Birthday weekend in the Highlands!

This past Thursday evening I attended the premiere of the Africa in Motion Film Festival here in Edinburgh which is the largest African film festival in all of Europe. It was a much bigger deal than I anticipated with a red carpet, camera men and a packed theatre. We saw the movie Uhlanga (The Mark) by South African filmmaker Ndaba ka Ngwane. Afterwards we headed out to an upscale club where they had an African DJ, free South African wine and a fashion show. The film festival continues on through this upcoming Friday with daily film showings, seminars, workshops with the producers, etc. This is the kind of event that makes me so excited to be studying at the Centre of African Studies! Where else would I find something like it, let alone people that would want to attend with me?!

In other news, I have officially submitted my first papers for the year! I was relieved for about 5 minutes and then I started worrying about the essays due in December...

As a bit of a reward for getting my work done, I went on a little trip up north through the Scottish Highlands with the university's International Society this past weekend. We traveled by bus, stopping along the way to the city of Inverness and back. The first pit stop was the William Wallace Monument in Stirling (less that an hour north west of Edinburgh). The monument was built in the mid 1850s to honor the hero William Wallace who led the Scots to victory against the Brits and King Edward I at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.

We then continued further north-west through the Glencoe Mountains and to Rannoch Moor where we were allowed off the bus to hike a bit. It was here that in 1692 the MacDonald clan was massacred by the Campbell clan in an act of extreme betrayal that is still remembered in Scotland today.

Next on the agenda was Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness! No sighting of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster but the castle ruins were pretty neat! It is thought that people lived at this spot up to 4,000 years ago but these actual ruins were not constructed until the late 1200s.

The last stop of the day was Inverness, the capital city of the Highlands. We spent the night here at a local youth hostel. It was a cute town but not nearly as great as Edinburgh!

Sunday morning we got up and made our way to Culloden Battleground just outside of Inverness. Over 2,000 Scots lost their lives here in 1746 in a battle against the British. All the men were buried in the field and you can find many large rocks that make the spot where whole clans are located.

Later in the afternoon we stopped at the Falls of Braan. Absolutely amazing! First of all, the forest smelled just like Christmas - like the 'Christmas Tree in a Can' stuff you spray in you have a fake tree but want people to think its real. Also, the sound and shear power of the water was incredible. These pictures really do not do it justice - I swear it looked a whole lot bigger and more impressive in person!

Final stop of the trip: the adorable little town of Dunkeld. Here I strolled around a beautiful cathedral and enjoyed window shopping along the (basically) only street in the town!

There are whole lot more pictures from my trip in my Brilliant Scotland Picassa album if you want to check them out!

Grad school is no joke.

Well, the past two weeks or so have been quite stressful. Grad school is officially hard. I am questioning a) why I thought going back to school would be a good idea and b) how I managed to fool the university into accepting me.  The midterm papers seemed to have crept up on me and now I am struggling to get them completed by this upcoming Friday (and here I am blogging and wasting time!). I only have two and neither are at all long so I guess I passed them off as easy. However, I am a bit nervous about grading here since the scale in general is different than in the U.S. and the expected level of writing is pretty high I have gathered. We also found out that if we get below a 60% (not the same as a U.S. 60%!) on any piece of work, we are not eligible to do an internship at the end of the programme. So much pressure! Needless to say I am spending a lot of time on these papers! My first one is a policy brief on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in the Cape Winelands for my Development Research Methods course and the second is a critique on those 'save a child with $1 a day' infomercial type commercials for my Cultures of Human Rights and Humanitarianism course. 

And to make things worse, I made the mistake of letting myself listen the Christmas music the other day even though I usually try to wait until after Thanksgiving. Now I am in the pre-Christmas/race to break productivity slump and have no motivation to do any work besides look for holiday dresses online and pinterest yummy recipes. I think I subconsciously associate cold, dreary weather with Christmas time and, well that type of weather has arrived here in Edinburgh so I feel that it is only fitting that I let myself get in the Christmas spirit. Listening to Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas' at least makes the walk to class a bit more cheery! 

Anyway, I forgot to update you on a mini trip I took two weekends ago. I went for the day to Culzean Castle, which is about 2.5 hours from Edinburgh along the western coast of Scotland. It was liberating to finally get out of Edinburgh (it was my first time outside of about a 2 mile bubble). The castle is apparently 'modern' though it's still a couple hundred years old. Again, they didn't let us take pictures inside but to be honest it wasn't that exciting. I loved much more just being outside along the water. Got to love chilly, dreary beaches! Beautiful in their own way!

If I manage to make it through Friday alive and get everything turned in, I will be going up north to the Scottish Highlands Saturday and Sunday and hopefully have a relaxing birthday up there! Look for pictures Sunday night!

MSc in Africa and International Development

I was recently asked to write a little bio on myself concerning my background, development experience and reason for choosing this program that would be displayed on the program website. Check out the MSc in Africa and International Development page if you want to read what I said, as well as check out the other cool people I will be studying alongside this year! Also for a video talking about studying at the Centre of African Studies (where I am studying!) click here! Hope this gives you all a better idea of what exactly it is I am doing in Edinburgh!