Linlithgow Palace

Out of all the cool ancient places I have been to in the general Edinburgh area Linlithgow Palace is perhaps the most structurely interesting. It was built with a thatched roof making thick walls unneeded and maked it possible for large open spaces. Along with its large open spaces the palace also has very well preserved stone works and a truly awesome net work of connecting rooms, passages and dungans.
The palace had been used by Scottish royalty and Scottish parliment for several hundred years up untill less then ninty years ago when parliment held a most or less symbalic open air meeting in the now roofless old great hall. But when the Great hall was being more heavly used back in the day there was three kichtens that supported it for meals. One of the kitchens had a walk in oven with a stair case inside of it leading to a room with a passage to one of the other kitchens.
The palace has a jail beneath the front enterance which is a stairless, ladderless pit complete with no light source and whos enterance is inside the guards gateroom. Also a wine cellar with 18 foot vaulted roof with 10 to 6 foot thick solid stone walls and back in the day it had a vault door with the newest locks of the time. So the wine cellar ended up being more protected then the jail.
This is the same castle/ palace that was on the banks of the pond I sailed on with the University club. Linlithgow is also the home of one of the only supermarket where I could find fresh cranberries, its a nice thing to know.

I suggest going to this palace, its wicked cool, less expensive the many other sites and the town of Linithgow is a very nice little place with many little shops and bars.

Pictures from Edinburgh

When ever it is a nice day in Edinburgh (not raining) I try to go out and do things in the city. Mostly walk around try to get lost, look for interesting building's roofs in the distance and find them on the street. When I do this I always bring my camra and cell phone that has more mega pixels then my actual camra with me due to Edinburgh being a extremly beautiful city and with the compliment of sun light is even more so. Being from the New England area I am used to being around lots of trees, plants and not huge massive building like I am hear. So on the weekends/ time I have off/ sunny days I go and try to find areas in the city with trees, plants and smaller buildings mostly to keep what sainity I have left safe. But even with these excersions around the city a few times a day I find my self standing at a crosswalk waiting for the walk sign to change and staring marveling at the northern sky. Its really something else, well same as normal sky just farther north. When look back down after having  these moments of looking up at the sky at these intersections theres normally anywhere from one to six people also looking up to see what I'm staring at whom are so consumed looking for the object in the sky I have spotted that they completly forget that they want to cross the street.
Well here are some photos as prevously described;

There is alot of city and there will most likely be more of these picture posts.

An American Thanksgiving in Scotland

Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November is a very important holiday in American culture. It marks the first good harvest that the pilgrims had in the 1600's. The pilgrims when they came to the new world had no idea how to grow food in the rock soil of the North East of the United States, just south of the city of Boston. The pilgrims for a couple of seasons tryed and failed to grow their own food. The Native Americans of the area watched as the strange people with powerful weapons failed to feed eachother and die of diease and lack of food. Sooner rather then later the Natives took pitty of the Europeans and taught them how to grow their own food and with alot of help the pilgrims were able to grow a full harvest. All the Natives wanted in return was for the Pilgrims to kill off the other tribe in the area they were at war with. The Pilgrims were happy to help their new friends and with their heavy firepower for the day they distroyed the opposing tribe. To celebrate their victory, friendship and the Pilgrims first good harvest they had a massive party that lasted four days which included games, trade and eating a large amount of food. The Natives brought most of the food.
To celebrate now a days we have a large dinner with family and friends where you eat untill your stomach is so packed full of food that moving/ bending in and direction causes pain. Also watch the Macy's parade, that is a very large parade that goes through New York City, watch American football, watch Charlie Brown TV special and go around the table and say what you are thankful for.
Being an American studying in Scotland during the holiday season home sickness is a real threat and to keep up with tradition I decided to host my own Thanksgiving dinner and share it with other international students studying at my University.
I wanted to make everything from scratch and on the menu was mashed white potato, mashed sweet potato, sweet potato rolls, celery and onion stuffing, apple stuffed beer soaked nine pound turkey, cranberry sauce home made and bottled, gravy, bagetts, roasted potato's and onions [dessert] apple pie, pumpkin pie and pumpkin icecream,, along with home brewed hard apple cider. I started baking the day before makingh the potato dishs and pies then Thursday between classes I cooked the rest including the stuffing that was rather difficult to make due to me never have made it before and the pure lack of the herb sage and pultry seasoning in the city of Edinburgh. Just to get the cranberries I had to go to lithlogow about three stops on the national scot-rail train.
I was entertaining eight students and due to their classes the dinner could not start untill six pm but that just gave me time to finish cooking and watch old 007 movies because I couldnt figture out how to watch the Macys parade online. There was; two Candians, two Chinese, one Scot, one English, one Singaporian and one Bulgarian for dinner. The Candians both had celebrated their Thanksgivings by roasting chickens, but you just cant replace a turkey with a chicken.
The dinner went off with out a hitch although there was many conservative eaters that might have not fully understood the the holiday of the directions I handed out when inviting them of fasting that day untill the dinner. After the main course we lost one of the Candians and the English citizen who left early. But soon after they left, we attemped to open the large bottle of the home brewed apple cider after we had finished the smaller bottles. I say attemped because we all but twisted the bottle top a couple of millimeters before the cap and the contence exploided out and covered my geusts in hard apple cidar. After the shock went away, it was pretty funny.
After a little break, I had the privelage of introduced many of my fellow students to the wonders of pumpkin pie and pumpkin ice cream that was a top rated dish among them as we watched the movie Salt and had a lovly conversation about the hieght of actors and Russian spys.

