Dining and Dancing

On Wednesday, President Tobey (Arcadia's president) came to Stirling as part of his trip to the United Kingdom to visit some of the many schools Arcadia students are studying at. For his trip to Stirling, Tobey visited with the FYSAE students, asking each of us what we liked best about the FYSAE program and being in Scotland. After we talked, Tobey and Hamish (the Arcadia liaison for Scottish students) took us all out for lunch in Bridge of Allan. It was nice to have a good meal (without having to cook!!) While we were there, we introduced Tobey to IRN-BRU, a Scottish soda. I personally think it's horribly sweet and sugary, but since it's so popular in Scotland, you have to at least try it. It was nice to get out for lunch, get to talk to Tobey, and help introduce him to a small piece of Scottish culture.

The next day was the ceilidh for Arcadia students. Students studying through Arcadia came from all over Scotland. It was the FYSAE students, Preview students, students from Glasgow, and some students from other universities who were partnered with Arcadia to send their students abroad. There was a dinner first. (Again, I was thrilled to not have to cook!!) It was a simple buffet style dinner, but it was pretty cool to just sit at the table, have some good food, and just talk to  everyone at the table.

Certainly not the most flattering of
pictures, but it's proof that I did, in
fact, do some dancing. 

After dinner, it was time for the ceilidh. A ceilidh is a traditional Gaelic gathering which basically involves a lot of traditional Gaelic dances. There were several Scottish dancers there to show us how to do the dances, as well as to demonstrate some of the more complicated dances that we wouldn't be dancing. It was a lot of fun, dancing to traditional Gaelic folk music. Most of the dances are high energy dances that are all about footwork. Since the girls significantly outnumbered the guys, most of the time I ended up patterned with a girl, which almost always led to questions of "Am I a guy or a girl for this dance?" Almost all the dances are dependent on male-female couples, so it was important to try to remember who was being the gentleman for each dance. I think one of the funniest things is seeing a bunch of girls saying "I think I'm the man this time."

Megan, Mike, Ian and I after the ceilidh. We always seem to
end up hanging out in our kitchen, usually until well past
ten or eleven. And these are the friends that I went frolicking
through Edinburgh with. 

The ceilidh was a lot of fun. I was glad I had done the ceilidh at Firbush, because this time around I felt like  I knew what I was doing (Kind of. I still can't really dance). We had one of the Scottish men play the bagpipes. I think he looked like my uncle Alan, so it was kind of weird seeing him play the bagpipes. But he played the more common bagpipes, and then he played the lowland bagpipes,  which are pumped full of air using a pump operated by using your arm to inflate and deflate the bag. The more common bagpipes are played simply by blowing into one of the pipes to fill up the bag. One of the girls that I assumed was part of the Arcadia program is actually a very accomplished Scottish dancer, so she did several dances and showed us all how to do one of the solo dances. All in all, we had a blast. When it was time to leave, it was eleven, and I felt I should have been tired from all the dancing, but instead I felt so alive and I just wanted to run and jump. Luckily, my friends are a lot like I am, so we 'frolicked' through the square, and then literally started running to the train station. It was awesome. We're all legally adults now, but it felt so good to just run through the streets of Edinburgh like we were little kids again. In short, another incredible night in Scotland.