Forests, the Funnies, and Golf

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were some of our last days in Dundee, and after our jam-packed week of activities, we took our opportunity for a rather relaxing weekend.

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.

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:

Squad at the beginning of the walk on "Lundin Bridge"

Daniel demonstrating exactly how intense the wind gusts were

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.

Patty and our friend, Sally the Snail - she didn't come out much, but we didn't take it personally

Our nameless baby crab friend

Patty, Jael, Daniel and I jumping in a wheat field

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.

Squad pumped to be at The Open

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!

Fun in Edinburgh, Forensics and Faces

It's beginning to shock me that I can write unfortunately long blog posts about the activities over only two days, but that is the nature of this amazing and busy trip through the Fulbright Commission. Our day in Edinburgh on Wednesday really captured exactly how much the Commission intends to expose us to in such a short 5 weeks.

So, the group and I woke up bright and early to hop on our bus to Edinburgh on Wednesday morning. Once we arrived, we ate breakfast in a small cafe and waited for Leo, one of our Strathclyde contacts, who was spending the day with us. As soon as he arrived, we jumped immediately into our busy schedule.

The first part of our trip to Edinburgh was climbing Calton Hill. Calton Hill has the most amazing view of Edinburgh and is one of the more touristy spots. When you google the city, images from Calton Hill will undoubtedly pop up, and it's really not hard to see why - the view is stunning. Leo and Pat, our Dundee Professor who joined us, pointed out several important parts of Calton Hill and places in Edinburgh since we could see a huge part of the city from the top. We snapped several photos, but soon had to move on to our next activity.

This is the rather classic view of Edinburgh from Calton Hill - it's absolutely stunning

Here's most of the boys and Leo by the National Monument of Scotland on Calton Hill

The Nelson Monument on Calton Hill

Me on Calton Hill with the famous landmark, Arthur's Seat, in the background

Our next stop was the National Portrait Gallery. The group and I highly enjoyed just walking the streets of Edinburgh with gorgeous buildings, bag pipe players, plenty of gift shops and beautiful scenery, all the while with Pat and Leo telling us anecdotes about the city. The Portrait Galley itself was stunningly beautiful, of course, just with the architecture let alone the portraits. Anyway, we were led into this rather small room filled to the ceiling with books. I won't lie, I was almost more excited about the structure of this room with the two floors of books than the amazing and famous photographs we were about to be shown. Anyway, we got a lovely presentation about the evolution of photography over time by Anne Lyden, an international photography curator. She told us about how Scotland made a crucial contribution to advancements in early photography mainly through the work of Hill & Adamson who used paper as their medium instead of highly shined metal, and therefore taking important steps in the new industry. Other highlights are below:

This here is Queen Victoria and her footman Mr. John Brown. You may have heard that after Victoria's husband, Albert's death she was notoriously close to Mr. Brown (there was a film made about it rather recently) and this photography was used to highlight their suspiciously close relationship. What one might not immediately notice is that the original photograph features another footman standing right beside Mr. Brown, but he was cut out of the photograph for sensationalizing purposes. 

So, this is a photo by Alfred Buckham who was a pioneer in photography due to shots like these from high altitudes. Apparently he would just hang right out of the planes by his leg!

You might recognize these four gentlemen - they're the Beatles photographed by Harry Benson, still a rather famous photographer 

This the main hall of the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh - clearly everything is beautiful in this building, not just the portraits. 

