The Land of Kilts and Haggis

This past weekend marked my last overnight travels in the UK. On friday, my tutoiral class visited the enormous British Museum. In a turn of poor planning (that's UGA for you) and bad luck, most of the exhibits that our tutor wanted to show us were closed. Ooops! But we did get a chance to see the Rosetta Stone, which for history and classics nerds, is a big deal. Other than that highlight, the museum proved to be too hot and too crowded and made you feel as if you were being herded from room to room by Asian tourists pushing their way through with video cameras. But it was an experience to say the least. After the museum, we ate dinner (and mostly drank wine) at a lovely Greek and Turkish restuarant and talked shop with our Don.

It was a early morning on Saturday (and not just because of the wine at dinner) when we caught the 5am train to the surprisinly lovely city of Edinburgh (pronounced, somehow, as "Edinburrr." Not quite sure how that works outs....) After an excruitating 7hour train ride in which we were forced to keep changing seats (and they wonder why American tourists are so rude....they're just tired!), we finally saw some of what Scotland had to offer. Walking up and down the steep, cobbbledstoned Royal Mile, we were able to see the Edinburgh Castle (huge), St. Giles cathedral (which had bell from one of the ships of the Spanish Armada), and Holyroodhouse Palace. We learned later that J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in one of the nearby coffee shops. Too bad for us, we didn't get to see it....we were too busy shopping! (Some of you may be lucky enough to get some of the souvenirs I picked up. I wouldn't get your hopes up though....it's a select few)

We finally made it home to a rainy (surprise) Oxford and had to shower quickly and throw something cute on to meet our Tutor for drinks in the Provost's House. We finally met her Husband (The Provost as we were instructed to call him) and he proceeded to quiz us on our future life plans. In between interrogations, The Provost revealed some of the secrets of Worscester College and showed us around his home: the living room with paintings worth millions of quid, the study with a balcony overlooking the private rose garden, the dining room with the silver rowing championship cups... just your average flat. He also told us some funny stories of his term and explained the tradtion of "Scouncing." Scouncing, as it were, takes place at high table dinners as a sort of punishment for a social faux pas. For instance, if one of your mates insulted your momma, you could appeal in latin to the Provost presiding over dinner, for some sort of retribution. If your latin was correct and the offense was strong enough, the Provost would agree and bring out a Scounce, which is sort of a silver mug that holds various amounts of beer which vary from 2.5 pints to 7.5 pints. The offender would then have to drink the entire contents of the Scounce without stopping in order to correct the err of his ways. If he could not finish, he would then have to pay a fine. It's basically a glorified version of frat party hazing. To my people back in athens, happy Scouncing!