Merry Christmas!

Where did October go? I have no idea, but from the looks of the stores in Aberdeen November's already over as well. Either way, I've almost three weeks to account for, which shouldn't be too hard; I haven't done anything terribly exciting for a while, and only just got pictures of anything last Sunday. But news is news, I suppoose. After Skye, the Lairig were going to Glenn Nevis, near Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the British Isles. It was a popular weekend, however, so like Skye, they ended up having to draw names to see who would go after committee members. My name was not drawn, and while I wanted to get up Ben Nevis pretty bad, I was a wee bit glad for a weekend off, and the weather ended up being terrible anyway (it was apparently too windy for anyone to get up Ben Nevis, and I'm not sure what anyone actually did). I stayed at Hillhead (the dorms) and spent some quality time out with my flatmates, who'd been complaining that I went away too much and was missing all the fun back at the flat. It was a very relaxing weekend, sleeping in and lazing aboot.
The following Tuesday I got an e-mail from one of the Celtic professors about a Gaelic poetry reading by a guy from Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia has a sizeable Gaelic-speaking population, and there are pockets of Gaelic speakers all over Canada. However, they do speak a sort of preserved 19th century classical Gaelic, so it's harder to understand but still pretty much the same. The poet was Lewis MacKinnon. He read about six poems and sang a couple of songs. It was really neat to hear Gaelic poetry and songs, and to listen to the people in the room all conversing in Gaelic. I was really interested in hearing the poetry because Gaelic has long and short vowels, like Latin, and like Latin poetry, a lot of Gaelic poetry emphasizes meter, and I wanted to hear a language's poetry that was still alive, as opposed to restored and reconstructed Latin. Unfortunately, as I had anticipated may have ended up being the case, he was a more modern free-verse kind of poet, so meter didn't figure as much into his poetry as a lot of classical Gaelic literature. But it was still interesting to listen to the rhythm of the language. After his reading, the professor from Aberdeen gave him twenty pounds and had him take the audience (about six people) over to the pub where we talked about a lot of different things, mostly somehow related to Gaelic.
Thursday the Lairig put on a slideshow of the club's outings from the previous year. A lot of amazing photos of different parts of Scotland, the Swiss Alps, and the Himalayas, all places these guys go at different times of the year. Afterward, they headed down to the pub for their usual Thursday night meeting at the Prince of Wales, but I got sidetracked by Robby, a guy I met through the Lairig, who was taking his pipes to the Celtic Society meeting in the top of the Blue Lamp, another pub (everyone meets in pubs here). Robby plays Border Pipes, which aren't blown, but you use a bellows under one arm to pump air into the bag under the other arm, where you pump air through the pipes. They're smaller and a wee bit quieter than the Highland Pipes, the normal pipes you see and think of. He played two or three tunes for a couple of dances, and then the music died down to a couple of people with guitars, tin whistles, and a Bodhran (Irish drum), while other people sang Gaelic songs. That night they told me about the Ceilidh they were having, the annual Celtic Society Ceilidh, the very next night. So I bought a ticket.
Friday night, obviously, I scurried on over to the Ceilidh at the Blue Lamp, the same place the Lairig had their Ceilidh a few weeks before. I danced a piece, and talked to some people from my Gaelic class, and then met up with some people from the Lairig, oddly enough. They weren't in the Celtic Society (neither am I), but they just like a good party. While talking to them I found out a few people were going away Saturday night to do a bit of hiking on Sunday (the word on Thursday was that no one was actually doing anything, or at least anything exciting that weekend, which is why I didn't mind skipping the Lairig meeting to go to the Celtic Society meeting). I told them I'd be up for going, and Saturday night we were off.
About 6:00pm we left the dorms in the minibus, only about eight of us, and headed up to Loch Nagar, the same place we went the very first weekend. We stayed in a "proper bothy," my first bothy experience. Bothies are little traditional huts that are set up all over Scotland. They're not marked on maps, and you sort of have to know where they are, but they're perfect little huts for staying a night or two, and anyone can stay in them. There's a small group I think that maintains them, but they're all volunteer. The bothy had a fireplace, an upstairs (amazingly, this is not common), and plenty of floorspace for us to lay out. Robby brought his pipes with him, so we had some proper pipe music in the bothy, mixed in with Freddie playing guitar and people singing. This time it was mostly popular songs on the guitar, however, not Celtic music. It was a great way to spend the evening. We all finally went to bed at some point, but I don't know actually what time it was. A few of the guys (including a new member from Czech on his first trip with the Lairig) got up at about five to head up several munros. The less ambitious bunch, this time myself included, got up about nine and dragged ourselves up a munro about 10:00. I had already climbed this munro, however, it was the last munro we did on the Freshers' Trip.

