretty low. I was certainly excited, but had a few things on my mind that needed to get done, and I wondered how great the ball could actually be. Joseph, Kerry, Shaunna and myself met up sometime around 7pm for a free drink in the hall's common room. Everyone looked so nice and the champagne was good. Later, Joseph and I split a bottle of rose wine we had bought that afternoon and the four of us listened to and danced to bad music videos in our kitchen. And we took a few photos,
Shaunna. :)
myself and Shaunna.
myself, Joseph and Kerry.
This is what happens when we take pictures.
Joseph and I were on the same shuttle to the ball which was held at a hotel on the other side of town (as a side note, typing 'the other side of town' just caused me to begin singing Bob Dylan's Hurricane...) about a five minute drive from our hall. I think nearly everyone was already there and we joined Kerry and Shaunna in the free ice cream cone line. I think we all ended up having at least two scoops. My choices were raspberry ripple and cookie dough. :)
Kerry and I got this photo taken a few minutes later.
Shaunna and Joseph joined us for this one.
In between dancing and talking to friends, I was surprised to see my friend Marc at the ball. He doesn't live in our hall and I really didn't expect to see him at all. He introduced me to his friends and he met I think all of the kitchenmates plus a few more.
myself and Marc.
The rest of the evening was spent talking, drinking a bit more wine, dancing and laughing.
I was so pleased I chose to attend and it was such a nice evening. :)
Alright, back to Skye!
As we toured the island, much of it was so, so remote and barren. Beautiful, but isolated.
Crumbling stone structures were sprinkled here and there and the sea was never far from view.
We stopped in this tiny museum village and it was incredibly windy. As a group we walked about five minutes towards a nearby cemetery, and each step was met with so much wind. Everything we carried needed to be held so tightly. Running was nearly impossible against the wind. One student's camera was blown out of her pocket, but was later recovered. :)
At the cemetery, our guide Mirena pointed out a few graves of influential Scots, but the most well-known and visited was the grave of Lee Alexander McQueen. McQueen was a fashion designer who is most known for designing the wedding dress of Kate Middleton (although the design occurred after his death, and was truthfully designed by his brand) McQueen grew up and lived in London but his father was Scottish and Scotland itself has been influential in his work. Two of his collections, 'Highland Rape' and 'Widows of Culloden' brought attention and curiosity to Scotland. At the release of Widows of Culloden McQueen said, “Scotland for me is a harsh, cold and bitter place. It was even worse when my great, great grandfather used to live there. The reason I’m patriotic about Scotland is because I think it’s been dealt a really hard hand. It’s marketed the world over as haggis, bagpipes. But no one ever puts anything back into it.” McQueen's ashes were scattered off the coast of Skye and his tombstone seems to be a sort of memorial.
That evening we had a dinner of curry (as a side note, three of the four weekends I've spent on organized trips of some sort with other St. Andrews students have always included the two meals of baked or fried fish with potatoes and peas followed by a curry dish the next night).
The next morning we left Skye a little past nine and crossed this bridge to arrive back on the Scottish mainland in the western Highlands. Mid-morning we stopped at Eilean Donan castle, a beautiful and historic castle in the western Highlands.
Much of the rest of the day was spent on the bus. We travelled through Glencoe, a mountain range in western Scotland that is beautiful. We had also stopped in Glencoe in October, but it was wonderful to see it again.
Unfortunately, Glencoe is also a bit like another Scottish version of Gettysburg. The Massacre of Glencoe took place there in 1692 and surrounded a misunderstanding in which Clan MacDonald was thought to have not signed a loyalty oath to Britain's new King William and Queen Mary. Supposedly, the Clan was only lost in a blizzard as they set out from their home in Glencoe to sign the oath in Inverness. Unfortunately, government forces arrived in Glencoe to murder the men of the Clan and burn the Clan's settlement, allowing the women and children to die from exposure.
And I think that concludes everything. Skye was such a beautiful part of Scotland.
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