After our photography lecture at the National Portrait Gallery, we walked briskly through Edinburgh to our next appointment with the British Council. You might be thinking "what in the world is the British Council?" - I know I was - but apparently, a lot of Britain itself doesn't know either. The British Council is a nondepartmental government body that works to use the cultural assets of the United Kingdom to build trust and positive relationships between the people of the U.K., and other peoples overseas. It was emphasized that the British Council is all about the people-to-people relationship, not involving the governments necessarily. Also, cultural assets is a bit of an arbitrary phrase, but our host, Kate Walker, gave us the examples of the U.K.'s exceptional education, arts, and english as a language. Now, my sister, having her degree in cultural anthropology, and having taken anthropology classes myself, there were some red flags going off in my head concerning cultural respect of other nations, but after asking a few questions, I found myself gaining high respect for the British Council and all the amazing work it does. The people who work there generally have worked abroad and have a level of cultural experience along with the cultural training they get when they begin working for the Council. But more than that, wherever the Council is doing work, whether it be Afghanistan, or Beirut or even the U.S., they usually heavily rely on the advice and cultural understanding of the local population and usually have a team of locals working alongside them.

So what exactly does the Council do? Well, our host mainly talked about their efforts in education across the world. One example she used was their work in South Sudan where they were particularly focused on female education achievement. There's so much more to say about the British Council and the amazing work it does, so if you'd like to know more, let me know and I'll be happy to extrapolate.

The group and our host, Kate Walker, at the British Council office in Scotland

As if we hadn't already had enough amazing experiences for one day, we moved on to our tour of the Scottish Parliament. Oh man, I have so much to say, but I'll try and keep it brief. So, the Parliament of Great Britain (you know, that thing at Westminster), devolved some power to Scotland beginning in 1997. Wait, wait, wait, remember that date 1707? That's when the Scottish Parliament and the English Parliament were dissolved and merged into the Parliament of Great Britain. So, that covered the legislation of England and Scotland from 1707-1997 -- which is quite a long time! Alright, so Scottish Parliament - the building itself wasn't actually opened until 2004, which does not surprise me having been in it. It's a bit of a masterpiece. So we come in and put our special pink lanyards over our heads to show everyone we're special and then start our tour. The architecture was very modern and quite stunning, but also had a lot of important symbolism. For instance, the St Andrews cross (the cross on the flag of Scotland and therefore a completely secular symbol) could be seen in all sorts of creative places from the ceiling to the floor -- quite literally. It was made almost entirely from oak wood as well, giving it a very warm feeling.

St Andrews crosses on the ceiling of the Scottish Parliament

The lobby of the parliament is a perfectly public place anyone can come in and use!

This is the debate chamber in the Scottish Parliament - talk about gorgeous

The sun roof of the debate chamber in the Scottish Parliament

On of the hallways inside - the ceiling is supposed to look like leaves 

One of my favorite moments of the tour was the tapestry pictured below that was made to symbolize Scottish history. At the far left, it's all black with a few Scottish flags representing the distant past of Scotland and all the stories and moments that are shrouded in the doubt of the deep past. Certain crosses throughout the tapestry represent certain things; so white represents a unifying event, and black symbolizes an event with lots of death and loss. There are also hidden messages in block letters, which, of course, I can't remember, but they referred to Scottish nationalism.

The tapestry of Scottish History

After our tour, we were lucky enough to get a chance to sit down with a current member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) called Jenny Marra. Ms. Marra is a member of the Labour party's shadow cabinet in the Scottish Parliament. As you may know, the Labour party in Scotland has recently met a huge obstacle in representation in the Parliament of Great Britain due to the success of the Scottish National Party (SNP) - out of the 59 seats Scotland holds at Westminster, Labour won only one of them, while the SNP won 56.

My question for Ms. Marra was what some of the reasons are for the discrepancy between independence being voted against last September and then the Scottish National Party winning the vast majority of seats in the British Parliament in the most recent election in May. As expected, Ms. Marra had many interesting insights. As many know, independence was voted down last September 45 to 55. One of the more interesting tidbits was how those who voted "yes" for independence are referred to as "45-ers" because of the voting record. Interestingly enough, the number 45 has had significance in the realm of Scottish nationalism for a number of years, namely because of 1745, the year of the Jacobites' Battle of Culloden. Ms. Marra also noted that the 2-year campaign for independence was very similar to President Obama's first campaign in that they both emphasized hope and change. Anyway, Ms. Marra made sure to mention that she, being a member of the Labour party, does not support independence and was instead part of the "better together" campaign.

