Forests and Frisbee

My last week of spring break I actually spent in class for four days, but it was one of those classes that confirms any doubts (not that I have any) about me being an environmental studies major because the entire day is spent learning outside (besides the time being carted around in 17-seater vans). It was very interesting to visit a forest from the perspective of a forester -different from the conservationist and biological perspectives of other field courses. The topic of conversation would be about managing a forest, but the reason was for producing harvestable timber, not for the ecosystem in sake of itself.
Growing up in a forest state I was naturally curious to see how Scotland's forests compared to Minnesota's. I checked online and found out that Minnesota's percentage of forested land is about 32% and Scotlands is about 8%. Minnesota's total area of land, excluding inland waters, is 206,208 sq km. Scotland's total land area excluding inland waters is 77,097 sq km which is one of those fascinating things about Europe and America -there is just more of America.
Also, there are no charismatic megafauna in Scotlands forests. The biggest animals there are deer -no bears, wolves, or mountain lions. Don't misunderstand me, because certainly the megafauna are not the only thing important about a forest, but when I looked out at the great expanse of sleepy, misty pines and spruce, I felt that there was something missing when I knew that there were no wolves out there padding softly along on the trail of a deer.
I have many more thoughts on the field trip but you will just have to ask me when I am home because I should probably get around to writing the report since I can't turn in my blog.

Saturday and Sunday I spent all day at CUBE playing in my first beach ultimate tournament. It was so much fun and was so great to play frisbee again, after having gone probably a month without it! There were a few people I overheard saying that beach ultimate is "the way ultimate was meant to be played" which I disagree with very much but I would love to hit up more beach ultimate tournaments (especially Paganello) sometime in my life. It was super hard to run on sand but really easy to lay out (yes, I did, and caught things too!). The weather was nice and sunny but a bit windy the second day and therefore a little chilly. We only had enough space for two pitches so the games were really short and I always wanted more when they were over! The frisbee party that night was a ceilidh, so now I have been to two ceilidhs (this one was much more fun than the last -helps to dance with people you know and people who are Scottish and are good dancers). If I could bring anything back to America from Scotland it would be my very own ceilidh band.

Today was my first day back at uni and I haven't started much of my work, so I must get on that now-
Cheers!
Karen

Blur

I haven't written in a while as I haven't had any time to sit down at a computer and write. I keep a journal but it ends up being organized in bullet points of fragmented images and not structured entries to share. I am working on a longer entry right now but will probably not finish before I head off for the last week of spring break. One day of rest after 16 on the go is not enough when I have to wake up earrrly tomorrow morning to travel again (forestry class). But the past two weeks have been amazing beyond belief. Here is a teaser of some of the things I have done:

Visited Raelene in Dublin touring and just hanging out in her flat.
Spent ten days with Lauren. Minus the night where I got stuck in a small town in France by myself (no working cell phone, either) where about two people spoke English and I of course was unable to speak French.
Spent three days biking from breakfast until dinner throught the gorgeous and varied land of Provonce, biking up and down mountains and through the countryside of vineyards, wandering through small towns, having picnic lunches of food bought from markets and experiencing a France I never knew to imagine.
Wandering the streets of Nice and gazing out at the Mediterranean from the cliffs near Monaco, where we spend an morning rock climbing. Found out my fear and inability to master rock-climbing still exists. But spent yet another day out in the sun getting colour on my pale winter skin.
Met "we're not hippies" at the Hills of Tara (an ancient pagan religious site in Ireland) and got a tour of their peace camp and peace bus.
Spent a lovely Easter day splashing in the cold waters of the Irish sea and eating very expensive and hard to come by Mexican food.

Probably one of my favorite things about my travels is that I did it by myself in the sense that I went from place to place independently, but inbetween met some cool new people and got to see two good friends from home with whom I am so grateful to have been able to share these experiences. :)

Now I've got to do laundry, figure out how much damage I charged to my credit card and pack and read for class tomorrow before I pass out . . . tough . . . more on everything later. And be sure to ask me for my stories because I definitely have them. And as spectacular as my days have been I still do get pangs of homesickness; I miss everyone back home so drop me a line sometime soon!

Industrial tourist? Or do I live here?