Robby on the pipes.


Freddie on the gueetar.
Freddie, Zoe, and Robby on the trail.


The trail with a bit o' loch.
Rainbow! Well, it was really a snowbow, since it hadn't rained all day, and it was beginning to snow (bha sneachd ann :: it was snowing).
This is when it really started snowing, as we were nearing the top. The weather changes soooo fast. It was perfectly clear, like in the above picture, and in about five minutes you couldn't see the edge of the hill.
Then it cleared up again, but the wind was blowing really hard. It was pretty fun. Freddie's on the top next to the cairn, and Robby's on his way.More loch.

Robby avoiding the wind.
Not avoiding the wind. You could actually lean really far over and not fall when a big gust went through. I jumped up once and it took me about three feet laterally. Probably kind of stupid, but it was fun.Gle ghorm (very blue)

A wee creek next to the bothy.
The outside of the bothy, which was connected to...
An taigh (the hoose)
Taigh beagh (a wee hoose)
It was obviously a really nice day.Taken from the little dock.

The little dock.
The weather was superb until we finally decided to head home after a while at the fire warming/drying/talking/having a cuppa (tea). On our way out, though, it started to rain, then it really rained, and then it snowed.
Then it stopped.
Highland furry folk for the critter-crazy. These are protected range reindeer.This week not much has happened just yet too exciting. I did get back my first written assignment for my Gaelic Culture class, and I got a perfect 20 (I did the night before it was due and thought that I had done the whole thing wrong when I turned it in...nice surprise). Grades are all out of 20 here, and apparently a 20 is really hard to get, though I'm not sure if that's just on final grades or generally all around. Either way, I'm off to a good start. All of my oral/listening worksheets have done really well, too, in Gaelic, with an 18 the first week, 19, and finally a 20 this last week. Every Wednesday I get together with a few other people from my class and a couple of graduate students in Gaelic and practice using the Gaelic we know, playing games and just talking about the weather, how many pets we have, siblings, what time it is, etc. Between the number of people that actually show up and the number of times we've introduced ourselves to one another I should definitely have a better grasp on everyone's name...but it's good fun, and great practice.
In other news, I ordered kilt today. I'm getting the "Granite City" tartan, since I live in Aberdeen, and it's nickname is the Granite City. It's a gray tartan, obviously, with a little black and white. Hopefully I'll have it in time to wear it to my Thanksgiving get-together with Anne, the Girls' Senior Counselor from YMA this last year who's living near London, and 0ne of the other counselors; the only problem is they normally take about six weeks, but the lady at the shop said she'd try to get a rush order through (no extra charge, oddly) so I could have it in four. She made it sound like it probably wouldn't be a problem, so I hope she's right.
This weekend the Lairig are going to Glen Coe, so I'm hoping to get on and get out of town for another weekend. One of these weekends I'm going to make it to Edinburgh, and hopefully another to Glasgow, but I'm running out of weekends fast.

Tioraidh

Gaelic Phrase for the Day: Tha e fliuch agus fuar. (Tr: It is wet and cold...pretty much the default response to "How is the weather?" in Scotland)

'Scuse me, while I kiss the Skye.

