Hiking, William Wallace and the Most Scottish Kid ever

Five days, probably time for another one of these. There's also a fair amount to report here. Where to start?

Wallace Monument, from a distance

How 'bout all he hiking we've been up to? Good thing I brought those boots with me, 'cuz the kids on my floor take full advantage of the hills and woods surrounding campus. Last week we hiked up the hill to the William Wallace Monument, about half a mile off campus. I'll put some pictures up, since describing a tower is kind of redundant. It was built in the 1880's and is modeled after gothic design, and is located near Stirling in honor of the early Battle of Stirling Bridge, which Wallace won, and the later Battle of Stirling Castle, which Robert the Bruce won and which secured Scottish independence for a few centuries (and this sentence doesn't count as describing a tower since it describes tower history). Anyway, we took a good crowd up and got a picture with a man dressed as one of Wallace's men (which was actually kind of weird, you know, that he was just walking around this park at four on a thursday. Come to think of it, I'm not sure he worked there. Creep.)

Freedom!

Inside the tower and up countless flights of spiral stairs (or was it all one continuous spiral?) we learned about William Wallace, who was protector of Scotland following the death of Alexander III. Fun fact, Wallace carried a four foot long sword on display in the monument (if you can't picture four feet, it's the height of a child. No, a bigger child.) Because of this and his remaining bones (his four limbs were buried in the four corners of Scotland after he was beheaded in London) they estimate Wallace's height at about six foot six, making him three inches taller than me, his fellow Wallace, with what I imagine to be about two hundred extra pounds of muscle. The view from the top was easily the best part; you could see all the way to Edinburgh, which isn't particularly close).

Me mimicking a statue of William Wallace. Any resemblance?

One of the views from Wallace Monument

Since then, we've also been on two night hikes in the woods adjacent to campus. On the first, Lewis and I found an abandoned (and let's be honest, totally haunted) house in the woods. The next night we went back with a crowed, but couldn't find it. That's right, Loyola. This school borders on woods that change every night, forbidden forest style. UP. YO. GAME. Still, that night we did see three, count 'em, THREE (3) shooting stars. So a pretty good times for this former scout.
I have had the first day of classes for two of my classes so far; Scottish Literature and Medieval to Renaissance Literature, the latter being a lecture this morning. One interesting thing about being an English major here is that I have to read three  books a week, which I'm sure will be good for me as a writer. This week, the three include The Odyssey and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which makes me feel like I'm in senior year of high school with boy, Mr. Wagner, all over again. I'm also reading one called Beside the Ocean of Time for Scottish Lit, and I must say, it's terrific. It's by George MacKay Brown, and you should definitely check it out.
One final thing, before I end this ramble. Remember Stuart from that last blog post? He's been declared the Most Scottish Kid we know. In addition to knowing his way around Stirling post-pub visit, he pretty much sealed the deal with the sentence "My uncle is one of the top five pipers in the world." Yeah. And he plays the traditional drums that accompany bagpipes. One more thing; his clan? McLeod. WE'RE RELATED. So naturally we take turns ragging on people and coming up with slogans for White Strike (a cider so trashy it's a pound seventy-five for a Liter). I'm personally between "When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose," and "White Strike, Black Out." In any case, it's like The Blitz in your mouth, and I'll make sure to send home a bottle. Oh, he also broke some bad news to me, that I must now relay to Thomas Graham (whose name keeps coming up in this blog): Jack Daniels is distilled after a Welsh Recipe, not Scots or Irish. Looks like we gotta switch to Johnny Walker, bro (which is distilled ten minutes from this kid's house, again, the MOST Scottish.)

Stuart, The Most Scottish Kid

In other news we found out why my Charlie Bronson prison workout is appropriate and why the dorms look this way; the housing system at this university is modeled after Swiss prisons. I feel safe. Anyway, all is well here, and we're enjoying a day of rain. Tomorrow we plan to go hiking. Until then.

Life North of the Wall

So it dawns on me that I set up this blog several days before I left and have yet to post anything. This dawns on me because every now and then I see this page and theres a line on my dashboard that says "No posts yet--Get Blogging!" Hey google plus advice-- piss off! I don't need some voice from across the sea telling me what to do with my time; that's what I have a mother for. Anyway, this blog is set up to chronicle my travels or whatever since I have a very bad memory compounded by the fact that Foster's is cheaper than water in our campus run store. Did I mention that this campus runs a liquor store, a club and a bar? But enough about breakfast, I'll come back to that later. This blog really got set up because Loyola never e-mailed me back about becoming a student blogger. Apparently somebody warned them. But, as Tyler Perry's Madea once said, "I can do internet all by myself." Anyway, this post title is a reference to Hadrian's Wall, built by the Romans to keep the Scottish (at the time, Picts) from wreaking havoc on Roman conquered England and Wales (incidentally this is often considered to be the last efficiently run Italian contracting job). The blog title itself is a reference to the Legend of Korra, and together I think those titles prove that while I know a great deal about history, at heart I will never leave my parents' basement. With that, let's talk about Scotland.

