My first week in Edinburgh

Old College of the University of Edinburgh, where the School of Law is situated.





This bridge reminds me of the Bridge of Sighs in Oxford!

Me at the Bridge of Sighs in Oxford in 2005

The first week in Edinburgh was a bit hectic but with great fun. It feels so good being a full-time student again. Time flies when you are having fun. True.

Here are some highlights of the first week:

1. Uni life

I have a very busy schedule - I am doing a MSc in Applied Linguistics (In the Scottish education system, all master's degrees are MScs. MAs are bachelor's degrees with honours) and I have six courses in the first term (a total of 14 hours per week - plus a 2-hour French lesson!!!):

• Introduction to Sociolinguistics


• Issues in Applied Linguistics (The first two courses are taught by Professor John Joseph who was the Head of the Department of English at HKU from 1993 to 1996 and he knows some, well maybe a lot, Cantonese!)
  
• Introduction to Semantics


• Introduction to Phonology (For those who know me well, I do not like things about sounds, e.g. phonetics, phonology and even sound waves in Physics! I am having a hard time catching up with the course materials!)
  
• Introduction to Syntax (Tree diagrams! Yay!)
  
• Introduction to Discourse Analysis


• Introduction to Language Research

Having classes every day means that I cannot go on a whole-day trip! :(

2. Trips within Edinburgh

I managed to squeeze in some time to explore Edinburgh. I visited the National Museum of Scotland (http://www.nms.ac.uk/nationalmuseumhomepage.aspx) twice - there are so many things to see and for me to learn more about the Scottish history (e.g. clans, origin of place and person names, tartan, Queen Mary of Scots...etc etc). I have not seen Dolly the Sheep yet as some parts of the museum is closed for development.

The Maiden - the beheading machine used in Edinburgh

With some horrible background music

Overseeing the Edinburgh City from the Roof Terrace (7/F of the musum). The Edinburgh Castle is on your left.

The other side of the Edinburgh City.

I also went to Arthur's Seat (the peak of a group of hills at the city centre) with the people from my hall, namely the Churchill House at Richmond Place in the first week.


The radical road up to Arthur's Seat


Very windy up there...you can tell from my hair!

A very big swan!


The Scottish Parliament with a strange architectural interest...


A random street scene on the way home


I have also walked past the Elephant House (http://www.elephanthouse.biz/) where J.K. Rowling sat and wrote the Harry Potter books in the back room. Some other writers like Alexander McCall-Smith are also frequent visitors to the tea house. I will definitely spend some lazy afternoons reading novels and perhaps do some creative writing there, hoping to become a famous writer someday...... By the way, food and drinks there are reasonably-priced!







Greyfriars Bobby - Man's best friend - is one of the most faithful and famous dogs. For details of the touching story, please click here http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Scotland-History/GreyfriarsBob.htm

In the coming weeks, I would like to go to the Edinburgh Castle (It seems like everyone here has been there already!) and the Palace of Holyroodhouse.

3. Daily rountine

Getting up at 8ish or 9ish (weekdays of course!) --> having quick breakfast (usually cereal or sandwich) --> rushing to uni for the morning class --> having lunch in the uni canteen (hot dishes range from 2.95 pounds to 3.6 pounds - you can have fish and chips, macaroni cheese, pasta and rice with meat - good taste, at least yummier than the meals I cook at home! Haha!) --> afternoon class --> grocery shopping at Tesco to earn points for my Clubcard --> "planning" what to eat for dinner and preparing dinner (it may take an hour) --> cooking dinner and washing dishes (it may take another hour, including chatting and practising mainly Putonghua and sometimes English with friends living on the same floor) --> beauty shower --> MSNing and trying to concentrate and do some readings --> beauty sleep (at least 8 hours required)

PS. I have already spent 108 quid (pounds!!! not HKD or RMB!) on buying textbooks - enough to get a free mug and a 5 pounds coupon from the bookshop Blackwell's......

Savouring every mouthful of the delicious dinner I cooked (Thanks Ling-yun for taking the photo and practising cooking with me in the pantry!)

Chicken and veggie stir-fry! It tasted better than you thought! :P

To be continued in next blog: Day trip to Stirling, Ceilidh dacing class, watching the Scottish play...... :)

Edinburgh, here I come!

I always feel the Chinese translation of the name 'Edinburgh' is very romantic...爱丁堡...爱(ai) means LOVE, 丁 (ding) means small and 堡 (bao) means castle...perhaps the Chinese word 爱丁堡 together can mean 'to love the small castle'???!!! Am I too romantic to think in this way?

My journey to Edinburgh started on the evening of the 15th - the day after the mid-Autumn Festival:

13-hour flight from Hong Kong to London, followed by 1.5-hour flight to Edinburgh. I watched Made of Honour (quite boring...but some parts are set in Scotland!) and a British film called Summer on the plane...also been able to sleep for a few hours which never happened to me before and it was good. Heathrow is always very busy and crowded with travellers and never fails to disappoint them - not about overbooking or losing baggage this time, but I was told to go to another counter and undergo the health control process (simply filling in a form and answering a few questions like whether or not you have done a chest X-ray etc.) when I had only less than half an hour for my connecting flight. Oh well, another amazing race to the boarding gate before it closed! (Jenny: Remember the exciting race in the Tokyo airport?!)

Edinburgh was very cold and wet in the early morning on the day of my arrival (summertime here, mind you!), and I found it so depressing. Checking in my room in Churchill House, joining a uni tour and buying groceries in Tesco were all what I did before heading to bed for a 14-hour beauty sleep. :)

The weather was much, much better on the second day - warmer, better visibility and SUNSHINE!!! (Please bear with me about the frequent weather update as I am so strongly influenced by the British weather...) I went to Adam House and finished the matriculation (i.e. registration) process, so I am now one of the University of Edinburgh's students officially! I also met all of my 12 classmates in the orientation session in the afternoon - they are from all over the world (surprisingly enough, no one from the mainland China!): Greece, Poland, Spain, Japan, Taiwan, Macau, the US, the UK and Hong Kong (that is me!)! A very interesting cultural and linguistic mix indeed! My timetable is not very impressive though - 6 courses in all five weekdays in the first term, but thank God there are no 8 am or 5 pm lessons.

Other achievements of the day included wandering around and getting lost in the city centre while locating museums, galleries, theatres, pubs and most importantly, the shopping area in Princes Street, going to the Warden's welcome dinner in the students' common room to meet some new people from all over the world (including a HKU exchange student!) and have the Indian curry dinner for free, and also applying for a Clubcard in Tesco to earn points and save some pennies! :P

Still no Internet in my room yet...No newspaper, no TV, no Internet, no MSN...seems like I am losing touch with the real world...What I saw in the paper is Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and more recently the Lloyds TSB and Halifax Bank of Scotland................