I have returned (mostly) unscathed from yet another weekend with the Lairig (Aberdeen mountaineering society), and this time from arguably one of the most picturesque areas in the Highlands and Islands (weather pending, as per usual). After the ceilidh last Monday night, the rest of the week went pretty well; classes are getting more interesting. I had my first tutorial (small discussion class) with Dr. Frederic Pedersen, a Dane who specializes in Norse history during the medieval period. He looks a lot like a viking in a sport coat. The way classes are set up here are really different from the way people do it in the States. Homework assignments don't really exist; for the most part, they just give you a list of books you could read, and assume you'll read something out of some of them and call it good. I'm used to teachers telling you exactly what to read from which books and by when, whereas in my history course here all I have a list of well over 100 books concerned with various aspects of medieval life, history, economy, politics, religion, etc., and an essay topic for a paper that's due in December. At least they gave me the topic, and well in advance. We'll see if I take advantage of that. I can finally introduce myself, ask how someone is, where they're from, and count to 20 in Gaelic. In a short digression, I walked past my Gaelic teacher today on campus and when she said "Hi," in English, I replied "Feasgar math" ("Good day") in Gaelic, and I think I caught her a little off guard. She stopped in her tracks, smiled, and we had a really (really) short conversation in Gaelic (she asked how I was, I asked how she was, said "Great," and then "Bye"). But it was really cool nonetheless to have had some kind of exchange in a foreign language. Studying dead languages for two years and not paying attention in the live ones in middle and high school didn't afford me too many of those experiences. But it'll happen moor and moor before I leave, I'm sure. The Gaelic class is still going really slowly for me, but if I keep complaining and not actually doing anything the vocabulary will catch up to me real quick (so I started making flash cards today).
Now on to the exciting end of the week: my weekend. Thursday night everyone met at the Prince of Wales pub (the meeting place for the Lairig), but so many people showed to sign up for the weekend to the Isle of Skye that the committee members ended up taking down everyone's name on a small sheet of paper and putting it in a pint glass and Simon drew names for who would go. Luckily, my name was called (although I'm still hoping there was no foul play in getting my name out, since several members of the committee wanted me to go no matter what). Instead of riding in the minibus, however, like the last weekend, I rode in Jimmy Roy's car with Freddie and Zoe. Jimmy Roy owns a tiny Ford car, called a Ka, but the way the British saw "car" it sounds like a "Ca ca" when they say "Ka car." Needless to say, I was the shortest person in the Ka, and the most comfortable, regardless of the fact that my knees were touching the back of the driver's seat (which is on the right) the whole way. We drove across the whole of Scotland in five hours, stopping in Inverness to buy groceries for the weekend. It's a long drive, including passing Loch Lomond (it was too dark when we went by to take any pictures, but I could see the Loch through the dark). We got to the hostel and pretty much went right to bed after some short discussion of what people were doing in the morning. I had already agreed to go up with Matthew, the guy that I walked with on my first hillwalk with the Lairig on the Fresher's trip almost three weeks ago now. I knew he was going to take it out quick, and he had a pretty ambitious day planned for himself, doing three munros in a row all along a ridge, and then coming back down to sea level, walking around to the other side of the range, and back up to do two more. And now, for pictures.

This is a shot of our early ascent. Matthew wanted to get up at 7:00am and get a good start. This is pretty early for the Lairig, considering most of the hikes they do are up hills that aren't usually more than 4,000ft in elevation, and the huts are pretty close so the hike in isn't all that bad. But Matthew wanted to do five munros in one day, so he separated the men from the maniacs with early rise. That's him in the bottom right. Conditions weren't looking great at seven, but really not too bad for Scotland.
This is what was behind us the whole way up.
Then it started to clear a little.
And a little more...
And then it fogged up again. I have a video of how fast the clouds are moving all around us, but Blogger or my internet connection are being dumb and videos aren't uploading. We had to scramble up a lot of this loose rock to get to the main ridge, climbing over large boulders and trying not to send tiny avalanches of tiny-mid-sized ricks down on each other.

The coast of the Isle of Skye. We were in the Black Coulins, in the south of the island.

Me putting on my Gore-Tex jacket, since the wind was really picking up. I didn't get other people to take pictures of me, but when Matthew posted a bunch on Facebook I asked if I could have a few for the blog, and he said sure. So I took all the photos of me so the blog would stay focused a little more on yours truly.


Scrambling along the top ridge. If I had known it was going to be this scary, I might not have gone. I had not quite understood what everyone was talking about the night before, and everyone told me that the hills weren't difficult and "You'll be totally fine." I missed the part about two hundred foot drops on either side of wet rock in heavy (but not that heavy) wind and and fog.
Marcus and me on the main ridge on our way to a summit (I think it was actually after our first summit on our way to the second one).
Notice, mom, that while Marcus is bravely standing up, I am safely making sure I have at least three points of contact on the ridge at all times, albeit as casually as possible for the photo.

