Festivals and Adventures

Wow! So after a week of boredom I got to have some fun again in Scotland. First things first, of course there was class again for me all week, instead of the fantastic reading week I had before. I learned about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and about real Hallowe’en traditions that originated from Celtic Society related to the end of summer and the beginning of winter, a festive time known as Samhain (pronounced sao-wayne) Anyway we learned about turnip lanterns, so my new goal is to create a turnip lantern at the next Hallowe’en so that I can be cool. Turns out that Samhain is when we become closer to the spirit world so we dress up to confuse the spirits... Don’t know how well it works but we still do it. So that is how my learning goes here! The excitement I have. The more exciting things happened at the weekend this week.

The Guy Fawkes Fireworks at Glasgow Green, you can even see some of the carnival rides

Friday as most of you may know was 5 November, which means that it was Guy Fawkes Day (before that though, I got to make an exciting Taco dinner!!! It was lots of fun, and tacos taste excellent here in Scotland, although they could use some salsa help). Turns out this guy (Guy Fawkes) and a bunch of people wanted to blow up parliament a really long time ago, and they failed miserably, they planned to do this on 5 November but were caught about a week and a half before (So it was really an epic fail) so in honour of their epic fail, we set off fireworks, and I guess a lot of towns have bonfires. Glasgow has a great celebration down at Glasgow Green, the park was full of people, and there were carnival rides, and food (didn’t eat any) and of course fireworks. Erin and I went on two of the carnival rides (each costing 3 pounds, but who cares) and then we enjoyed the fireworks, because we didn’t know when we would get to do this again. The fireworks were great, and they played Abba the whole time which was funny. Afterwards my friends and I went to a bar in Merchant City, one in the City Centre and ended the night at Bamboo (which is a very interesting club).

Tom, Alex, Me, Justin, Erin, and Sam at Bamboo

The graveyard behind Glasgow Green, Sufficiently creepy

Saturday I had to wake up nice and early to crash the second Archaeology Field Trip. I technically wasn’t invited on this one, but no one checked to see if I really belonged, so I just had some fun. Our first stop on this rainy day (which wasn’t forecast to be quite so rainy) was the Glasgow Cathedral, which is the oldest church in Glasgow. It was built and rebuilt many times, and is now just old, and old. Saint Kentigern (aka St. Mungo) is buried in the Cathedral, and he is very important to Glasgow, somewhat of a patron saint. The grounds around the Cathedral are beautiful, there is a fantastic graveyard behind the church, and really great trees as well (the day was full of great trees actually). Next we got on the bus to go visit a “wall” it was somewhat north, but not too far. Built by the Romans a really long time ago, as a checkpoint they think, but not a lot really remains. The “wall” was built of turf, so it looks more like a hill really but they told us, it is definitely a wall (we must believe the archaeologists). Near the wall is also a fort, but there isn’t a lot there anymore other than really cool trees. I think the whole group was a little disappointed at the fort because they said it was the location of a bath house, and considering our very wet and cold situation we could have all used a steam. But no such luck, we just got to trek through the mud, and start freezing to death (I think the teachers were enjoying themselves way too much).

Some trees as the Roman Fort right next to where the bath house would have been

Linlithgow Castle Built By King James III

Next we went to Linlithgow, to visit Linlithgow castle. It isn’t a very big castle, and the real low-point of the building is that there are no more roofs, which means that when it rains, you can’t really escape the rain. Other than this point, it was really quite pretty, and we got to climb to the top of a tower and see everything from up there. A really key note about this tower is that it changed my dream of being a princess living in a tall tower. There are too many creepy stairs, and it’s too far to walk to go to bed, so I may be a princess but I am not living in any tower. Finally we stopped at a cairn, which is pretty much a big pile of rocks to put your dead in. I am sure the site was really awesome at some point but it was ruined, I feel, by two different things. A) It was really, really, really cold, and wet (and for a 30% chance of rain, I think I was 100% wet) and B) it was archaeologically ruined I felt by the fact that they rebuilt it in different “stages” of its uses and so it isn’t the actual original cairn, it is just a cairn. So it was a fantastic weekend, I really enjoyed it (even though it was wet) and it was absolutely beautiful with the rain falling everywhere. 

More trees, because it was a fantastic tree weekend!