Friday morning and early afternoon was spent in the classroom with Dr Chris Murray and Dr Jim Stewart (by the way, they just don't put the period after Dr. and St. and Ms. etc. like we do in the states). Dr Murray's lecture was titled "Comics: The Scottish Connection." Comics are actually quite important to the economy of Dundee, which I believe I mentioned earlier. This is largely due to the fact that it's the location of the large and prevalent publishing company, D.C. Thomson, that is especially famous for its cartoons. As a result of this, Dundee is one of the only universities with a PhD program in comic studies. During our lecture, Dr Murray walked us through understanding the definition of a comic and how that has changed throughout our past. For example, one could easily say hieroglyphics are a form of comic; however, another potential "first comic" could be Benjamin Franklin's "Join or Die" diagram during the American Revolution.
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| Ben Franklin's Join or Die cartoon - a potential candidate for "first comic" (image from shmoop.com) |
Lecture moved on to two PhD students showing us a comic they were working on themselves. One interesting aspect of comics that I never really thought about was that there's often a lot of collaboration involved. Of these two students, one wrote the script and the other drew the concepts out into panels and characters. They have to go back and forth many times to make sure they're both on the same page and they agree on where the comic itself should be going. Ultimately, it was all very impressive and opened up my eyes to the world of comic creation.
The next lecture was from Dr Jim Stewart who is an English professor at Dundee, but is also the current poet-in-residence at Tentsmuir. Dr Stewart walked us through four of his poems that were inspired by his current residency. Tentsmuir Forest is just across the Tay River from Dundee and is a gorgeous forest on the Eastern coast of Scotland. It features a stupendous forest of mostly pine trees, fields of flowers, a sprawling coast, dunes, and several wheat fields. I'll tell you why I know that later. So, the first poem was by far my favorite - it was three riddles about three different animals that occupy Tentsmuir. It took us about 40 minutes, but we talked through it and figured out them all (it was a seal, a red squirrel, and an otter). I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I totally figured out the seal first, so basically, I'm a genius.
We were so inspired by Dr Stewart's poetry that we decided to take our free day (Saturday) and head to Tentsmuir for a hike. Dr Stewart did suggest that the only way to truly experience a forest is to get lost in it, so we did just that. Well, more or less. We started off our hike at "Lundin Bridge," which was poorly named since it was so tiny.
The walk begins on the coastline where the huge gusts of wind blew the sand against the backs of our legs and made us feel like we were in the middle of Tatooine. I did the best I could to capture it with the pictures below:
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| Squad at the beginning of the walk on "Lundin Bridge" |
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| Daniel demonstrating exactly how intense the wind gusts were |
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| The sand was blowing across the beach from the wind...a little too green to be Tatooine, though |
We explored the coast and got a little off-trail, but we met two friends along the way: Sally the Snail and a baby crab who remained nameless. We found the trail after our coastal exploration and began walking in the actual forest. It became much less windy, which was quite a relief, especially for poor Michael who had shorts on the whole time. We walked on the path through the forest for a few hours, stopping a few times for a break, and eventually decided to find Morton Lochs. We kept following the signs but it took us hours to find the Lochs, which weren't even that impressive anyway! On our way out of Tentsmuir, we began walking down something I can only call a "country road." We were flanked by two fields of wheat and flowers and we couldn't really see anything for miles...which was a bad sign. Luckily, Liam asked to see the map and pointed out that we were going the wrong way. Whoops. So we backtracked for a quarter mile and hung a left to take us down the correct path. By this time, we had been walking for pretty much six hours straight and were definitely feeling it. Oh well, we had a lovely time together getting more or less lost in Tentsmuir Woods. We think Dr Murray would be proud.
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| Patty and our friend, Sally the Snail - she didn't come out much, but we didn't take it personally |
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| Our nameless baby crab friend |
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| Patty, Jael, Daniel and I jumping in a wheat field |
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| The beautiful, but less impressive than we had hoped, Morton Lochs |
We all came back to the flats and took much needed showers and naps, but since it was our lovely Michael's birthday, we took him out to dinner at Avery & Co., our new favorite restaurant in Dundee (thanks for the recommendation, Katie Norton-Williams :) ).
Sunday might be the day most of you are interested. We got up bright and early and trekked over to St Andrews for THE 144TH BRITISH OPEN! We were so lucky to happen to be in Scotland during one of the few years it's actually held at St Andrews, and even more lucky that Fulbright thought it worth while to sponsor us to go there. Granted, it certainly is a Scottish experience to watch an international golf tournament being played on St Andrews's "Old Course."
Now, don't hate me, but no one in my immediate family finds golf even remotely interesting, but I could certainly appreciate this amazing cultural, athletic, and international experience. There were people from all over the world in St Andrews, and that was pretty spectacular. The golf was good too, of course. We saw players like Graeme McDowell (who Nina was particularly excited to see), Paul Dunne (the amazing Amateur who's currently in the lead...I think) and Robert Streb from the States! My favorite part of the golf-watching experience was the impressive level of silence such a large crowd can accomplish. That, and the resulting subtle golf clap I got to join in person! How cool.
Also, forgive me for the low level of pictures of the Open -- you're not really supposed to do much photographing of anything.
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| Squad pumped to be at The Open |
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| Me, Patty, Nina and Omar at the 18th hole! |
After The Open, we headed back to the flats to make ourselves some pasta, and reminisced on our time at Dundee. Tomorrow is our last official day before we head off to Glasgow, and we are all feeling quite bittersweet about it.
The next post will be all Edinburgh and Glasgow - woohoo city-life! Cheers till then!
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