Fresher's Week - Part 1

Alright! So, thus far I have survived part one of Fresher's Week. Allow me to explain exactly what that entails. So first you should take Davidson's student population of 1,800 and multiply that by about 14. That will give you roughly the population of the University of Edinburgh. Then take into consideration that 1/4 of that number is experiencing college for the very first time. Cue the thing that is known as "Fresher's Week." Basically, it is an entire week, Sunday the 12th to Sunday the 19th, dedicated entirely to fun, crazy, activities geared towards first year students. Also, don't forget to add all the other visiting or postgrad international students new to the University of Edinburg to that number... so maybe it's really more like half of that 26,000.

Now, add 50+ activities each day, utilizing blow up bouncy castles, enough free food to feed a small army, and hundreds of volunteers to herd us around the city and make sure we have absolutely as much fun as possible while getting to know the city and meet other new and slightly disoriented/overwhelmed students. In a nutshell, it is a week dedicated to fun before buckling down and starting class this coming Monday. And it is SO FUN!!!! I don't even know where to begin... so I think I might just have to go day by day. That's the only way I can wrap my mind around it really.

Saturday:

My friends and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather and hike up Arthur's Seat. Arthur's Seat sits at about 823 feet and is the main peak in a group of hills that form Holyrood Park, located right in the center of Edinburgh. It is easily accessible and has absolutely breathtaking views of the city from the top.

View from the very top

Group picture

Yup, we climbed that!

That night I went out with my new flatmates. They are all really nice and each one has a really interesting story. From the left - Tara is from Boston and is here for all four years. Her Dad works for William Sonoma so our kitchen is AMAZING and completely outfitted with all the latest and great appliances. I'm quite a big fan. Then there's Camila who is from Oxford. She took a gap year after finishing secondary school and traveled all through Argentina as well as across the United States. She's fluent in Spanish and is studying Italian here at the University. She said she'd be willing to teach me, so we'll see how that goes. Then there is Bex, our "pretend" flatmate. Although she doesn't actually live with us, she hangs out with us all the time and is in our flat more than her own I think. She is really sweet and is from a small town about 30 miles south of Edinburgh in the Borderlands. Then there is Lauren who is also here for just one semester. She is from California and goes to Pomona College. So those are the roommates!

On our way to get some free food at the Teviot Union. At the beginning of the week, we got out the extensive Fresher's Guide and mapped out all of the free food for the week. I have only had to purchase one meal so far, so it's been a great success in my opinion.

HAGGIS!!! Ugh, yuck, ew, gross!!! Actually, no. It was quite good really!

A photo taken during the ceilidh we went to (basically a traditional Scottish dance somewhat similar to line dancing. But harder...) Thankfully Bex knew exactly what she was doing and was able to point us in the right direction so we didn't look completely lost.

Had to take a picture with the man in the kilt. Of course.

Monday:

In addition to all the free food and fun events such as parties, informational meetings, dance classes, scavenger hunts, coffee crawls, pub crawls, club meetings, etc., etc., etc., ETC., they also offer a lot of highly subsidized tours during Fresher's Week. So I decided to sign up for the trip to Rosslyn Chapel, which is located in the small town of Roslin about 15 miles outside of Edinburgh. You have probably heard of it thanks to Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code and of course the 2006 movie. Our guide told us that the chapel was built by the Sinclair family starting in the mid-15th century and that its real name is the Collegiate Chapel of St. Matthew. It was pillaged and shut down after the Scottish Reformation in 1560 and was closed until 1861 when Queen Victoria visited and reopened it as a place for public worship according to the rites of the Scottish Episcopal Church. The church actually had a huge metal roof covering it for the past 13 years to prevent further water damage and allow for the restoration of the roof. They actually had removed the covering just 10 days before we visited, so we were one of the first groups for quite some time to be able to take pictures of the exterior. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures of the interior, but it was beautiful. Our tour guide also shared many interesting facts and talked about how most of the legends popularized in Dan Brown's book are most likely completely untrue. However, that didn't stop the number of annual visitors jumping from 8,000 per year back in the 1990's and early 2000's to 177,000 per year after the publication of the book and the release of the Da Vinci Code film.

Tuesday:

During the day on Tuesday, my friends and I went to the Trade Fair, which was basically a HUGE room full of free stuff. I walked out of there with lots of candy, a coffee mug (from the contact lenses prescription table... whatever, they couldn't tell if I was wearing them or not and I needed a mug), fruit from the organic foods table, pens, pads of paper, a reusable grocery bag, free passes and discount booklets, the list goes on and on. It is really easy to live frugally here since there are about a bajillion student discounts and all of the restaurants and cafés right near campus are incredibly well priced. More money to travel on!