 In considering the inconsistency between voting against independence and the bounce back of the SNP in the general election, Ms. Marra said some level of bounce back was expected, but not nearly the amount the SNP gained. So why was the SNP so successful? According to Ms. Marra, the SNP knows how to run a good campaign. For the referendum, the party was successful in lobbying for and achieving a lower voting age, considering that younger people were more likely to vote for independence. However, Ms. Marra said that when polls were taken across Scotland in schools, the proportion of those who wanted independence and those who didn't were about the same as those of the general election, so although these efforts might not have helped the odds of independence much, it still catalyzed the voting age in Scotland to be lowered to 16 for electing members to parliament and in referendums. One reason Ms. Marra stated for why the SNP was able to make such a splash in the last general election is the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon. Besides her general appeal and excellent political skills, Ms. Marra suggested it is a popular time for female leadership as well. One particularly brilliant move on Ms. Sturgeon's part was pitting the SNP against the Conservatives, not Labour, in the general election. Labour is a more liberal party than the Conservatives (unsurprisingly), so Sturgeon was able to create a duality with greater polarity in the general election by contrasting her party with the Conservatives.

The group of us talking to Jenny Marra in the Scottish Parliament

It was very interesting being able to talk to a member of the Scottish Parliament in the Labour party about the SNP and the independence referendum. Based on interactions the locals, at least in Dundee, I've really only been exposed to the perspective for independence. Although, Ms. Marra did mention that Dundee is considered a "yes" city, so perhaps Glasgow will present a different perspective. More on what the locals have to say about independence later though.

So, in order to relax a little after our thrilling time at the Scottish Parliament, we crossed the street and toured a castle for an hour (relax, ha). Not just any castle though, the Queen's Scottish Residence, Holyrood Castle (pronounced Holly-rude). It was named after the Abbey that stands in ruins next to it which once supposedly housed a fragment of the cross Jesus was crucified on (holy + rood, which was an Old English word for cross), but our tour guide suggested that was probably just something they said to entice early Christians to take pilgrimages to the abbey.

Holyrood Abbey - right next to the castle

Anywho, Holyrood was very crowded and touristy - more so than any castle we've seen. It was very lavish, of course, and our tour guide was able to tell us of many impressive occasions and moments that occurred - and still occur - in the castle such as the knighting of Sir Sean Connery. The most impressive part of the castle, for me at least, was Mary Queen of Scots's bed chambers. Our tour guide told us a rather chilling story of the room where one of Mary's personal secretary and good friend, David Rizzio, was suppering with Mary with a few other friends in her chambers when Mary's paranoid second husband Lord Darnley barged in with a group of Protestant nobles, dragged Rizzio out of the supper chamber across a room, and proceeded to stab him no less than 56 times. Talk about excessive. Oh, and Mary was 6 months pregnant.

Here's a portrait of the Murder of David Rizzio, although a) Mary does not appear to be pregnant and b) that room is not that big, let me tell you

The courtyard at Holyrood Castle

The whole squad outside Holyrood Castle

Think our day in Edinburgh is over? Not even close! Next we hopped in a taxi and headed to the U.S. Consulate. It was casual - not. We changed into our finest garmets in order meet with the staff at the U.S. Consulate in Edinburgh and a U.S. diplomat, Fleur Cowan, currently stationed in London, but working on relations in Iran. It's very complicated.  We had a lovely meet and greet with Ms. Cowan and the other staff members and were able to ask her what it was like to work in the foreign service. Ms. Cowan has spent time in various countries serving the United States and speaks seven languages. She walked us through a normal day as a diplomat, mentioning how important collaboration and staying up to date with politics is for their team. Between this visit and the British Council, I'm confident many of us were considering a potential future in the foreign service.

