The Students Arrive, and We Immediately Send Them up Arthur's Seat

So, the real work begins! The students arrived on Thursday, around 1:00 pm, and we launched pretty quickly into three days of orientation and activities for them. We had to do kitchen duty, since they haven't been trained in their jobs yet, and I wish I'd taken a picture of Dennis in the hairnet! At least the experience of mopping an institutional kitchen made me realize, again, that no matter how hard grading papers is, I'd rather do it than food service!


We did the usual first day routine: the faculty and staff all line up on the front steps to welcome the students, who arrive en masse from the airport in Glasgow. There's a piper playing as they come off the bus, to begin to give them some Scottish atmosphere. I think it's a really nice way to welcome them -- a little bit of ritual and ceremony to help emphasize that this experience is going to be special and that this is really a program, not just classes.

So, the other two faculty standing with me are Cyndi Kernahan, who teaches psychology at UW River Falls, and Jerry Kapus, who teaches philosophy at UW Stout. It's really great to have a group of faculty all from the humanities, because we're already seeing quite a bit of overlap between the ways of thinking that our classes represent and promote. Nothing against accounting, but I think it would be hard to create a lot of "synergy" between Frankenstein and double-ledger bookkeeping!



Here they are! They piled off the bus, tired, thirsty, overwhelmed, and almost immediately started taking pictures. They come off, stare at the piper, then slowly look up and up and up at this amazing building they're going to be living in. The coo had to come and see what all the commotion was - I think she was responding to the sound of the pipes!




After two days of learning the rules and policies, the orientation culminated in a trip to Edinburgh (their first chance to use their bus passes and see how to get into the city) where we lead them down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Park for a walk up Arthur's Seat. Not all students signed up to go -- it's pretty intimidating to tackle a two-hour walk if you're not already an active person! After getting them into Edinburgh, they had to find their own way back to Dalkeith, and, I haven't checked around this morning, but I'm assuming they all made it back!


Here's where we started the climb; it actually doesn't look very intimidating from the base, because you can't quite see the very top, and you certainly can't see/predict just how very steep the first part of the climb is. The very top is 824 feet, and we made the ascent in about 40 minutes, so I'm sure you could do some kind of calculation (Rob) to figure out how steep the climb was (of course, Rob, you don't have to calculate, since you've done it yourself!).

We had an absolutely brilliant (as they say) day for the climb, too: sunny, warm, clear. I can't believe that some of the students are already complaining about the cold! All the students who chose to come along made it to the top, even the ones who'd done way too much celebrating the night before -- ah, the vigor and resiliency of youth!

Here I am at the top -- I only had to stop 8 or 10 times on the way up to catch my breath and let my heart-rate slow down a bit! It was very steep, as we took the path up past the Salisbury Crags (above -- see the tiny little people?), then the zig-zag rock "stairs" up the backside of the "rump" of the lion (from a distance, Arthur's Seat looks like a seated lion).

Standing here at the very top was a little scary, as I'm having to jostle for a spot to stand on some rocks that have been worn smooth by thousands and thousands of other walkers. One wrong move, and I would have been learning the ins and outs of the National Health Care system. To make things even more interesting, there were HORDES of flying ants at the very top, landing and crawling everywhere, so I'm trying to hold still for the picture, hang on to my waterbottle, keep the ants of off my face, and not knock Mitch and Ma (the two students there with me) down the cliff!


Dennis at the very top:
He realized why I'd been so squirmy when the ants started to swarm him, too!



Here's a small sampling of what the AMAZING views are from the top of Arthur's seat -- that's part of the city of Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth out beyond my head.

We took lots more pictures, but it takes a long time to upload them to the blog (plus, we wouldn't want to spoil the Christmas slide show!), and pictures simply can't capture the largeness of the scene.

After coming down (which took another 45 minutes or so, and really tested the resiliency of our knees), we walked back up the Royal Mile (more uphill walking!!) to Grassmarket for a pint and some onion rings at Maggie Dickson's pub, then up to Forrest Rd for a nice (but overpriced!!) array of Indian food at a place called Kurry Bar (which I don't really recommend -- the food was just not that interesting) and then caught the bus home to lie on the couch and watch CSI.

Tomorrow, classes begin. Deep breath in.

Gin