Sunday 27 October 2013

Conich Hill, Loch Lomond

Okay I know I am way behind on updates - I've just been on several great trips in a row and need to a) upload the photos and then b) blog them but I get caught up in things like homework and classes... and other day trips. and beer pong parties. and Netflix.
Regardless...

The first leg of the Conich Hill climb.
Holly and I finally made an independent day trip to hike up Conich Hill! We had a little group of interested friends, but lives got in each others way and so the two of us went anyway. It was a miserable, grey and foggy day (not unusual) and I almost wanted to forget about the trip and raincheck it. Thank goodness Holly is more fearless than I am, and got me to hop on the train anyway. We finally used our student rail passes to get discounted tickets to Balloch from Glasgow. It was about 40 mins on the train to Balloch, which let us off in another wet and grey area of Scotland on the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. We set off in the most logical direction we could surmise and found an information center, where we got directions to the Balloch bus stance to catch our city bus to Balmaha. The total round trip from Glasgow to Balmaha only cost us about £8, and climbing the hill is free! We got dropped off the bus after about 20 mins at the base of Conich Hill, where the visitors center for the Loch Lomond & the Trossacs national park is built. We spoke to a lovely young gentleman who directed us to the path that would take us to the hill. We started up the path with our rain hoods pulled tight and our brand new waterproof hiking boots (Tip for future GCU exchange students: Mountain Warehouse on Sauchiehall street offers discount hiking/camping gear, often on sale and they also give a 10% extra discount with your student card!). The beginning of the hike is through a beautiful soft and green forested area, really showcasing some of the gorgeous flora that grows in Scotland. We got to a wooden fence with a hilarious sign warning us that sheep graze Conich Hill freely throughout the year and to please respect them. We shuffled through the fence (it was a bit complicated - ingeniously engineered so that people could fit themselves through it without the danger of sheep escaping) and sort of emerged into this vast range of mossy hills that disappeared into the thick mist.

The landscape was breathtaking. I love the soft and mossy green of the mountains in Scotland, and Conich Hill offered up the changing seasons showing us red and yellow mosses the the craggy rock as well.
The hiking path was recently groomed and was maintained beautifully. There were some wooden steps, followed by mossy hill (boasting a collection of sheep), followed by some well-kept stone steps up to a dirt path along the side of the hill's summits.



     

On the guide the Conich Hill climb was said to take two to three hours, so we were pretty prepared for that kind of effort. We had packed lunch, layered and layered and then rain-proof layered, and happily hiked further up into the fog and rain. By the time we could see the very peak of the climb, my hair was literally dripping wet, my face was soaked and my eyelashes were throwing off water droplets every time I blinked. Hiking kept us warm, but definitely not dry! I caved before the top and ate my sandwich, only to discover that the peak was a short climb from where we stopped to take a breather. We scrabbled up the wet grass and gravel and came to the very top of Conich Hill! There were plaques dedicated to deceased lovers of the hill, and Holly got to enjoy her lunch at the peak, where we overlooked the rolling hills and the shore of Loch Lomond. There was another summit not far from were we were standing, so we wandered down the hill a little and got to a bit that was closer to the shore. Amazingly, as we were taking photos of the landscape through the thick cloud, it began to clear! I won't go so far as to say the sun came out, but the clouds did lift just then. We could make out the islands just off the shore in the lake, and could finally see the little farmyard that a cattle-sounding ruckus had been coming from for almost the whole hour we had been hiking.


It was our descent that was probably the best story of the day. Adventurous young things like myself and Holly get bored with the beaten path, apparently. Over the edge of this hilltop was a water runoff, really just gravel and moss and heather. We brilliantly decided to make this our descent path rather than go back the way we had come from. Thank GOD we had our new hiking boots on. The only parts with any grip were the patches of bush that grew between the rocks. We had to keep practically crouched so that our weight was low enough to be stable climbing down. We both got stuck a couple of times as we tried to make like mountain goats and navigate down the cliffside to the grassy hill below! 

Holly scaling the cliffside on our way down from the top.
There was a French family on the path below us who must have thought "those idiots are going to die today." We had way too much fun with this part! After we finally made it to the grass at the bottom of the runoff, we decided to explore this newest hilltop, and got to the other side of it when we saw a little goat path to the main walkway! Brilliantly, we made for it not realizing that to get there we'd have to once again stumble down a gravel cliff. Again, we had way too much fun doing it and made it to safety without so much as a twisted ankle.