I don't know what's wrong with my face in this one. More ridge traverse.

Marcus and me on the top of Sgurr a'Mhadaidh.

Once we got all three summits (Sgurr a' Mhadaidh, Sgurr a' Ghreadaidh, Sgurr na Banachdich) that Matthew wanted to conquer, we descended back to sea level. The weather had kept getting better and better, and by the time we were back in the valley conditions were almost perfect. We went back to the hostel, since it was virtually on our way, and Marcus decided to stay while Matthew and I refuelled and headed off for the last two munros at about 1:20pm.

Scottish sheep. I thought they had extraordinarily long tails, but Matthew figured they were just normal. I'm positive they had longer tails than most of the sheep I've seen. Sheep are everywhere in Skye, just sort of roaming; there aren't even any real apparent fences for most of them.
The coast of Skye on our slow ascent hike to the last two munros.
A couple of islands just off Skye's coast.
We had to scramble about a mile up a huge rock quarry to get to the real base of the last two munros. This is from about half way up the quarry.
Matthew ascending the quarry.
Once at the top of the quarry, everything plateaus out and the mountains shoot up on the other side of this "inloch." I think this loch is more than 600meters up, and the mountains are all behind me while I'm taking this photo, facing the sea and the islands. We popped up just to the right of the photo out of the quarry.
Once we climbed the further quarry up most of the mountain to our fourth munro, we could see over the ridge to the other side of the range. Those are more islands.

We got most of the way up the fourth munro, and then hit a hard spot. We had to turn around and try a couple different ways up, and finally ended up in a section that had one scramble up a really wet slab with small holds that I wasn't particularly fond of. It wouldn't have been such a big deal, however, if it wasn't a 100ft drop below the small break in the trail. Matthew struggled a bit getting up, and then turned around and yelled "I made it look harder than it is," and I shook my head and said "I'm not too happy about this one," pointing at the drop, should I make one mistake. He understood, and left me for the top, which I was fine with. I was wondering where he was, when I heard him yell my name. I yelled back "Yeah!" and he shouted "Come down!" He had obviously gone down a different way than we had gone up, and we met up around the corner about five minutes from where he left me waiting. He reached the summit, which he said didn't get any easier as far as the scrambling was concerned, and the weather was getting worse at the top, so it was probably a good thing that I had stayed.

This is me on the main ridge on the way down. Now, of course, the weather's getting a little better. The wind was continually getting stronger, but the clouds were all gone for the most part.View on the way down. We decided not to attempt the fifth munro because of the time and light. Obviously, it's getting late.
The sun was setting, and while we needed to get off the wet, scrambly bits before it was dark, there were some really good photo opportunities, I felt. That's Matthew in the bottom.
Descending happily.
Being stupid taking sunset photos while the sun is setting...and I still have about 800 meters of descent, and two hours of light.

This is a good photo, but a bad sign.
That little pinnacle/tower/thing is neat, and this is also a good photo. Also a bad sign, as at this point the sun is not entirely set, but the mountain is obviously higher than the horizon, which means we're going to get darkness a lot sooner than if we were already down.
Matthew in the quarry, the loch to the right. We actually ascended just to the left of where he is, and then traversed to the right until we got to that small dip in the right of the photo. From there we popped up onto the top of the ridge and on to the mountain, which is not in this picture.


