All right. The pics are working. These are from the last several days and are sort of all over the place. I'll give some quick captions and hope to flesh this post out later.

Peeps

Here's Rania, our tutor. She's Greek, posh, and about to get her PhD. She prefers long vowels and is very interested in 'the pohleeteeks of the bohdee.' We love her and hope she grades us generously.Here's Paul with Chrissy, the nice person who has broken into our clique, on our way to St. Andrews and Fife on that bus tour.Unfortunately, this crappy shot is my best picture of Chrissy that actually shows what she looks like. She's on the left grinning at Alex.Alex is hugging Simone (pronounced si-MO-nee), a lovable Italian who is one of our 'student hosts.' He likes football, jazz, and pulling Paul's arm hairs.Peter is one of the directors. He has amazing hair--it's impossible to catch the full glory on film, but I tried. He's the most English person I've ever seen. Clare, his co-director and girlfriend, is a super-cute Glaswegian. I'll have to get a picture of her tonight at the farewell party.

Parliament

Two quick shots of the new parliament building, which we got to tour on Friday afternoon. There's grass on the roofs of some of the buildings (bottom right of the first one). Originally budgeted for 80 million dollars, it ended up costing a billion. I thought it was all right. The Scots are pissed about it but they also make fun of themselves for complaining about everything constantly. Oh, and a postscript: it's going to fall down in 200 years.


Highland Games at Inverness

This dude is picking up that tree! [They call it a 'caber.'] Seriously! And then he throws it! I couldn't get a good shot of it, but the goal is to throw it end-over-end so that it falls away from you, ideally perfectly straight.This dude just threw that huge hammer (it's sort of hard to see against the green fence in the background--sorry)!This dude just threw that huge rock!Pipers, and drummers doing cool twirly things that are hard to photograph:

The dark side of the Highland Games--military recruiting. They work the young 'uns by letting them pretend to mow down the crowds with machine guns.Paul and Alex in their natural habitat.Awww.

Bus Tour to the Kingdom of Fife and St. Andrews

A couple of bridges over the Firth of Forth.Fishing stuff from the coast of Fife. These were taken right before we had the ambrosial / hellishly mouth-burning Fish And Chips.
St. Andrews as seen from the top of a ruined cathedral.

Rosslyn Chapel.

Okay, so I forgot my camera. Paul and Alex took pictures and I'll get theirs tonight.

Stirling Castle.

We toured this yesterday--it was pretty neat. We saw the various battle stuff, including holes in the stones made by muskets in the 1600s, and also watched some weavers making copies of the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. But what you really need to see is a picture that makes fun of how tall Paul is! Cause those jokes never get old! Paul is really tall though.

After we got back from Stirling, we stopped at a place called Kebab Mahal and picked up some food. We couldn't eat it right away because we were almost late for a cool lecture on modern Scottish art (the lecturer was dreamy, brilliant, and had a cute accent). The food was too hot to eat anyway--but when the lecture was over, we and the food were ready for each other. Oh my--that was some good eating. Maybe it's just because I haven't eaten any, you know, flavors, since I got here. But it was just so damn good. We went a little crazy after we got into the vindaloo. I think I did some kind of dance that I don't remember.

Tonight's the farewell party. Supposedly we're going to perform '...Baby One More Time' with re-written lyrics... witty SUISS inside jokes. None of this has actually been written, though.

My next post will be a retrospective with more pictures... and it will be published from the states! Hard to believe. Love to all of you.