After we backtracked to the bottom of Conich Hill, we were sopping wet and cold from sitting motionless on the bus back to Balloch. We had about ten minutes before our train back to Glasgow arrived, so we ducked into an adorable inn by the train station for a pint to warm up. There was a fantastic real-wood fireplace and a great big cow hide rug that we sat right in front of. We made our train just barely and headed back to our Glaswegian lives. I was absolutely soaked through, and even after a hot shower and dry clothes I didn't feel properly warm again until the next day!

I'm about three adventures behind on posts, so I hope to bang them out as soon as I can. In the meantime remember to browse my photo album! The link's right at the top of the sidebar.


Wednesday 23 October 2013

Belated Scotsgiving!

Forgive me, I have been trying to figure out exactly how to do my homework lately. For instance, I have a 2,000 word paper for my E-Marketing class at the syllabus only explains that I must use course concepts... so it's been difficult to discern exactly where to begin. I've also been struggling to do my assigned lecture readings, since they come up on the lecture slides but there is no reading schedule to be found anywhere in my syllabus for the module.

Regardless, we went ahead and celebrated Thanksgiving!
The Swedes and the Finns were game, even though they'd never had a Thanksgiving before. From that angle, it's a little silly to try and explain what the point of the holiday is. At the end of the day I'm satisfied with: it's the day you eat as much as you can with a big group of people that you like hanging out with!

On a student's budget it proved more than challenging to have a Thanksgiving spread. Instead, we brought our own meals and shared anything left over. Kind of a hodge-podge of dishes, and not some that I've seen at many of my family Thanksgivings, but the sight of a full table and happy faces was really what I was after anyway. The non-Canadians were good sports about it, and we felt like we had been properly celebrated.






PS. These are Nina's disgusting candies from Finland. In Finland they love to eat things that taste horrible. They taste like salt and black licorice, and they love them so much that Esko dissolved some into his vodka so that it tasted just like them!



Monday 21 October 2013

Check-up

I never appreciated how wonderful Brock is until I had the chance to step away from home. At the opportunity to fly across the ocean and settle into a new city, school, and world for four full months, I barely hesitated to jump through the necessary hoops. It's been about six or seven weeks since my arrival in Glasgow, and adjusting has been slower going than I had imagined.

I thought of writing this post this morning, when a professor of mine asked me how I'm finding Scotland, etc, and he asked me what the biggest difference between here and home is to me. I didn't have a proper answer for him, and so I think I came off a bit unobservant or non-participatory in some way, as if I haven't noticed any difference at all. But truthfully, I had to take a moment to think of a real answer to the question.
There are many differences, and many similarities. But to answer my prof's question, I think optimism is the biggest cultural difference. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about - but the Scots seems  a perpetually positive people. Aside from shop clerks and baristas, who are consistently upbeat, the people on the street and in the university offices have the same positive attitude. Nothing seems to be worth stressing over - to some frustration on my end, when half the printers on campus are out of order and nobody seems bothered about rushing to fix them.
I was delightfully surprised when, by another spectacular failure on GCU's part I was overlooked when placing  students into workshop groups and am now four weeks behind on coursework. I went to meet with my program advisor, who went over the module expectations with me and said to just show up to the next class. Now, I am a chronic worrier and automatically spin into panic mode when everything isn't sunshine and rainbows, so I asked him outright: is this going to be a problem that I should be worried about?
He laughed. No, he chuckled with glee or something wonderful like that, and said "Nah man, it's cool!"

So I suppose to answer the question, the biggest difference to me has been attitude. People seem happier when everything isn't dependent on perfection all the time and place faith that the problems will get resolved in their own time. My frustration with GCU's administration, while justified by my organized, anti-chaos Canadian culture is actually standard procedure when you take the approach that everything will work itself out. I'll try to get used to it. But it is difficult when half the facilities on campus are broken and not fixed for weeks on end, or when the fire alarm in my building is broken and it's a long weekend, so the squealing goes on for three days before someone is reminded to fix it.