The group with Fleur Cowan, U.S. diplomat

After our visit with the diplomats, we stayed at the consulate for a reception that hosted people from all over Scotland. There were several students and Professors from both Dundee and Strathclyde along with high school students who were interested in studying in the States. My favorite conversations were those with the younger high school students. They told us we had accents and couldn't believe we were so excited to be in Scotland. They also were flabbergasted that we had yet to try Tablet (a harder, carmel-y fudge), Haggis and Irn Bru (pronounced Iron-Brew), which I went out and tried today since they insisted it was very tasty. It's not. It's less sugary soda that tastes like bubblegum cough syrup, but at least I tried it, right?

Here I am trying Irn Bru, the Bubblegum Cough Syrup Soda in the Dundee Student Union

So, after our day in Edinburgh, we were exhausted, as you might imagine. We all slept quite well Wednesday evening and were well rested for our day of Forensics!

On Thursday, we spent an amazing 7 hours in the Forensics department at the University of Dundee. There were three main highlights. Firstly, in our opening lecture, Dr. Clare Lamb discussed one of the most important advancements in the study of anatomy, Thiel Embalming. This method of preservation of the human body leaves tissue soft and much more lifelike, so that observations and experiments are significantly more accurate to the live human body. But get this, Dundee is the only university in the UK that offers instruction in Thiel Embalming and the technique isn't used at all in the States. What?! This is the best way to preserve the human body and study anatomy out there and the U.S. isn't using it? We couldn't believe it. When asked why this is, Dr. Lamb had a depressingly simple explanation: most of the literature on it is in German. Sure, there are costs associated with it, but the research advancements are totally worth it, especially with all the crucial medical research done in the States. My own sister actually works for a translation company, so I made sure to tell her to get on that.

The second highlight was being able to see and touch body parts preserved with Thiel Embalming vs. the older method (which basically plasticizes and hardens all tissue for preservation), which effectively demonstrated the assets of Thiel Embalming. Yeah, it was little eerie to hold a human heart in my (gloved) hands and manipulate a dead hand's tendon to make the finger move, but it was clear that preserving tissue in its soft state would lead to much easier and effective medical research. Plus, our bio majors Patty and Nina were tweaking with excitement, which is always fun to see.

The final highlight of our day of Forensics was the facial reconstructive portion. Dr. Christopher Rynn walked us through the process of facial reconstruction and how it's evolved over time. Dundee's facial reconstruction services are used for several criminal cases a year and for many other services as well. Although the scientific portion of the lecture was absolutely fascinating, my favorite part was when Dr. Rynn discussed race and facial reconstruction. He told us about how the "Cross-Race Effect," or basically how if you're a member of one race, you might think everyone from another race looks very similar, is rooted in skulls and psychology. Because when we see another face, our brain automatically compares it to our own, we're used to comparing differentiating features that result from our own skull shape - so for me, I look for differentiating factors that result from a caucasoid skull. Because people of Asian decent (and Native American, actually) all have mongoloid skulls, that's the main distinction I, as a caucasoid, see. So I might think most Asian people look the same since my brain is comparing their faces and skulls to my own, which are fundamentally different. There were so many other interesting factors of forensics and facial reconstruction that contribute to racial relations, but I've written enough on the topic for now. Ask me upon my return if you'd like to know more.

We also got to play around with the facial reconstruction computer technology in the forensics lab! The pen in my right hand actually felt resistance when it contacted a part of the virtual skull! How cool is that?!

We got off from Forensics a bit early, so we headed over to the Student Union to meet up with some of the Union Board Dundee students. We spent a lovely night with them learning about their culture, and UK culture altogether since one of the students was from Newcastle, England and one was from Northern Ireland. We played a game with them where they had to name all 50 states in 6 minutes. I won't lie, the first time I did this, I only got about 44 - these Brits ended up getting 49! Granted, we helped them a little, especially with New England. If you're curious, the one state we all forgot was Montana - sorry Montana!

Also, everyone knows who Bernie Sanders is and totally loves him here. Classic Europe.

