Whew!

This first week of classes has been exhausting (although that was probably made worse by spending Monday in the hospital). Grad school is weird. I do not approve of this style of seminar here in which you get a reading list with twelve+ books on it, from which you're supposed to pick and choose, thereby constructing a situation in which everybody shows up for seminar with basically nothing in common to talk about. I'm trying to develop an entirely new system for reading and taking notes from the library, because my entire undergrad/high school career was composed of writing in books purchased for the class. I most definitely cannot afford to buy twenty books a week for two classes.

On top of budget and note-taking issues, it's just overwhelming to feel like you've been reading and reading but you'll never even make it through your seminar's recommendation list, let alone make a dent in the topic. In the last five days, I've read about 7.5 scholarly books. This includes a grand total of zero for one of my two classes. My To Be Read pile is about eight books deep.

I'm hoping as I get more familiar with Edinburgh I'll find more and better alternative places to study. The library is always swamped, probably because it's all there is nearby. It's quite disconcerting to have come to Edinburgh, UNESCO World Heritage Site for architectural oldness, to a university that dates to 1583, and end up in an ugly 1960s modernist rectilinear beast of a library. My apartment is older!

But enough kvetching. I know I'm just tired (with Justin both sick and swamped by a research project, I'm doing just about everything else) and disoriented, and things will look better as I get more into the swing of things.

PS. I was going to post a video here to make up for the whineyness, but either our apartment internet or Blogger is not supporting video right now. It never rains, but it pours!

Classes; My New Modeling Career; Nana's Job

Classes have started, and the first week so far has been busy, as expected. Nana may have a short post about our Monday hospital visit, seeing as she was the one who was actually lucid throughout the day (long story, nothing major, and I'm feeling much better), but otherwise we'll probably be on a short hiatus, through Sunday or so.

In other news, earlier this week, I was invited to be a model for the University Prospectus (ie, gigantic brochure). Apparently almost no guys applied, and they thought it would look more scholarly to have a balding guy with a beard!

If you e-mail me in a few weeks, I should be able to send out some of the photos. For copyright reasons, though, I can't post them here on the blog.

Last but not least: Nana landed a cool part-time job today, working for TANDEM, a student union group that organizes free language-learning partnerships and cheap activities for students looking to improve their skills in a foreign language. Apparently, she completely rocked the interview, so hats off to her!

Internet!

We now have internet in the apartment, which means we're back in touch with the world!

Running ragged

Our last few days have been absolutely insane, as we finish the registering and inductions and meetings and all the university goodies required to matriculate at Edinburgh. Plus, we've been forcing ourselves to go to at least one big social event per evening, so forgive us if our posts are sparse and belated.

Here is your random fact of the day to make this post more valuable, courtesy of a guy I met at the History department social yesterday: Northern Ireland, like Scotland and Wales, has its own soccer team for the World Cup, as does the country of Ireland. In international rugby, however, the entire island of Ireland plays as one team, in spite of the fact that that includes two countries. It has to do with the fact that the Rugby World Cup predates the division of Ireland in 1921, whereas the FIFA World Cup postdates it.

Sightseeing in the Highlands: Culloden Field

(This is the latest post in a multi-part series on our recent trip to Inverness, Skye, and the Black Isle in the Highlands. You can find the first two posts here and here.)


Yesterday, we treated our loyal readers to the world-record briefest-ever history of Jacobitism in Scotland. Today, we visit the sight of the last chapter of the Jacobite story, Culloden Field, a soggy moor a few miles east of Inverness.

 

Bonnie Prince Charlie's defeat in the Battle of Culloden marked the end of the 1745 Rising. It was also the last land battle ever fought in Great Britain.  

As I mentioned yesterday, there were Scots on both sides of Culloden--more, in fact, on the government side than on the Young Pretender's--and partly for that fact alone, the battle and its aftermath represent one of the bloodiest episodes of Scottish history (which is saying something).

Historically, though, Culloden is most important as the final major blow to the Highland way of life, and those clans who supported the Jacobite cause were, through imprisonment, destruction of property, deportation, and outright execution, nearly erased from the Highlands.

I won't go into much detail about the battle itself: you can learn a lot more through the excellent National Trust Scotland website--or, if you happen to be in the Inverness area, at the battlefield itself. Access to the battlefield is free, and there are plenty of interpretive signs to help you make sense of the place. The visitor's centre is pricey, but excellently done, and well worth the cost for history buffs.

Today, the moor still looks much like it did in 1746, and provides an appropriately moody backdrop for the day's lessons.

 

One portion of the field includes a large cairn in memory of the fallen Highlanders, surrounded by headstones marking the various mass graves belonging to each clan.

 

  

  

A few of the order of battle markers had had flowers lain on them, presumably by the descendants of the soldiers in that unit.

 

Interestingly enough, there is little offered in memory of the government troops, in part because of the tendency of later Scottish nationalists to romanticize the Jacobite cause--though there were far fewer government casualties on the day.

Nana may have her own comments on Culloden later, but to me, Culloden was just deeply sad. It's so easy to see, in retrospect, the strong reasons that drove soldiers to fight for each side (in fact, many Scots would have had relatives on both sides), and thus all the more tragic, I think, that so many had to die for what they believed in.

As I said yesterday, Culloden and its aftermath started a 100-year flood of immigration from the Highlands to North America. As far as I've been able to learn, I didn't have any family at Culloden: though a batch of MacKinnons were involved in the campaign, they were captured the day before at Littleferry.