I have been getting annoyed with a lot of the workings of GCU, and most of the time try to chalk it up to the cultural difference instead of getting upset. I will pose a question and for whatever reason, it rarely gets understood correctly and the respondent will spend an unnecessary length of time explaining something to me that is irrelevant. For example, when I asked my seminar leader about how exactly to begin my essay, he proceeded to explain the importance of title pages, paragraphs, citations, etc. as if I have never written a university paper ever before. When I emailed another lecturer about the same topic, asking the same question, he rudely responded that it was inappropriate to ask for help over email and to discuss my problem in seminar. Maybe it's just me that found his response impolite and brash, but I am still quite put out about it. No matter how many times I've sought out help on my own, nobody seems to be able to give me the guidance I'm looking for. It makes my anxiety about succeeding in classes worsen, and a lot of the time I feel like I'm just on my own to figure it out. The program leaders are adamant about being available for anyone with questions, but at the moment their help seems useless to me.

Another note about my exchange: the classes offered at GCU are unlike any classes I've ever seen at Brock. I'm taking Creative Advertising in which we are given a brief each week and must pitch ideas to our professor, which is so stimulating and creative in a way unlike anything I've done at Brock. I'm also taking Radio Production in which we write and produce a full-length radio episode.These opportunities aren't available for credit at Brock in my experience. The opportunity to explore and exercise these tasks and skills is worth the cultural frustrations... so far!

Wednesday 9 October 2013

Weekend Getaway: Paris, France

I never thought Paris would be somewhere I would ever visit in my life. I guess I never thought of myself as someone who was particularly drawn to the city. But since I'm already this far, and the flight was only £30 round trip, I decided to go with Taylor, Shayna, and Holly this weekend. I fell in love after the two days we spent there. After we'd booked our flight and hostel, we discovered that we'd chosen the best weekend possible to travel to the city of light. The city opens its doors free of charge on the first Sunday of every month, so we figured that we can do most of our desired sightseeing on the Sunday of our trip. On top of that, we figured out that the Saturday night was the famous Nuit Blanche, where the city becomes one big party all night long, full of art and music all free of charge. Lucky for us, our hostel had no curfew so we were free to experience Nuit Blanche in Paris - amazing.

First things first, we boarded a bus in Glasgow on Friday morning to take us the hour-long trip to Glasgow Prestwick airport, one of the smaller international airports that RyanAir operates out of. That trip was about £5 each and a good hour or so on the top of a double decker bus. Once we arrived at the airport, our relationship with Ryanair began. We had our visas checked and went through the security check, and were spit out into the single waiting area that Prestwick had for all of its gates. We finally walked the tarmac and boarded our plane, where they told us that the aircraft was experiencing a technical difficulty and would have to be assessed by an engineer. The man sitting next to me and Taylor confessed to us that he was an aircraft engineer for British Airways - bad luck. After about a half hour they finally deboarded us (as Holly had predicted they would) and put us in yet another queue (the British are huge fans of long, non-moving lines apparently) to wait for another craft to be ready for us. So our takeoff was just under an hour later than scheduled, but none of us were bothered much - after all, we were on vacation!

The airport we landed at was also about an hour out of the city, so we boarded a shuttle for €16 that took us into Port Maillot on the North end of Paris. After we got off the bus we made a beeline for the street map of the city, and had not gotten any farther than figuring out where we actually were than a French man with his family stopped and asked us where we were headed. We weren't actually sure, so he looked up our hostel on his iPhone for us and showed us the mapped route to there. When we determined that it wasn't possible to walk, he told us how to take the metro all the way to our hostel. So our first Parisian friend was a godsend! We took a €1,70 metro adventure and came out at the Republique square under the Fontaine du Roi, just a block or two from the Hostel Absolute Paris. The city was vibrant and alive, buzzing with young people and filled with streetside cafes and open front bars. We found the hostel easily and checked in for two nights, totalling €63 each. We had booked a four-bed dorm room, so we were able to get the whole room to ourselves. We dropped our backpacks and headed out into the street, stopped at an open front cafe on the corner of the Republique and ordered a bottle of Chardonnay, crepes, cheese, and baguettes. We went to bed shortly after to rest up for our first day attempting to tour the massive city.


Paris at night
Paris in the morning





















At 9 am we got our free breakfast of croissant, milk and cereal, coffee, hot chocolate and baguette with butter and jam. We mapped our way to the first bus stop of the day with full bellies free of charge. We had pre-ordered tickets on the Hop-On-Hop-Off tour of Paris, which let us get on any tour bus we wanted and take them all over the city at our own pace. We did a drive-by of the old Moulin Rouge building, and got off at the Gare du Nord train station. We explored a little bit of that area and walked to Gard du l'Est, hopped back on the bus and took it to Notre Dame.