Beyond playing games, we compared political systems and student life. We were both equally shocked at our differing costs of school. If you live in Scotland, you can go to university in Scotland for free - what's that? Did you say free?! Why yes they did. If you're from another country in the UK, you have to pay a few grand and you're good. Also, if you have student debt, you don't have to start paying it until you make 23,000 pounds a year, and if you haven't paid it off in 30 years, it's completely forgiven. Wow, sounds like a good deal, doesn't it? Then we told them what each of us were paying for college and their mouths dropped. We all agreed Scotland has the better deal here.

Finally, I asked them all about independence and devolution. Most of the students were for independence. When asked why, they said they were for it in the first place because it would make legislative issues more simple (more on that in a moment) and it was economically viable. Apparently, in 2007 (right before the recession) the Royal Bank of Scotland was the biggest bank in Europe and all because of donations from Scots themselves. To Derek, one of the students, this proved that the Scottish people were willing to make sacrifices for independence. They also mentioned that one big reason used to argue against independence is that Scotland would most likely accumulate a 3 billion pound deficit, but as the students pointed out, that's much less than the U.K. deficit and American deficit and several other European nations. These among other reasons they cited supporting the idea that Scotland could easily be economically independent convinced them of Scottish independence.

Another fascinating aspect of UK politics we discussed was devolution. So, I've talked about this before and we know Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own governing bodies whether they're parliaments or assemblies as of rather recently. So, there's a parliament of Great Britain which represents all 4 nations within the United Kingdom. Here's a handy chart from Wikipedia to show how many seats each country has!

Number of seats for each country in the British Parliament. Thanks Wikipedia!

Okay, so each country is represented decently in the UK parliament. Apart from that, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own bodies with devolved powers that they can regulate and the UK cannot. However, note that England doesn't have their own parliament with devolved powers. So England just uses Westminster for the powers that were devolved to all the other nations' parliaments...which all sounds well and good until there's an issue being addressed in the UK parliament that's only relevant to England and the representatives from the other countries get to have a say in it because of their seats. This actually recently came up in the issue of Fox hunting. In Scotland, it's already illegal to hunt foxes, but in England and Wales, it was being voted on. Scotland believes the practice is morally wrong, so the SNP threatened to block the vote even though it wouldn't affect Scotland at all! This seems a little unfair. The students at Dundee told us they thought Scotland should be independent, but if not, England should at least get its own parliament with devolved powers so it's all equal and all this complicated political stuff doesn't happen as often. I asked why the English parliament isn't an argument that's gone anywhere and you know what they said? Apparently, England doesn't want their own parliament! This seems very strange to me, but maybe I'll find out why later on.

Okay, wow, this is turning out to be quite the long blog post, so I will postpone writing about today until the next one. Thanks for reading! I know it was a doozy.

Cheers till the next one!

Ghosts, Cathedrals and Castles

The third and fourth days in Dundee were even more exciting as the first two, if that were even possible.

Day three began with a lecture on Scottish literature since 1707. Why 1707? While the union of England and Scotland occurred in 1603, 1707 marks the year both the Scottish and English parliaments were dissolved and replaced with one parliament of Great Britain. According to Professor David Robb of Dundee University, this also marked a turning point in Scottish literature. The Scots became much more aware of their identity as an independent culture now that they were a less independent nation. Professor Robb listed many important and influential authors through the 18th to 20th centuries and how Scottish literature changed and grew over time. Overall, it was very focused on Scottish culture and identity, although some authors wrote in order to bolster the idea of the Scottish and English union like James Boswell and James Thomson. One of the more fascinating writers he told us about was Hugh MacDiarmid, which is the pen name of C.M. Grieve. MacDiarmid wrote his poetry in a hybrid form of Scottish and Gaelic languages from throughout history. The result is a charming linguistic effect that one can't possibly appreciate unless you hear a Scotsman him/herself say it.

