"I Could Have Danced All Night"

So this may seem like a  slightly odd title considering my disdain for dancing, but after experiencing the joy of traditional Scottish dance I am seriously reconsidering my opinions on the activity.

Sunday night my flatmate Emily informed me that her and her boyfriend were heading to a Ceilidh ( pronounced kay-lee, trust me I had trouble with it too) and invited me to come.  Basically a Ceilidh is a massive three hour long dance where they teach you all these old Scottish routines and play traditional music. Not exactly something I would ever get the chance to do in my normal life so I agreed to go. First thing to know about a Ceilidh is that it is incredibly intense. Like seriously I was sweating.  The dances are all really fast paced and involve a lot of running and spinning which gets pretty exhausting after a while.  Luckily they gave us a few breaks so I could rehydrate and stretch.  Another important thing to know about Ceilidhs is to wear shoes with serious tread;  I didn't and definitely caused a little bit of trouble during all the spinning and twirling...  Despite the intense workout and my slippery shoes the whole experience was incredible.  The dances were so much fun and I felt like I was in a scene from Pride and Prejudice or something, it was so great.  Although just a warning many Scottish men attend these events in kilts, and sometimes you see a little more than you necessarily want during all that spinning...

Since our classes are only five weeks long (its so weird that I only have two more weeks of class left) we've already gotten our midterm assignments so Monday I spent my day locked in the library trying to finish one of my papers.  I have to say the University of Edinburgh library puts Leavey to shame.  Its open and spacious and has huge windows out of which you can watch shirtless rugby players practice.  Between that and the success of finishing my paper it was a very pleasant library experience.  That  night I went out with a bunch of the girls in my program to a local club. Since it was a Monday there weren't that many people out but the club we went to was having an eighties night and was playing a wonderful assortment of Michael Jackson and Van Halen so needless to say we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.

Today we visited John Knox's house, he was a Presbyterian reformer during the reformation and pretty much an overall bad ass, however his house was definitely not that cool.  Apparently he only lived there for five months and the whole place is pretty small and doesn't really have that much you couldn't learn online or at one of the other reformation sights in Edinburgh.  Overall definitely one of the least exciting places I've been so far.

Tonight I'm heading over to my friend Marchant's  flat to eat some homemade Mexican food. This may be the highlight of my week considering how much I miss Mexican food, if there's guacamole I may cry of joy.  I also managed to find tequila which was a huge achievement considering the fact that no one in Scotland seems to know what it is. 

Tomorrow i head off to London for the weekend so I'll be sure to have a much more exciting blog post then!!! Talk to you all soon!