Sundays are the worst days

I hate Sundays because I hate saying goodbye to the weekend, especially this past weekend which was exceptionally fun. I also hate dealing with being tired from the weekend and realizing all of the essay writing I need to do and being sad that I have to wait so long to have fun again.

Friday night I went to a concert that I was really excited about because it's a DJ, named Afrojack, that I really like. It was the event to be at in Edinburgh Friday night, meaning that a lot of weird people that should have not been there were. But first of all: it was in a shopping mall. They cleared out the food court, set up a couple of bars, and put a little stage at one end of the room. It looked like a low-budged middle school dance, which is really embarrassing since Afrojack is a huge name on the electronic scene. As for the people: Scottish girls were in a state I have never seen them in. They were wearing 6-inch heels and caked on the makeup. There were older people as well; some looked like they could have been parents. Also, most of the men were trying to into fights and the front was a mosh pit and when I finally got far enough back to be out of it there was a pole in my way. I also experienced a new kind of dancing that I have never seen before. A bunch of guys will form a circle, put their arms around each other, and jump around in a circle. It's bizarre and dangerous and I didn't like getting trampled on. All in all though I had a great time and am really glad I went. I was able to socialize more than I expected which was nice. It just didn't meet my expectations because if I went to a concert in Boulder of the same sort, everyone would be wearing sneakers, neon clothes, and would be dancing peacefully.

me, Jack, and Christine enjoying our time in the closed shopping mall

and the award for worst venue goes to: Ocean Terminal Shopping Centre

Rosslyn Chapel

Saturday I woke up at 8:30 after getting about 3 hours of sleep and went on a trip to the Scottish borders with Arcadia. Our first stop was Rosslyn Chapel which has some unbelievable stone carvings and was featured in the DaVinci Code movie and book. It's famous because the Holy Grail is supposedly buried somewhere in it. It is also rumored to have Mary Magdalene's embalmed body and the mummified head of Jesus. They x-rayed the whole church and didn't find anything in the pillars or anywhere else in the church; however, they did find honeycomb-like cellars buried up to 12 feet below the church. The Duke of something doesn't want anyone tampering with the vaults underneath because that is where his ancestors are buried  and he does not want to disturb them. I suppose the mystery will never be solved. The chapel is also very small because it never got finished. One of the most important and interesting carvings in the chapel are of tobacco, maize, and aloe, which were carved 100 years before Christopher Columbus ever reached the New World, suggesting that there may have been Europeans in the United States before him.

After Rosslyn Chapel we went to Melrose, had lunch, and went to Melrose Abbey. It was pretty. It was a bunch of ruins. Yeah. 

me on top of the Abbey

Melrose Abbey. The stones in the front are the only remains of the original 15th century Abbey

After the abbey we went to a tower in the middle of nowhere. It used to be owned by Walter Scott's grandparents, who lived in a farm house below it. He lived there for a while and went to the top of the tower when he was wee. It was originally built as a farmhouse and is tall, on a hill, and built out of special stone so that offered protection and lookout if the British tried to attack. It was boring, I learned nothing, and we didn't even have a good view.

Smailholm Tower

Me and Cahrissa in front of the tower

Scott's view

Our next stop was a look off of a beautiful view of Scotland where Walter Scott allegedly used to sit and contemplate the beauty of his country and write poetry and books about it.

Our last stop was another abbey called Dryburgh Abbey. It was very similar to the first abbey. I did learn that the monks had a strict vegetable only diet that consisted of kale, oats, and beer. Beer was a food in 1500. The monks also spent most of their lives praying including waking up at 1 AM to start their prayers. There were also a lot of beautiful trees. Scotland has really interesting and different looking trees. Oh, this Abbey is also the burial place of the Scott family.

Last night I went to one of the student unions called Potterrow, where they have it open late on Saturday nights. There were four bars, a lounge downstairs, and a huge dance floor upstairs. It was all "cheese" music, but it was so much fun to just dance and goof off. 

Sorry for the long post! I'll be writing essays this whole week so there probably won't be any very interesting blog posts. 

I had my all-time highest pageviews in one day when I put up my cat post. A little sad that I got 70 pageviews about cats and I usually get about 15 for posts about me...I guess people just love Brainard and Magic more than me.