I've been thinking about this post for the past month and have written in over and over in my head, and at least five times on paper. Everyday I discover something new and though it may be the slightest new perspective, I feel like it renders my previous musings completely outdated. So here is my latest version I just wrote tonight:

Since I've been here, I have been struggling with the notion of industrial tourism. I don't want to be one of those people, as Edward Abbey characterized (and I wish I could quote but I don't have the book with me) in Desert Solitaire, that drive around in their box of a car, faces glued to the window, "seeing" all the beautiful scenery and other such wonders of the world. I want to get out and really see things. Take more time in one spot, travel less, and experience things. Yet there is a part of me that keeps nagging at my adrenaline, trying to convince me that I should always be moving, always occupied, always socializing, always traveling, sightseeing as much as I can, never having a dull moment . . . but that is unrealistic. Perhaps if I had more money I could do so, but I don't; and money is that other obnoxious villain that incessantly creeps in my shadow while I am here (and when I am at home).

Four and a half months is too short. It takes time to settle in to a place, figure out where things are, meet the right people, establish relationships; you can't force bonding or memories. There is too much to see here -too much that I want to see here. I want to say I have seen Stonehenge with my own eyes, visited all the castles in Aberdeenshire, and stood on the northernmost point of Scotland in the Shetlands. I want to take advantage of being on this side of the Atlantic (because who knows when or if that will happen again), but I don't want to do it thinking I am ticking things off a list.

I am on my spring break right now -three weeks of no classes (this school system is ridiculous!). A few of my international friends are doing what I would call a power-trip of Europe. Cramming in all the cities and countries they can. This seemed a little much for me, and since I had hoped to do so before I left America, I am going to visit my Gustavus friends Raelene and Lauren where they are studying. Tonight though, I met another American girl who is also backpacking across Europe, and the way she described it made me remember how much I used to want to do that. But, this was the first time I really had that feeling and it really is not a regret. I am waaayyyy excited about my adventure plans. And very excited about the last stretch of time in Scotland that awaits me when I come back.

So, if you are curious, here are my plans:
Sunday the 29th I fly to Dublin to visit my friend and former roommate Raelene. I am sleeping on her floor until Wednesday the 1st when I fly to Nantes to stay with Lauren. On Saturday April 4th we take the train to Avignon with four of her friends for a bike trip across Provence. Then we end up in Nice on Wednesday the 8th, I think, and spend the next few days on the beach of the French Riviera. On the night of Friday the 10th I fly back to Dublin to spend Easter with Raelene. On Monday the 13th I fly back to Aberdeen to miss the first day of my week-long forestry class. Oh well. Tuesday the 14th through Friday the 17th I am in my forestry class traveling around forests of Northern Scotland. I think we are based out of Inverness. Saturday the 18th I wake up in Aberdeen and that day and Sunday the 19th I spend at CUBE –a Frisbee tournament on a beach a short drive north of Aberdeen. On Monday the 20th I sleep and start thinking about the essays I have due that week and the next and try to remember to balance my industrial tourism and life that I just wrote about in a very short eight weeks.

Pretty packed after all (try adding two or three more countries!). I am so pumped. :)
Just hope I packed the right stuff -and not more or less than I need! (Yeah right.)

Catch you all later-
Karen

P.S. Far more to say about this subject than what I wrote. Life is amazingingly huge. :)

I am sitting in the hub, the university's student union more or less, and I just read Raelene's blog.

She was commenting on the clothing here and why it bothered her: because it is gendered. This is so true. Girls trip around in heels and skirts all the time and there are very few hoodies and no sweats. The fashion is very material; perhaps that has to do with the weather, as I have noticed more flowery and bohemian clothing in stores, but I haven't seen anyone wearing any yet.

I had to go shopping in the city centre today because I needed a cardigan (found, after I combed the the racks in just about every store, looking at every dumb cut and atrocious color), still need a purse/bag, and a swimsuit for my spring break traveling. Dear god I hate shopping.

I was so annoyed with my fruitlessness, my need to be thrifty, and with all the older ladies shopping for things they probably don't need, that I haven't been able to calm down yet. Grrrrr!

I do enjoy looking nice and wearing colored tights are fun, but not all the time! I want to wear ripped jeans and feel like a slob!

I also just got a cold the other day, just in time for spring break traveling, lovely . . .

BIKE POWER!

I have a bike!!!!!!!

I saw a flyer at uni today advertising a place called Bike Fit nearby campus that collects donated bikes, sells bikes at cheap rates, and fixes bikes, it had an address on the flyer so after my last class I google mapped it and walked up there. It is operated out of a charity and I walked in, picked out a bike for £40 and a lock for £10, ran back to Hillhead to grab cash I had in my room and grab my friend Hege, ran back to the place all within 45 minutes, she picked one out, we paid, and tada! we have mobility! I am going to find a helmet at a standard bike shop tomorrow.