And this is what it looked like once we were most of the way down. I took this while we were still on some slabs, but off the steep stuff and at very low risk of getting seriously injured. The camera obviously wasn't going to do much, but the moon looked great in person. The other amazing thing, was it was a clear night, and we didn't even have to use flashlights to get back. I've never hiked or walked far solely by the light of the moon, and it's amazing how much light it gives. I've always been out with the Scouts or camping with the family in a forest where it doesn't matter, but here there aren't any trees. There also aren't ANY lights. I could see almost perfectly. It was like the sun in heavy cloud cover.
We made it back just fine, right about 8:30pm, only an hour after when we had estimated we would be back, one munro short, but four ahead (3 and 3/4 for me) of most of the other people. 13 hours of walking drains you pretty bad. We got back to the hostel and ate some dinner and joined the others in the "Box Game." The box game entails leaning over and trying to pick up a cereal box with your mouth without anything but your feet touching the ground. After everyone has done it, you tear a certian amount of the box off, and repeat the process, until you have only the near paper-thin bottom of the box. About eight of us (including me) got all the way down to the floor. It's pretty much reverse limbo, but with a lot more germ-sharing. They use it as an ice-breaker, however, so before you can attempt each time you have say something like your name, where you're from, what you're studying, etc... After normal pieces of information were exhausted, they moved on to things such as "Your first pet's name and your mother's maiden name," which rendered answers such as "Snowy Williams" and "Fuzzy Moore." Mine, "Chaucer Howard," received a prompt "Wait, your first pet's name was Chaucer!?" To which I replied (to an English person) "He was an English bulldog." "Oh, well, fair enough," was the response. Thanks, dad.

The next day, I set off again with Matthew, as well as Stephen and Jimmy Roy to attempt one more munro with Jimmy Roy, while Matthew and Stephen were going to break off at a certain point to climb:

The Impin. This is apparently an actual munro top, but soloing it is obviously a little tough. Also, as you can tell, conditions were not the best on Sunday. You don't really notice in this photo, but we're standing on a pretty narrow ridge, that the entire way down to the Impin is smooth, slick slate, and it was too wet for comfort. Stephen decided it wasn't the day to do it, and Jimmy Roy wasn't keen on the way to the other munro he and I were going to climb on the other side. We left knowing this might happen, and I don't think anyone was too disappointed in turning around. We did more than just about anyone else on Sunday, anyway, at least getting out and trying something, since most people go hard on the Saturdays and take their Sundays on the trips pretty easy.

Stephen (left) and Jimmy Roy (right). No, Jimmy Roy is not his whole first name, but yes, you do have to say his whole name every time. This was on the way back down, after all the scrambly bits. At this point we pretty much just ran down the hill (which my knees didn't like much afterward).
Just to the left of them. You can tell the weather's a bit different from Saturday.



Where we went up, and came back down (picture taken turned around on the way out).Last view of Skye. For now...
Once we got back to the hostel, we noticed the minibus was already gone, and Marcus was the only one there. Apparently, a bunch of people had driven into town instead of hiking and gone somewhere for lunch, assuming it'd be a while before we were back (we were a couple of hours earlier than we had expected, had the mountain been good to climb). However, considering the drive home, in the event that we did get back early it would have been nice for people to be there and ready to go. We waited for a while and tried to get in touch with them via the payphone outside the hostel, everyone inside (a few people were down at the beach and had come back to join us) chatting with the owners of the hostel. Finally we got a hold of them, and they were on their way back (which means about a 20-minute drive from the nearest pub). Jimmy Roy rounded up the three smallest people (Marcus, Matthew, and me) and we all piled into his car and headed for home. Admittedly, when we were walking to his car, I opened the driver's side, and everyone made fun of me. It's a problem.

This is the Saddle, which is apparently famous (it's the dipping, saddle-like part of the rock in the distance).
Loch Ness, in the daylight. We didn't pull over, and we didn't see any monsters, but we did see the look out for monsters sign (it's like the deer road signs in the U.S., except it's the silhouette of a plesiosaur. I could have gotten a better picture if British people drove on the right side of the road.

We stopped in Nairn for fish 'n chips, and then continued to Aberdeen. Once I got home I was too tired to post. I showered and went to bed. Monday I just forgot to post, and now I'm taking care of business. I practiced on Monday, and I did today, too. I found the practice room in the central building, and it's not that bad. It's just a big room with two pianos, and you get to sign up for however long and lock the door, and it's in a pretty remote hallway so I don't feel self-conscious at all. I like it a lot. Yesterday and today I pretty much just worked on long tones and Klose scale studies, just to get myself re-used to playing. I already told my exciting story about having an impromptu Gaelic "conversation" with my teacher, and that's probably the most exciting thing that's happened so far this week. I only have one class tomorrow, so I'm going to do my laundry in the morning...I have no clean clothes left. Which is probably the right way to end this post.

Tioraidh

Gaelic Word for the Day: (an) gille (pr: gil-yeh), tr: (the) boy