Tuesday, March 3, 2015

In Which I Try to Make Weather and School Interesting Topics to Read About

It is raining in Scotland this week. This is fine... to be expected… I might even say it is a part of the reason I chose to come to Scotland. (I'm weird, okay. Leave melancholy people alone. Let us be. We like being sad, we like clouds, we like rain. Don't try to understand us.) Of course, this rainy week I'm in the mood to be outside, to drink up some sun, to be warm. Maybe it has something to do with my family at home continually flying off to tropical destinations. Maybe it has something to do with missing beautiful places like the Ayrshire Coast, which I visited a few weeks ago, and loved.





I mean, check out that blue sky meeting that even bluer ocean, and the rocky coast? Exactly what I imagined when I thought of Scotland. There were also some castle ruins…





And some sheep chilling on a lush green field…


And a dragon to protect the coast from future viking invasions…


So, that was my throwback to happier times, about two weeks ago, when it was sunny and there was water but it was not falling from the sky.

I've had a few people (my mom, mostly) ask me about what I'm actually doing here. You know, school? As it turns out I do not actually spend all of my time traveling and taking in pretty sights and Scottish culture. Sadly, most of my time is spent in class, and studying, and writing essays, or at least trying to find the motivation to go to class, and study, and write essays.

I have only three classes here, which is quite different from home, where I generally have 5 or even 6 classes in a semester. These classes will transfer back as more credits than my classes at home (or so they told me), and I even get an added bonus of not having to take the dreaded Perspectives course, since I suppose living in a foreign country is exposing me to enough new perspectives and different cultures and ways of thinking.

Two of my three classes are English classes, and they are somewhat similar to my English courses at home. I am in a Renaissance course, which is okay but most of the works we are looking at I have read before and did not find too enlightening the first time. There's only so many times I can read Ben Jonson or Andrew Marvell without wondering why I'm even bothering when the majority of the population (non English-majors) just reads Shakespeare and maybe Milton and calls it a day, when it comes to the Renaissance. One thing that is interesting about this course is seeing how differently my professor here analyzes works than my professors at home. I'm starting to think she may be making up her analysis on the fly and it may be 100% wrong, but hey, maybe she's just interpreting the works in a more... British way? (That was me being generous. Her interpretations are wrong in any culture.)

My other English course is called "Arthurian Legends From Monmouth To Monty Python." I actually really like this one. It is all about King Arthur's court, and how Camelot and the whole story has been seen and interpreted through the years. Scots, and Brits in general, seem to have much more of a connection to these stories, as at least some aspects of it are the history of their nation. Even the parts that are clearly myth they kind of claim as history. It's interesting because I received very little exposure to King Arthur in the past. I knew the basic characters (Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, Guinevere, Mordred), and the basic plot, but that's about it. Everything I did know, I learned through books and movies I read and watched on my own, not in school.

We started out with a text from 1138, Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain then moved on through a few other books, including one of my personal favorites, Tennyson, though we read his Idylls of the King, which was much different and a few hundred pages longer than "The Lady of Shallot," my favorite of his poems, which also happens to be set in Camelot.

Now we are moving on to versions of this story that were created in modern times. We just read Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court which was actually the most disturbing. Now, as my brothers will tell you, I am not Twain's biggest fan. We have an on-going argument about whether Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the great American novel (it's not). But this was even a little far for Twain. It started out funny, but then part way through it took a dark turn and ended with (spoiler alert!) everyone dying. So that was fun. I'm still ruminating on this book, so in a day or two I may decide I loved it. Either way, we now get to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so all will be right with the world again.

My final course is a History class, called "The 'Highland Problem?': Crown-Clan Relations In The 16th Century." To be honest, I am lost in this course, because I knew nothing about the highlands except what I learned from Braveheart and Brave, and apparently most of that was wrong. I spent the first few weeks of the course trying to figure out why "MacLeod" is pronounced "McCloud." I'm still confused about that. Even though I feel like I am playing catch up to the Scots when it comes to my knowledge of highland and lowland clan interaction, I am enjoying the course because the professor is brilliant. Also, the first day she told us while she'd be asking all the Scottish students if they did the readings, she'd be asking the study abroad students where we traveled over the weekend, so she's my kind of woman. (It should be noted that she was probably joking. It should also be noted that I took what she said at face value.)

There you have it; this is what I am doing in school. Also, I feel as if this is a good time to tell you that this entire post was merely me procrastinating and not starting my Arthurian Legends essay. I have three or four essays due before and during spring break, so I am trying to work ahead (clearly this is not going well), because come spring break, my best friend and my cousin are coming to see me. And, let me just say, I have never been so excited to see anyone! It is like home is coming to me, and oh how I miss home. In fact, I think my next blog post may be a Lancaster/America appreciation post, because none of you realize how good you have it (she says, from Scotland, where she dreamt of going for a very long time). I love it here-I really do, but I miss home none the less.

This weekend I am going to Wales with my Canadian friend, Robin. Wales was not one of the places I had on my "Must-See" list, but ever since we started researching it, I have realized how incredibly beautiful it is. I think they have the best castles in the UK, like this this one, and this one, or "the most technically perfect castle in Great Britain" and we are going to see them all, or at least the three I listed. Wish us luck. Neither of us have done a multi-day trip over here, so the trains and the hostels and all the planning it takes is all a little new to us, but either way, we will have fun, because WALES.

Cheers,

Carrie

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