I flew in this past Saturday, and got to my room and as I'm unpacking I open the window to get some sunlight, which is funny since they don't have that here. In fact, the Scots don't have a word for sunlight since most of them live their whole lives without seeing it. It was sunny a few days ago and my friend Gordon (from Glasgow) was completely disoriented. We're telling him he dreamt the whole thing so he can cope with it. What I did see out my window was, and I kid you not, a golf course and a castle. So I'm definitely in Scotland, or Disney's getting really aggressive with their theme park placement. I took a walk after I got unpacked, and I was alone since I didn't know anybody here and had fallen asleep for an hour or two from the jet lag. Except I wasn't alone because on the way out of campus was Graham construction. And then two minutes down the hill was Graham dairy. Thomas, are you following me, bro? Cuz I've got a floor if you wanna crash.

Our floor is largely American, which is pretty comical. We outnumber the Scottish kids something like 3 to 2, and we've been talking about opening up an Embassy in our kitchen, since it's just loud American 20 somethings drinking with Scottish 18 year olds. After re-reading that sentence, I'll admit that I have no idea what happens in an Embassy. The hall itself, AK Davidson isn't bad, though a bit old. All of the student housing here looks like it belongs in the former Soviet bloc, and there is indeed an East and West Wing. Guess which one they put all the Americans in, Aaron Sorkin? We've all had a good time so far and the Scots are lovely. To name a few; there's Lewis, another English student and now a fellow nerf assassin, Gordon, who has been proclaimed my son and who let me borrow his computer early on since I lied earlier when quoting Madea. There's Evie, terrified of spiders but very sweet, Heather who I run into mornings, Scott (who is indeed a Scot) the quiet kid of the bunch of us, and Stuart the cut-up, and Lucy, a girl we've adopted from East Wing. These are of course weak descriptions, but I've got limited space, so give me a freaking break. There are too many Americans to name here, so maybe I'll do a post later just introducing people on the floor, or maybe I'll just make you guess who I'm talking about. There are, after all, two American Amys and two American Toms (although the other one is technically Czech.)

Before I go, a few words (as if I could ever write just a few words) on cultural differences. I believe I mentioned that this is a wet campus, which is surprising most of all in that it's not a big deal here. Eighteen year olds can drink in the open, so if anyone ever got into trouble we'd call for help and sae them instead of leaving them when we're running from the cops. Ya feel bad yet, American colleges? They sell Stella Artois over here for cheap, and it's called wife-beater, since that's what wife-beaters drink here. Gordon asked me what wife-beaters drink in America and I said "A lot." Can you believe we pay top dollar to import what the trailer trash drinks over here? They also freaked out when I pulled out a pocket knife to cut a Mars Bar (yes, they have 'em here) in half, as apparently knife crime is bad here and knife possession is an arrest (thank you to a very drunk Gordon for explaining this to me). Perhaps the strangest cultural difference is the schooling itself, though, as the majority of your studies are made up of independent studies. In fact, while at Loyola I would attend at least two classes a day for what comes to somewhere between two and five hours of class a day, here I have four class periods in a week, for a total of six hours of class per week. It does average out though, as reading homework in a given week probably falls just north of ten hours (it doesn't help that I read slowly, or that number would be much smaller). I had a class this morning that was cancelled, and my next class falls Friday at four. So I will be free for well over 48 hours now. Prepare yourselves, Stirling. One final difference I think is worth mentioning is that Four-Loco (or something close) is alive and well in the land of the Scots, and in multiple forms. There's something called Dragon, which is an energy drink with a bit less alcohol than the loco, but there's also something called Buckfast--a caffeinated tonic wine that tastes like oil (yeah, one time I drank oil. I was preparing for the role of Greased Lightning.) Both seem dangerous, but only the Scottish kids themselves are actually having a hard time handling them, by which I mean Lewis and Gordon, who both already have good Buckfast stories (and bad Buckfast hangovers). At 18, though, who could really blame them?

There is much more that merits mentioning, but this is already waaay too long a post, so I'll fill in the blanks later. More to follow whether you want it or not, I promise, and with pictures too! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going on a bus tour of the city of Stirling, and hopefully to a good fish and chippies shop. Bye.