Street art on my walk down Melville Dr.

I empathize with the person who wrote this on the street wall. I just finished week 3 of classes and realized I only have 2 weeks left! As excited as I am start working at the Scottish Parliament, first I have to survive midterms. The workload itself isn’t too bad, but doing midterm essays on top of internship essays has definitely been overwhelming. So far, I’ve done three applications, three papers, and have two presentations due for this upcoming week. I keep telling myself that it’s almost over – I know I can do this!

The best break I had this week was celebrating Burns Night. Technically, Scotland celebrates its famous poet, Robert Burns, on the 25^th, but I celebrated it as close to the date as possible. There were loads of events to choose from, but I decided to go to the Burns Ceilidh with the International Student Centre on the 22nd and the Burns Dinner with the Edinburgh Folk Society on the 28th. As always, I had a great time dancing the ceilidh and this time, it was much more enjoyable because I actually knew some of the dances! Here’s a video in case you missed the first one:

The Burns Dinner was hosted by one of my professors who runs the Edinburgh Folk Society. My entire program went and I also invited two of my friends. When we arrived, I realized that we were the only college students. But strangely, it was better that way; I felt like I got a more authentic experience being surrounded by Scottish people. Of course, to celebrate a Scottish tradition, we had to eat Scotland’s traditional dish: haggis. This time I went with the vegetarian version and it wasn’t too bad. The vegetarian one replaces the organs with oats so it was more edible. In addition to food, I also got a full dose of Scottish culture by (attempting) to sing along to some Burns songs, hearing bagpipes, and taking part in the traditional toast to Burns with a shot of whiskey.

Vegetarian haggis, nips (turnips), and tatties (potatoes)

This past week, I also had a chance to go to Scotland’s National Gallery with the other interns! Normally, I am not a huge fan of art museums. I was once at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and saw a work that had a definition of the word definition. Maybe it’s art? I just didn’t get it. But I do like paintings and the Gallery certainly had the most intricate pieces. When I first saw them, I was amazed at how big they were. However, I was even more surprised that we had the freedom to come right up to the painting and see the fine details. I’m not sure if I was allowed to take pictures (I may have seen the no photographs sign too late) but here are some of my favorite pieces:

Flowers in a White Stone Vase (1671) by Dirck de Bray. One of my favorite pieces in the gallery.

Art cabinet with Anthony van Dyck’s ‘Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine’. The details in this were amazing.

James Mayhew draws his character, Katie, into famous paintings!

This upcoming week is my second and final wave of deadlines. I can’t wait to be done! But like this past week, I also have some exciting things to look forward to including a trip to St. Andrews and my first meeting with my Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP)! I’ll let you know how it goes! Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015 at 4:07 pm and is filed under KyungSun in Scotland, Spring 2015. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.