Just like I promised

So I promised ferry blog, I deliver ferry blog.  I am aboard the SS Stena crossing the Irish Sea as we speak, and I know my battery wont last long, (2 plugs for every 400 seats? come on, what is this, the stone age?), so I will make this short and sweet. However, I promised a shanty, and a shanty I will deliver!

The wind, they say, it is a song* that winds* through the winter

The wind, they say, it is a song that bids the soul to enter

Let us sail the seas my friend, let us sail together

The singer lasts the season long, but the song, it lasts forever

Ya know the wind...

 *to be sung in a round, starting at the markings

I figure I am about an hour out from Belfast, and I will take a turn about the deck. Check in later for more updates!

Trains!

So, this blog post comes to you courtesy of East Coast Train Lines. Yes. That is right. I am writing, and posting this on a train en route to London from Edinburgh. Hooray internet! What really blows my mind is the fact that if I wanted to I could have posted this from the bathroom of a train. Hooray Internet! Right now, according to the handy dandy in train wifi trip tracker, right outside of Darlington. Although right now, all of the English country side looks dark and gray, I am sure Darlington is a wonderful place. So I am officially done with everything in Edinburgh, so my last week here is going to be me traveling. I'll be in London for a couple of days, and then I am going to make a sojourn to Belfast. That will be an adventure, because it involves trains and ferries. Crossing the Irish sea, I will try to sing a shanty to mark the occasion. And with the rate of wifi coverage on transportation I have encountered so far, I might be able to post the sea shanty! Hooray internet!

Right now I am very jealous of the fine folks who get to sit in the first class cabin. They get a meal service, and the steward just came over the intercom saying that he will be around shortly to take their order, and that the onboard chef today recommends the Steak Salad. Pish Posh! Cheerio, I do say old chap! Sorry, had a spontaneous British outbreak. It happens. I am in a very silly mood I suppose, but I am in a very silly country. To support my silly theory I was going to post an image of the Ministry of Silly Walks, but the train-wifi is sorta slow, and for some reason it has tricked my computer into thinking we are in Sweden, so I only get Swedish Google. I originally got swedish blogger first, but I changed back to English blogger.

Anyway, that is all I am going to post for now, but keep an eye out for a couple more logs as I travel this week.

Almost done

So I am about 3 hours away from being totally done with classes in Scotland. I figured blogging about it in Black Medicine would only be fitting. I suppose this is the part of the trip when I am supposed to come up with some concluding comments. Some broad reaching summary of my time at the University of Edinburgh, or something like. Unfortunately I do not have anything like that in my head. Maybe after my exams, when I am "truly" done. I'll be able to better get a hold on my time here. In the mean time, interesting story.

This morning I visited St. Giles Cathedral. It is the "Mother Church" of the church of Scotland. I don't have any pictures of the inside, because your not supposed to take pictures unless you have a permit. And I still don't know how I feel about coming in and snapping shots all over a functioning church. Just seems out of place to me. I thoroughly enjoyed my time inside though. It is a little bit more modern, as it was heavily reconstructed during the late 1800s, but it still had that ancient feeling about it. Spent a little bit of time in the the little chapel they have set aside for John Knox. He preached there for a while, and I can see how it is the type of church he would have liked. If you don't know who John Knox is, find a book about him somewhere and read it. For better or for worse, how you think about God and governments were probably in some way shaped by his ideas. You just don't know it.

This is St. Giles. Pretty cool. If anyone ever gets a chance to visit a cathedral or an old church, do it. I don't believe that Church has anything to do with churches, but I think everyone needs a change of perspective now and then. Big churches do that.

In my head right now I have the topics from my last lecture this morning still rambling around. It was my Napoleonic History class, and the topic was "Britons?". Cultural identity has always fascinated me, especially how those play out on an international stage. I don't totally know exactly what to say about it know, but its something to mull over, and something that will probably end up on this blog sometime soon. So homework readers: can you name your cultural identity in 5 seconds? Can you explain what it means? I think most of us can't. And I think that means something. What it is I don't know. Like I said, something to think about.