Notre Dame Cathedral


















I am officially a cathedra-phile (?)... Even now when I look through my photos of Notre Dame (and my past visits to Barcelona's the Sagrada Famiglia and the Glasgow Cathedral) they give me some sense of peacefulness that doesn't come with my other photos. Notre Dame was breathtaking both inside and outside. Though it was brimming with tourists, it was peaceful, serene, and respectful the entire time we were visiting. From Notre Dame we took a bus past the Hotel de Ville, and stopped at the Hotel des Invalides and the Musee de l'Armee. We couldn't go inside due to a wedding ceremony happening at the time, but we enjoyed to architecture and the cobblestone, and of course the gardens with their aged cannons bordering the property. 
Hotel de Ville

From the garden we could see the Eiffel tower, and decided to hoof it rather than wait for the next bus to come along. Along the way we stopped at four or five different souvenir shops all toting the same kinds of trinkets - Eiffel tower keychains, postcards, novelty berets, snowglobes and the like - until we finally reached the base of the legendary structure.














We had the fortunate timing to arrive just before dusk. We learned that at nightfall, the tower lights up in a glittering light show for five minutes every hour. After taking our requisite Eiffel tower photos, we ran along to find a little market where we bought a couple bottles of wine for €2 each and a souvenir Paris corkscrew, and hurried back to the other side of the tower before it got dark. We settled ourselves on the grass at the bottom of the tower, opened our wine and enjoyed the show. I took a video, if you'd like to see it: Eiffel Tower Light Show



We missed the last bus home, so we took another adventure on the metro back to Republique where Nuit Blanche was in full swing. We were exhausted, but didn't want to miss out, so we got some falafels and went to the square where there was live music and mist machines making the entire square of fog.



Day two was simiilar to the first, with different sights to see. Fuelled by our hostel breakfast, we started out with the Louvre. Since it was open-doors day, the lineup was a three and a half hour wait. When we considered all the things we could see in do in that amount of time, we decided to cross the Sienne at Pont des Arts and continue on. Pont des Arts was my favourite part of the day. One of the many bridges crossing the Sienne, this one carries a Parisian tradition of love-locks. Couples would lock a padlock to the bridge and throw the key in the river to symbolize their never-ending bond. Of course all along the bridge vendors sold padlocks, but there were a couple of oil painters and one accordion player as well.
We also hit the Musee d'Orsay, the Musee de Rodin, and the Cimetiere du Montparnasse, burial place of Baudelaire (I wanted to make it to Pere Lachaise and see Oscar Wild's gravestone, but it was too far away), before making our way again by the metro to Port Maillot. We had enough spare time to treat ourselves to a real French experience, and got a table on the street of a cafe. Ordering a bottle of red wine and dinner, we toasted to our successful weekend vacation to Paris.



If you've beared with this post this far, I'm impressed, and thank you! By clicking on the link at the top right of the page, in the column next to this post, you can browse my most recent pictures of my trip to Paris.

Thursday 3 October 2013

Ceilidh at GCU

There was an event held tonight for international students at GCU, so Taylor, Shayna, Holly, and our flatmates Gabi, Antje, Raul and Andres went to investigate the "free dinner" we had heard about. The event only cost us £3 each, and upon our arrival we were greeted by an open bar serving wine and juice. The evening began with us finding some seats, having a drink, and then being taught a "traditional" Scottish dance. After the instructions for the dance were given to whoever wanted to try learning, an accordion and drum kit would play recognizable songs like "Loch Lomond," "My Bonnie," and some of the Braveheart theme. That pretty much sums up the evening, a great price and an opportunity to get to know other international students - some even chose to dress in their country's traditional wear: kimonos, saris, etc... it was very cool. For such little money we were given a place to meet each other and get to know one another, as well as something to learn all together (the ceilidh dances are apparently super participatory, with tons of jumping and skipping and things). But I have to say the best deal was definitely the free wine, dinner, and desserts. For dinner we were served burgers with a side of haggis, neeps & tatties. The open bar also offered plates of chocolate coconut bars and some maple fudge - after my own heart.

Classes have been on for only two weeks now and I haven't put more than two hours into one. The process of organizing a timetable seems almost impossible, and the communication at GCU seems to be one of their top struggles. So I've gotten frustrated with the administration several times now, which is making me a little more tense about our trip to Paris tomorrow. Also, trying to tailor my plans to accommodate the exchange rate that brought all my savings from both summer jobs to less than the value of my one semester at Brock - even though Glasgow is a pretty cheap place to live, everywhere in the UK is more expensive than Canada.