Over all it was a great night and a good learn oppertunity on how to make some of these dishes I had never made before and I beleive my geusts had a good time other then being soaked in hard apple cidar.

The clear bottle is the exploiding one! There was more food I just hadn't brought it in the room yet.

Thats right I had a pumpkin center peice.

Halloween

Halloween one of my favorite holidays, including the candy the movies the time of year and the general high spirtness of people due to the harvest season. Due to Universities and schools in the same trying to make their students lives a living hell have structured that one of my only assignments be due the morning after Halloween. Being a student above the drinking age in this country I would have like to spend the halloween drinking heavly and carrying on as my fellow student peers. So having all the time in the world I got my project done before hand and planned my Halloween day with my mind free of the clapsing fear of failer.
Halloween isn't a big thing to the native UK'ers but is big for the shops of the larger cities. This fun fact is due to the high level of internation North American student and others living in those cities. The supermarkets sell candy, cakes and decor like its going out of fashion. The other stores sell decor and costums in all shapes and form. But the night of Halloween I saw not one child in costum looking for candy or causing misdeeds, I was very disapointed.
My Halloween day plans developed as the day continued. I made plans with friends to have dinner with me before a party in the late night. But sadly my day begain with lectures, tutorials and a viste to the heavly over populated student gym. I did my research on the festive holiday spreads and foods for Halloween meals. After classes I went to the market and got my materials and started cooking. Dinner was a great seccess afterward a pal of mine and myself stumbled across the city to the late night party held by some pals that I lived with last semester. Although their costums in some part were creative the volume of adult drinks they had already consumed might have made their ability to enjoy being the people they had dressed as lower quite abit. It was a fun night and I was able to awake in the morning to hand in my assignment and attend most of my classes.

Scary food for a spooky night

FYI I dressed up like Dr. Watson, victorian vest and victorian like paints. No one at the party got it, I thought it was clear.