Hugh McDiarmid (photo from http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/)

After our lecture and a quick lunch, we hopped on a bus to St Andrews for a ghost tour! The best part about this ghost tour was that our guide has been researching St Andrews since the 1980s and knows a ton about the city's history along with some heebie-jeebie inducing legends. My favorite, and the creepiest story involved a woman who escaped her fiance by running away to a nunnery. Once there, her fiance came to find her and rather than marry him, the woman mutilated her face by cutting out her own eyes, ears, mouth and nose. She died later from her wounds and her distraught fiance returned home and committed suicide. The legend is that she still haunts a tree next to the entrance to where the nunnery used to be, now a private school for ages 4-19.

Our tour guide telling us about the nun right where she haunts!

Our tour guide continued throughout St Andrews, telling us stories and showing us the incredible historical sights. My personal favorite was St Andrews Cathedral - a huge expanse of ruins of an amazing cathedral. From its initial construction in 1158, it has gone through many transitions from a church to a cemetery to a historical sight. Much of its destruction occurred during the Protestant Reformation of Scotland, but was once the largest church in Scotland. The ruins were absolutely stunning, and our group spent most of our short amount of free time there.

St Andrews Cathedral

As a history major, I'm incredibly biased. All the highlights of this tour in my mind involved any and all mentions of John Knox, the most prominent leader of the Reformation in Scotland. The Protestant Reformation is an incredibly fascinating time in history that brought about a massive shift in European culture, and consequently, many other cultures throughout the world in response. More on that later. But back to John Knox. Below is a photo of Liam and I hanging out on a staircase at St Andrews Cathedral that was once used to bring cannons to the top of this cathedral that were intended to blast John Knox to kingdom come in an adjacent Protestant castle.

Liam and I on the canon staircase at St Andrews Cathedral

When it comes to St Andrews, history is everywhere you look. I couldn't fathom that I was walking on ground that John Knox and Mary Queen of Scots once walked on too, or touching doors that they might have opened or even being in rooms they once resided in. Two other particularly historical parts of our tour included the first church John Knox preached in and Mary Queen of Scots's house. Her house! I couldn't believe it. Our tour guide made the clever joke that some say John Knox still haunts Mary's house, but one could argue he haunted it while he was alive and well, so there's not much of a difference. John Knox and Mary Queen of Scots (who was Catholic, mind you) had many meetings with John Knox, most of which were quarrelsome. 

The first church John Knox preached at in Scotland

Mary Queen of Scots's house!

Another highlight of the tour was a building that was once the Scottish Parliament, but later, when the Scottish parliament was dissolved in 1707 and became part of the British Parliament instead, was converted into a Protestant Church and remodeled. It's pictured below...

The old Scottish Parliament building

...Be sure to take note of the concave portions of the top half of the building where one would normally imagine a statue would sit. However, if you remember what kind of church this became, you will perhaps know why there are no statues in those spaces. One of the main tenets of the Protestant Reformation was a disdain for the worshipping of any sort of idol - something embraced by the Catholic Church. With a more literal reading of scripture, Protestants believe idolatry (the worship of any physical idol) is against God's word. Thus, to rebel against Catholicism, Protestants would often destroy statues of religious figures and any form of idol used by the Catholics for worship - an act called iconoclasm. The act of iconoclasm is part of the reason St Andrews Cathedral is simply ruins today. Thus, in their new church, the Protestants thought they were pretty clever, and decided to build a place for idols in their church, but very obviously not have them displayed. Those Protestants really know how to make a statement. 

Either way, St Andrews was an amazing experience, and I simply can't wait to return in a week!

Once we got back to Dundee, we stumbled upon an iconic spot! The building pictured below is the photo we were shown on our Fulbright website to advertise Dundee university itself, so we were very pleased to discover that our institute was in no way false advertising, and it really is a beautiful wee (a word used much more frequently here than I had thought it would) part of campus. 