So, this Paris trip is going to have to be creatively tailored to a low-budget tour. We luckily planned our trip on the first weekend of the month, the Sunday of which is apparently a free-entry day to many of the most popular sites in Paris. Some Googling will find us other attractions in the city that won't cost us a thing, and we've got a kitchenette in our hostel (so I'm told - we'll see).

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Loch Ness

Saturday was what I came to Scotland for! We got on a Student Tours Scotland coach bus at 8 am, with a backpack full of fruit and sandwiches, and began the three and a half hour journey into the highlands. It was actually really fun - Gary, the Student Tours leader is a gifted storyteller... or something. He kept us well entertained, and sitting at the very back of the bus with Holly, Rebecca, Isabella, Jared, Shayna and Taylor sort of felt like a throwback field trip with your friends. We drove right past Loch Lomond, which always puts the song in my head for the rest of the day. It was a beautiful foggy morning, and as we drove further toward to highlands and through Glencoe, Gary told us the truth about the Scottish mountains.
As it turns out, Scotland was once inhabited by only giants and witches (or "wetches" in Glaswegian...), and the witches were annoyed by the giants always crushing them to death. So the witches turn all the giants into mountains, and lost all their powers becoming humans. Which kind of explains why the Scots are such weirdos - they're actually Squibs. Anyway - it was worth it, because I have never seen anything like the Scottish mountains. I've never seen mountains bigger than, say, Mt Tremblant in Quebec, so seeing these massive formations was truly breathtaking. They're tremendous rock formations, all of them with some kind of waterfall or creek running down them. The rocks are covered in long, shaggy, unbelievably green grass that actually makes the whole mountain look soft and beautifully rolling. So much of the country we drove through was completely barren of any kind of settlement. It was truly wild and gorgeous.





Some shots from my seat on the bus










Ruins of Urquhart
Our first destination was the ruins of Urquhart castle in Inverness. The castle was built right against the banks of Loch Ness. It was apparently one of the best placed castles, with perfect position to defend from both land and water. I can't believe how much of the castle still stands after these hundreds of years. Both of the Historic Scotland sites I've visited so far seem to have a real investment in recreating and restoring the original conditions. Where the castle was ruined, a sketch of what could have been was always accompanying the area. For example: the stables and the pigeon house in Urquhart were just the rubble of the walls, but we could clearly make out a horse stall, and four remaining pigeon holes. The castle was also an incredible place to see Loch Ness. The lake is huge and long, and we couldn't have gone on a nicer day to see it.



Loch Ness and the highland mountains.






From the castle, we went to a sweet B&B/farm also right on the edge of Loch Ness. It was run by a lovely English woman who raised horses and highland cows, mostly to keep the grass nice an trim. The B&B was at an old pier that poked out on old stone over the lake. It was a warm day, so standing on the pier was a perfectly comfortable viewing point of Loch Ness stretching out around the property.







It was so cool to be at the farm. We had full run of the place, so Holly and I went hunting for the hilarious highland cows. I have a soft spot for cows - actually I love them. I love big animals of all kinds, and cows are so hilarious I can't help but love hanging out with them. Even more hilarious than the dairy cows of Ontario I'm used to are the highland cattle of Scotland. They are huge and lumbering as cows are, but at the same time they are woolly and super hairy - the rock stars of the cow world.

The elusive highland cow.
We found this one trying to disguise itself behind a bush, but we weren't taking no for an answer and decided to go make some bovine friends. It was a bit of an adventure through the mud and cow pies, across the stream (Holly stone-stepped, I took off my socks and shoes and walked right through it). We were a bit nervous about the horns on them, but like I said, cows are awesome. They just sort of lay there while we goofed around. 
Making new friends.

We wandered from the farm into the little town of Fort Augustus with about an hour to kill. We found a pub beside the lift locks called the Lock Inn, so we decided to take another Scottish leap: haggis. There were seven of us and we had ordered one plate to share. I'm not sure how the others felt, but I'm virtually fearless about food so I couldn't wait to dig into it. It came in two round slices garnished by berries in a whiskey mustard sauce that was perfect. Personally, I loved it and probably could have eaten the whole plate myself! It definitely will not be my last time having some while I'm here. Delicious!!!




*** Some blog updates:  Scroll down to the very bottom of this blog and see a slideshow of my entire photo album. On the sidebar you can visit my online photo album and browse all of my pictures from the trip.