Semester Assignment 1 out of the 2

Due to some mistake in class organization from my University I only had two in semester papers. In total I all had to complete this semester was 3000 words of research paper. I know you must hate me, thats alright I bored enough to wish for more work. The first of the papers was due the day after on of my top favorite days of the year October 31 or Halloween for all you swinging cats/ goblins. Also being the bored person I am I also booked my sailing exploration the sunday before on the 30th. So I was determined to do no work on Halloween and was well aware that I was going to get no work done of Sunday so I opped for a pre stick and had a lock down sesssion in the library computer lab Thursday afternoon for manys hours untill I became so restless that I had to go to the gym or the numb nuts singing a song while smacking the table while searching facebook was going to get his Face Smacked in the Book infront of him and the would have been no more singing (had to add that last bit in). Friday was the same deal although I desided that It would be best to get the gym out of the way first. So went to the gym and then the library and completed about 2 3rds of the paper sourced and all. The next day Saturday was the same deal, gym library. I completed the paper, I thought and saved it to a flash drive spent my Halloween and Sunday as a free man and Tuesday came around and I realized perhaps I didn't sorce this thing right. I had sorsed it like it was a MLA business research paper, but online on the University class page it was indicating some other way. So as a normal person would do I paniced and did half MLA and half Harvard sorsing. Your probibly thinking to your self "how does that work?" Well it doesn't work and it looks redictulous, but having only alittle time let I desided it would have to do and printed it out and sent it in as it was. I thought I was done and having another paper do in the next week about three days after I had handed in this paper I had justed finished I looked back online about sorsing and found I was due to hand it in electronicly aswell and I had misseed the deadline by 12 hours. So hating myself I sent a copy in and found on the class site that for every 24 hourlate it was like only 5% off the total score so I should be alright but the end results will determine the value of my efferts.

Sailing in Scotland

As I might have mentioned I am a sailor, not the navy type, yacht type or the hello sailor type but the one to two maned small craft team and fleet racing type also the teaching type but thats a different story. I was aware that the University had a team but I was having many difficulties trying to get in touch with the students that ran it. On their website there was no email addresses for any of the students or organizers and the discription of where the socails were molded in my mind with other socails of other soceities so I ended up going to the wrong socials more then once expecting them to be the sailing clubs. But after inviting my next door nabour from back home in the States that is here for a semester of study abroad, she informed me of where the socials were being held and how to sign up. I then went to the socail fittingly at an Irish bar populated mostly by the student types, only to find out that I had missed the teams tryouts but I could sign up for intermedate lessons. So slightly flustered I signed up for a Sunday intermedate class right before one of my term papers was to be due the next day. I get to the storage incove beneath the student gym where the sailing gear is cept, grabbed a wetsuit, life jacket and spray top and headed off to the train station with the small group of sailor that signed up for this lesson.
When we got to our destination 3 stops away in Linlithgow we all entered the sailing organizations building and got changed into our wetsuits. I have never sailed in a wetsuit before and to tell you the truth dont really wont to again, there was alot of constriction if you get my drift. When we went outside I was suprised to find only a pond sized body of water to sail on, oh and there was a massive castle over looking the pond aswell making a massive wind shadow over about 80% of the water. The Universities over here sail a boat called a Firefly, I know what your thing like that TV show that should have never have been cancelled but was. But the boat its self is nothing like a spaceship sadly, Its smaller then the North American Standards 420 racing boats, infact so much smaller that the crew sits facing you with their heads pressing against the vang. There very light and have over sized sails and undersized everything else. Also a cresent rounded keel, which along with the thin centerboard makes the boat natural rocky. But it was interesting to sail and they handle very well. But for some reason which it seems no matter where I go alwasy ends up being a fact is that me along with the other biggest guy there were placed in a baot together. I have no idea why but we were and we were slow compared to the small small small students in the other boats.
After sailing for about three hours and showing off some skills and capsizing with only minutes left of the day due to things out of my controll we ended the day with the sun setting off to the side of the ruins of a large castle.

I am infact wearing a mad retro awesome lifejacket in these pics, except the one with nothing but the castle and the tree where there is no one in frame.

My First Curling Match

Being new to curling and also being a competitive athlete I was no long able just to practice. Having had four traning sessions under my belt I signed up to compete with the Universities team in Lothian (Edinburgh area) curling league. The four person team was comprized of two seasoned curlers, another newbe and myself. The other team was comprized of late forties to mid fifty year olds that had been curling from a young age. As you might geuss they were infact better then we were. Well better then me and my newbe brothern. My team were able to get some points through out the meet but we did end up losing by lets say over five points.
But I had a great time, most of the stones I throw ended up in play and half of those half went in the general area that I wanted them to. Oh also in the curling world after the match the winners buy the losers a drink. So a very socialible fourty something women bought me a coke. Not a bad day over all and I got to learn what it was to curl competitivly.