The classic Dundee University picture and me very happy to have found it

By the next day we were beginning to get a hang of the structure of our trip: fascinating lecture followed by enthralling adventure. Who could ask for more? The next morning brought us to Dundee University's College of Life Sciences where we were given a wonderfully informative and fascinating lecture about their work in drug discovery by Mike Ferguson FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) who is a Regius (granted by the Queen) Professor of Life Science. Dundee's college of Life Sciences is extremely impressive and world renowned. Professor Ferguson and his collegues walked us through the difficult but massively important work they do in drug discovery, especially highlighting his work with tropical disease. He noted that research and development concerning tropical diseases is often not a priority because companies couldn't make a profit from them seeing as it requires creating products for very impoverished populations that can't pay for them. I appreciated that Professor Ferguson walked us through this part of his industry since it reveals how science interacts with the economy and politics. One of his overall themes throughout the day was the importance of blending disciplines to create the best research and the best project. After the lecture, Professor Ferguson took us on an amazing tour of the Life Sciences facilities. We put on our lab coats and safety goggles and followed him around the labs in the basement as he pointed out the fascinating processes of drug discovery and the complex machines and tools associated with it. After touring the labs, he made sure to highlight all the departments within the building, again emphasizing that drug discovery is a multidisciplinary process involving biology, chemistry, data and computational processes. It was all very eye-opening and inspiring, even for a history major like myself. 

The Life Sciences building at Dundee University

After our lecture on drug discovery we hopped on a bus to tour our first castle! Glamis Castle (pronounced Glahms) was only about a 20 minute drive from Dundee - it seems a lot of amazing things are only 20 minutes from Dundee which has been very convenient. Glamis is stunning inside and out. Although I was unable to take any photos inside the castle itself, we snapped a few of the outside of course. If you'd like a visual, imagine Hearst Castle in California only much much much much much much older. This castle was built in the 12th century and nearly 30 generations have lived in it. The Queen Mother, the current queen's mother, spent her childhood growing up in the castle and thus it has a special place in the family's heart. Glamis actually hugely emphasizes its connection with the Queen Mother, so much so that they have an entire exhibition room in the first floor of the castle dedicated entirely to her and her life in the castle. The archivists who took the tour with us told us that the Queen Mother was much beloved by Britain and she was still a very important figure. Us folks from the States might better recognize her as Helena Bonham Carter in The King's Speech - or at least the real life queen she portrayed. In fact one of the rooms in the castle we saw was her husband, George VI's room where he might have worked on his wartime speeches. Throughout the tour, we were told all about the family that resided in the house - the Lyon family - and all of their stories. The name associated with Glamis Castle changed many times throughout its history for various reasons. My personal favorite was when one member of the nobility, a rather poor man, wanted to marry into the family, the family's conditions was that he would have to change his name to their family name. Family and heritage was a huge big deal to people in that time, so this was quite the decision. He did end up marrying the girl though, and thus the family name became Bowes-Lyon. There are so many stories in Glamis Castle, some wonderful and some quite chilling, that I cannot possibly write them all here and you will have to find me and ask me in person upon my return.

Fun fact: Glamis was also the inspiration of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth and one of the rooms in particular that we saw was supposedly the room that Macbeth killed Duncan in...at least in the play. 

Everybody outside of Glamis Castle

After our tour, we were taken on a private viewing of the castle's archives by the archivists themselves. Fulbright is such an amazing organization to be able to give us this opportunity. A few of us history nerds teared up a little as we laid our eyes on medieval documents like a Charter by William, King of Scots (William the Lion) written sometime between 1188 and 1198. Don't just skip over those dates like they're just numbers! 1188 and 1198 people!!! 12th century!! They were written in the most beautiful script and in Latin. We also read one of the family member's personal diary - again with the most stunning handwriting. My personal favorite document was a papal bull...why yes, I did say a papal bull...from 1375 stamped by Gregory XI himself! Everyone was beside themselves with amazement, although the non-history majors seemed to be most fascinated with the invitation to Princess Diana and Prince Charles's wedding and their seating arrangement that was also lying before us, which I must admit, is also pretty exciting. But a papal bull guys! 