After that, we shouldered all of our loot and went on a Radical Tour of the City. A local expert led us around Edinburgh and shared little known historical facts about places that most of us had already seen and heard about. It was pretty neat to get the version that wasn't just straight from a guide book. We ended at the Mosque Kitchen which supposedly serves the best and cheapest curry in the city. Boy, were they right. For £5 you were ladled a heaping serving of rice, curry, and vegetables, complete with naan bread the size of your face. Even though the set-up was quite funny and slightly questionable (you walk down an alleyway and are served your food from a teensy tiny little kitchen in the basement of the mosque before sitting down at rickety tables outside underneath a tent with only plastic spoons, no knives) I will most definitely be paying that place many more visits.

Tuesday night's activity was absolutely amazing and I will not forget it anytime soon. I am so glad that I decided to come to Edinburgh to study abroad, primarily because of its literary history. Last night I signed up to go on the "Book Lover's Tour and Literary Pub Crawl" led by Allan Foster, the author of Edinburgh Literary Tours, the first guidebook ever published geared towards the city's literary background. Here are some of the pictures I took throughout the tour.

Where the first

chapters of Harry

Potter were actually

written. Most people

mistakenly think

that this momentous

event took place at the

Elephant Café across

town, where all the

tourists go. But apparently

the locals know that this

was the real place. Also, another

interesting fact, J.K. Rowling's

sister studied at the University of

Edinburgh Law School.

The Spoon Café and Bistro - the man who bought this didn't even know that this was where J.K. Rowling began Harry Potter.

During the tour, Allan Foster also told us the story behind Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was born in Edinburgh and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh under professor Joseph Bell, who was actually the inspiration for the character of Sherlock Holmes. And you're not going to believe this... it turns out that my archaeology class will actually take place in that very building, which has now been converted into the Archaeology Department as well as faculty offices. The building right behind it, the old surgical hospital, was also the site that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson's The Body Snatcher. The short story was written based on the Burke and Haire murders that occurred in Edinburgh between November 1827 to October of 1838. Granted, all of this history was pretty creepy (my goosebumps were definitely not coming only from the cold rain), but still interesting. I could go on for several more paragraphs about all the interesting tales he told us, but I won't bore you too much. Instead, I'll shift gears to Wednesday's activity, which was quite a bit different.

Wednesday:

So this morning, I woke up early to meet up with the University of Edinburg Gliding Club, which is offering flight trials twice a day during Fresher's Week. So for a discounted price I received transportation to and from Kirkcaldy and thirty minutes of gliding. So for those of you unfamiliar with gliding (which would have been me twelve hours ago) here are the basic steps.

1) Strap yourself into an emergency parachute

2) Hop into unpowered aircraft

3) Attach fore said aircraft to a tow rope

4) Give the designated "launcher" the okay signal

5) Feel yourself being yanked up, up, and away by the mechanical tow, moving about about 45-60 miles per hour and heading upwards at a 45 degree angle

6) Hover about 1,000 feet up in the air after the pilot drops the tow rope

7) Start flying and enjoying the amazing views

Here is me wiggling into the somewhat

awkward emergency parachute. You

were in a reclining position during flight

so the parachute had to be pulled VERY

tight when you were standing up. It made

me waddle around like a penguin.

View right after take off

All ready to go!

I think the take off was without a doubt my favorite part. The adrenaline rush was unreal as you just hurled off into the clouds in this tiny little plane. It was also really peaceful up in the air since obviously there is no engine and no need for those huge headphones you usually see people flying in. My instructor, Collin, let me take over the controls for about five minutes and it was really neat getting to fly along the contours of a ridge and practice turning and accelerating and de-accelerating. Too bad we didn't do any cool tricks like loop-de-loops or flips while were up there! No... I'm only kidding. Just cruising along at that altitude was quite enough for me!

Whew! So that is basically what I have done so far this week. I cannot believe I have been here for just a little over a week, it feels like it has been almost a month. I think it is because we have been doing so much each day, it will probably be nice to settle down and start classes. I will try to blog again at the end of the week after some more Fresher's activities! On the agenda are another ceilidh (this time hopefully I will look like I have at least a faint inkling of what I am doing), more walking tours, an all day community service outing here in the city, and, of course, lots and lots of free food.