Two Weeks Down, Only Eighteen Left

My first week in Edinburgh was indiscriminately chaotic.

My sister's-in-law sister, also attending post-graduate courses at the University of Edinburgh for the whole year, kindly picked me up at the airport and helped me find and get into my accommodations.  This entailed a bus ride from the airport to the city, then another bus ride to the accommodation center to pick up my keys, then a twenty minute walk down the street to my accommodation.  This, naturally, was all accompanied by my two suitcases and my panicky method of flouncing about the city.  It was an intense introduction to the public bus system, traumatizing me enough to avoid riding the public buses for fear that I would end up on the other end of the city with no change to buy me another bus ride and no way to call anyone for help.  Once settled into my accommodation, I spent the next few days acquiring an international cell phone, purchasing a few basic food stuffs to get me through the week, and exploring my new city.

Classes started on Monday, and I was swept up into the lecture and tutorial style of teaching with little preparation.  All three of my classes were on Monday, giving me a good look at how the teaching system works and a good introduction to what I would be learning during my semester.  My first day of classes, while only slightly less chaotic than my first day in Edinburgh, was much more informative and had an air of familiarity that I could cling to.  I am a good student, and I understand going to lecture and taking notes, and with map in hand I could easily find my way around the university.  This, I could handle.  I attended my first tutorial on Tuesday, which for all my American friends back home is the discussion part of the course.  You go to lecture and learn about the reading, and then you go to your tutorial (some once a week, others once every two weeks) and go more in depth about the reading and have a chance to discuss your own thoughts and questions about it.  It was basically just splitting my normal classes at home into two each, which actually makes more sense to me.  It is much easier to participate in a class discussion when there are only six or seven other students in the class, as opposed to somewhere between twenty and thirty.

Plus, none of my classes are earlier than 11 AM, which fits nicely with my tendency to stay up late.

On Sunday after my first week of classes, I joined a small group of other international students at the International Student office in a peer-led walk up Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh's own mini-mountain.  While the snow made it too slippery (or slippy, as the signs going up the mountain advised) to climb to the summit, I did manage to climb to the almost summit with most of the group.  Despite the wind blowing straight through my layers of sweaters and heavy pea coat and chilling my bones, the freezing temperature, the snow and mud layering the bottom of my jeans, and the inability to keep snot from constantly running out of my nose, I took a long look out over the city and fell in love with it.  The grey sky actually enhanced the view, and the light layer of snow over the city made it seem very peaceful and innocent.  I hope to return to the summit of Arthur's Seat when the view is clearer and the mountain less muddy, and to actually climb to the top to take better pictures of the city, but in the meantime we will have to make due with the pictures I have.

Edinburgh from one side of the mountain.

Me at the almost-summit

Edinburgh from the other side of Arthur's Seat

You can see the ocean past the city!

Unfortunately, however, I did not known that my accommodation was located a good thirty minute walk from my classes until I arrived in Edinburgh.  After my first week of classes, I decided that moving was likely my best option.  There is the public bus system, but that costs money, and I do not have much of that.  There is a free shuttle bus for only university students, but to get to that stop I had to walk ten minutes in the opposite direction I needed to go to the other campus, then wait for the bus to arrive, then enjoy the fifteen minute bus ride to the campus I needed to get to.  I found it difficult and tiresome, especially when I found myself walking thirty minutes in the rain and snow, so I emailed accommodations about transferring to a different location.  I got lucky, and ended up moving at the end of my second week to a place only ten minutes walk from my classes.  Much easier, less stressful, and generally a good idea to move so early in the semester.

Friday of this past weekend, I met another group of friends who took us up to Calton Hill, a less steep climb than Arthur's Seat, after dark to see the city by night.  Despite the cold and rain, the view was fantastic and wonderfully beautiful.  I do want to return during a clear day to take pictures again, as I can imagine the view during the daytime being similarly fantastic, however seeing the city light up all the way to the ocean and being able to see the next city over was unforgettable.

Edinburgh by night from Calton Hill.

I have yet to even begin to discover this city and the history that surrounds it, but I certainly plan on doing so during my five months here.  Culture-wise, I have learned a few things in my two weeks here: look right, not left, before you step into the road, otherwise you will narrowly avoid being hit by a car three times in one week; saying 'have a nice day' after an interaction with a stranger is not a common thing here, or at least it has not been in my interactions, which, as an American used to saying such a phrase constantly back home, is very strange to me; they have a two pound coin, which makes payments via change so much easier; laundry is really expensive; double-decker buses are awesome and allow a sweet view of the city; you don't have to wait for the crosswalk light to go green to walk, but it is recommended when you keep forgetting that people turning right will hit you if you don't think to look for them; it is impossible to understand people with a thick Scottish accent.

As I go into my third week (already!), and I start getting into my coursework and having deadlines approach at a rapid pace, I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable in this new home far, far away from home.

The Crofter and the Laird

Before I arrived in Edinburgh, I read The Crofter and the Laird by John McPhee, as a look at Scotland and the writing of Scotland in preparation, I suppose, for the five months I would be spending there.  The book follows the narrator as he returns to his ancestor’s home on the Scottish island of Colonsay.  I do not know much about the island itself, but the book presents it as the typical “rolling hills, sheep everywhere, people living in small villages” image of Scotland that I’ve seen in the States.  McPhee goes into detail about the clan history of the island, and the overbearing, generally disliked presence of the laird over the island that he basically owns.  It was an interesting perspective, as the points of view slip seamlessly between McPhee and the villagers.  The way he presents the island lends me an image of a generally beautiful, but entirely melancholic place to live.  I do not mean that the people he describes living there are necessarily depressed because of their residence, but rather that the history of the island and its clans is full of melancholy and grief.  He ends the book with the story of his ancestor escaping an invading army while a companion runs back to save the wife of McPhee’s ancestor, which left me feeling very confused and sad myself.  My feelings reflect my understanding of the book – there was so much description of this person’s ancestry and this person’s ancestry that I often got lost as to who was who.

                The book did reflect what I’ve been studying in my first week of classes at Edinburgh.  My Scottish Literature class has been going over the confused nationality of Scotland, how its history and lack of solid kingship has created an inability to have a national image of itself.  To the Scottish, I’m sure that is ridiculous, but I myself can’t think of anything other than kilts and sheep and haggis when I think of Scotland.  Is this because of my own ignorance living in America, or is it because of Scotland’s own confused and complicated history?  In McPhee’s book, the people seem to know very well who they are and what they are, but I was not as sure.  I had little sense of the characters and who they were; if that was because of McPhee’s tendency to leap from story to story with little in between, or because of my own inability to understand the characters, I still do not know.

                In any case, while McPhee’s book was an interesting read and certainly a different perspective of a Scottish lifestyle, my own arrival in Edinburgh was nothing like McPhee’s arrival in Colonsay.  Edinburgh is a city, and there was not a rolling hill to be seen while I rode the bus from the airport to pick up the keys to my accommodations.  I’m sure that as I explore the country more (this being my first week in Edinburgh, I had little chance to explore outside of the city), I will see more of the majesty that McPhee describes.  I certainly hope so, because while Edinburgh is a wonderful city with an innumerable amount of things to see, it is still a city, and I will forever be a open country kind of person.