As if the group and I couldn't be more satisfied, we ended our trip to Glamis Castle by spending some quality time with our good friends the highland cows. Highland cows are an important aspect of Scotland, and the Fulbrighters and I are quite passionate about them ourselves. I mean, look at those bangs!

Highland Cow, Bessie, Matt, Myself, Daniel and Liam - aka best friends for life

 Because I got behind on my blogging (do you blame me?), I will also quickly summarize our fifth day in Scotland so I'm all caught up.

This morning we had an incredibly captivating lecture by Billy Kay, an expert on the Scottish languages and the Scottish Diaspora (spreading of culture, people etc. throughout the world) who also makes radio documentaries at the BBC about Scottish Culture. This guy is legit. He was an excellent speaker who clearly was passionate and knowledgeable about all the content. Two interesting concepts he touched on were the differences in languages spoken in Scotland and Scottish Diaspora, particularly its impact in America. Firstly, he discussed the three languages spoken in Scotland: English, Scots, and Gaelic. Scots was the most fascinating one, which I will elaborate on since the other two are pretty straightforward. Mr. Kay told us that about 1.5 million people speak Scots and its mainly concentrated in the lowlands. He spoke a bit for us and it was a little like hearing half of a conversation but not the other half. Both Scots and English are descendants of Old English, however Scots is actually a little closer to Old English and has kept some phrases that regular English has weeded out. For instance, Scots still use the word doon (instead of down). There was something very poetic about hearing him speak Scots to us - it's clearly a language that is soaked with tradition and Scottish identity, and we were lucky to hear a true Scotsman speak it.

The second fascinating component of his lecture (although truthfully it was all amazing, but I simply cannot write it all down) was how Scottish culture has impacted the States so far. So in 1745 after the Jacobite Rebellion (Scotsmen fighting to get James back on the throne and against the union with England) highland culture was essentially banished, which led to emigration to North America! Kay did note that Scotsmen ironically sided with the loyalists usually during the revolutionary war and the confederates during the Civil War - unfortunately choosing the losing side both times. Unfortunately, a bit of an unfortunate legacy of Scots in the States is a certain clan that cropped up after the Civil War. Many Scots were involved in the creation of the Ku Klux Klan, hence the terminology of "Klan" used by the group. However, Frederick Douglass, a name chosen by himself, was chosen due to his reverence for Scottish culture, namely Sir Walter Scott.

Of course, the Scottish influence reaches much farther than North America, but again, you'll have to ask me if you'd like to know more!

Everyone with Billy Kay after our amazing lecture

After Mr. Kay's lecture, we headed to the Cairn O' Mohr winery for lunch and a tour. Cairn O' Mohr makes an abundance of fruity wines and ciders that are rather unconventional. It was fascinating to be walked through the process of gathering fruit, fermentation, bottling and the final product along with some economic and political aspects to wine-making as well. It was an all-around delightful winery and very informative experience.

Some of the gang and our favorite student ambassador, Keegan, waiting for our tour

We ended out day at a BBQ at the student union with some other Dundee students where we discussed some differences in US and UK politics. Apparently, the first-past-the-post system of election can be just as aggravating as a two-party system, so that was comforting...sort of. Everyone seems to be just as confused about the status of Scotland in terms of independence as we are in the states, but he was able to shed some light on the SNP sweep in Parliament - it was all a side-effect of the first-past-the-post system. The SNP got less than half the popular vote, but was still the highest percentage in each section of Scotland, so they won nearly all the seats. He also asked us about some political things in American like how we feel about our Congress and how surprised he was that the congressional deadlock last year was not more widely covered in the UK. 

That's all for now folks, but brace yourselves, this weekend we're going to spend some time with another creature of Scotland named Nessie. Until then, cheers!