Things I Like about Edinburgh:

• Walking everywhere:   The city of Edinburgh is 100 square miles.  I'm pretty lucky because Pollock residence halls are reasonably close to my campus buildings- about a 20-30 minute walk.  

Here is a photo documentation of my walk to school every day (!) :

                                                 ^  Student union, the oldest in the world! ^
It has six bars, a canteen, a coffee shop, a dining room, and many other meeting rooms

                                                                     part of campus



The walk to school is really beautiful, and goes quickly unless it's raining (when everyone moves a lot slower).  My walk is mostly along a busy street with a plethora of different restaurants, all so different!  This leads me to my second favorite thing about Edinburgh!

• Many more independently owned restaurants, coffee shops, and regular stores.  I have only seen ONE Starbucks in the whole city, which is really refreshing!  The main chain that I do see everywhere is Greggs, which is really big here (www.greggs.co.uk).  Greggs is like a cheap pastry shop that sells donuts and meat pies.  Right now they have started their Halloween promotion, which is a little weird.  Every time I pass by a Greggs (which is often), I see this huge advertisement for what they call the "SCARY Chilli Steak Lattice"  --it really grosses me out. 

Most of the places I pass by look a lot yummier, though.  There are tons of Indian restaurants-- curry is really popular here.  We some kind of curry offered in the cafeteria at least three or four times a week.

• I love the Scottish culture itself, and how important it is to the University of Edinburgh.  The Scottish people I've met are really proud of the culture of their people.  The international students that come are eager to learn about Scottish tradition.  One way the University makes this accessible to everybody is by commonly hosting "ceilidhs"(pronounced kay-lee)-- the Gaelic word for "visit"--- and that is its purpose: to get together a group of young people to have a good time doing informal traditional Scottish dancing.  My friend Caroline, who is from Aberdeen, Scotland, says ceilidhs have been a very common part of growing up.  

One of the ceilidhs I went to was in a gorgeous campus church, with a live band playing Gaelic folk music, and it was SO much fun!!!!

                                                               My friend Esther and I between dances



About a quarter of the men were wearing kilts (as is the appropriate wear).  Those who knew how to dance were very patient to teach everyone the various dances.  I liked dancing next to Caroline because she already knew all the dances!
We would all line up and learn a dance, which seemed simple enough, but then putting it to music was difficult.  Once you thought you had the dance down, the music would begin to speed up more and more until finally only the best dancers could keep up!




Here is a good YouTube video of one of the basic dances you might do at a ceilidh:






As you can see, the kilts tend to fly up, which can be dangerous.  I know what you are thinking, and the rumors are true-- no, they don't wear underwear underneath a kilt (even when doing wild dancing)  and yes---  I saw a few butts at the ceilidh.




I'll be better about posting more often-- I'll post again in a few days!


Love, Kate