I am so incredibly happy that I finally have a bike. It is too bad I could not have found one sooner, but this place opened within the last week, I believe, and no where else had cheap enough bikes besides the university workshop, which never had a bike available to rent when I went in there.

Bikes here have the back break on the left handlebar not the right. Probably related to the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road. Weirdos.

I am so thrilled!!!!!

Borders Country Can Bury My Heart

I have a lovely friend named Hege, from Norway, who also has lovely friends who have made the past two weekend trips wonderfully fun. This time our second pair were Heidi from France and Ingvild from Norway. The trip was with the International Society and the destination Borders Country, a.k.a that place where Scotland and England seamlessly blend.

Traveling with the International Society is an adventure in itself. One spends hours on a tour bus getting cramps, munching on snacks, and watching one or two obligatory awful movies (this time Ants and The Mask). That is perhaps the negative side. The positive side is all the beautiful scenery out the window and the unique circumstances, such as the student leader who couldn't string words together in a full sentence and giggled or "ummed" every four words (poor girl, we made fun of her so much, but she was American, mind you, so it was no second language barrier) and didn't know where we were going so our hour ride to the hostel from our last destination lasted three hours when we got lost or the Germans singing Backstreet Boys songs right behind us.

The time not spent on the bus was spent exploring Linlithogow Palace, ruins of the Stuart family castle where Mary Queen of Scots was born; Rosslyn Chapel, the chapel made famous by the Davinci Code, a place of carved wonders, serious restoration work, jealous masons and apprentices, and rumoured (according to our top notch tour guide) to be the final resting place of the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the mummified head of God, and Elvis; the town of Jedburgh (we missed entrance to the Abbey by about ten minutes); Vindolanda, highly excavated and archealogically rich ruins of a Roman fort along Hadrian's Wall; Hadrian's Wall (AMAZING); Melrose Abbey, built in 1136 A.D. for some Augustinian monks, and where three embalmed hearts have been found, one of which is honestly believed to be the heart of Robert the Bruce; and, inbetween all that, rushing through a supermarket where we were instructed to buy all our meals for the weekend because no one knew if we were going to have access to food for the next 24-some hours, as we were of course so far away (or back in time) from civilization we may have starved.

Hadrian's Wall, which was by far the highlight of the trip, was breathtaking. Due to a poorly planned, jam-packed two days of sightseeing, we only had half an hour to climb the craggy hill to scale the ancient wall that in it's time reached across the island from the North Sea in the East to the Irish Sea in the West, separating Roman Britannia from the barbarous north for the four centuries that all roads (in Britain) led to Rome.

I would go back here, to the Wall and to the region, in an instant. When the bus was winding through the hills -passing fields of sheep, dense forests, brooks, small content towns- all I could think about was how I wanted to get out of the bus and just run from summit to summit and found I had a reknewed desire to learn how to ride horses and bury my head in stories of Avalon and Lord of the Rings. I curbed my lust for this beautiful country by buying a Historical Site map of Ancient Britain which I will spend the rest of the semester pouring over until I have it memorized.

Pictures to come soon, but photography will very honestly never be able to capture the vastness of the sky, movement of the hills, or force of the wind from that mystical, invigorating country.

-Karen

Stirling and a Ceilidh

Saturday I went on a day trip with the international society to the town of Stirling, known as the "gateway to Scotland". Stirling is where the Wallace monument was built in the late 1800s to commemorate the national hero William Wallace. (Familiar with Braveheart?) I don't think I have ever experienced more wind than I did that day. There was a small child at the top of the monument and I was afraid he was going to be blown off the tower. We also toured the castle, which was quite cool as castles go, but again the wind was so strong in some places it was all I could to to not be blown off the wall. Since I went with the international society it was cheaper and we just bused out early in the morning and made it back in the evening which meant we were limited on time, so I didn't get to walk around the town much.

That night I went to my first ceilidh (I kept missing the others!). A ceilidh is a traditional Scottish dance. Dress was very casual, girls were in trousers or skirts, and men were in trousers or kilts, depending on how dressed up one wanted to get. The band was called Clachan Yell (you can find them on MySpace) and the lead would give instructions on the routine before each song. He was very difficult to understand though, and I mostly just had to watch the people near the stage to figure out what to do. Most of the dances were done in groups of four couples and was like square dancing. I ending up being in groups with a lot of fellow foreigners who didn't quite get the steps right, but no one cared and we just danced the best we could. It was so much fun -I can't wait to go to the next one. :)