My linguistics teacher actually showed up to class, as did the rest of the students. Apparently, despite being a discipline that focuses on communication, the journalism department forgot to tell students with different majors the teacher wouldn’t be coming in until next week.

The class itself was fun since once we finished going over the syllabus (I’m not actually sure what they call it, it’s either a guide or a handbook) we split into groups with a worksheet and started working out the rules for both a standard Scottish accent and a less prestigious Scottish accent. I think I’ll really enjoy that class since we’ve got a decent range of UK accents, and, while I’m not the only international student, I am the only American in the class.

Wednesday I decided to go on another photo adventure in the National Museum of Scotland. Except there’s this cool looking church a little further down the street that I’d been meaning to take a picture of, and then there was a neat detail on the building a little past that. Half way down the block I gave up and decided to go on an outdoor photo adventure instead.

One of the things I ended up passing was St. Giles Cathedral. My creative writing teacher had mentioned the fact that the top of St. Giles was a crown just the day before and I was having trouble visualizing it. Then I walked down the street and with out anyone telling me that was the cathedral was like “oh THAT’S what she meant.”

I decided to go to the museum the next day, and it turned out it was a good thing I did. It was raining and kind of miserable, but I managed to make it all the way through the EARLY PEOPLES exhibit getting pictures of just about everything I wanted to, so I count it as a win.

The National Museum of Scotland continues to impress me with the way it displays its items. They had several of these metal statues/display cases that not only showed you the items of jewelry, but showed you where they would have been one the person wearing them. I’m not entirely sure how they compiled the ensembles for the statues, but it was cool to see regardless.

My next order of business was to make it down to Prince’s Street to explore the area around there. I’ve slowly been building a mental map using a combination of google and the EASY MAP my aunt sent me before I left. It’s actually been working really well and just about every time I go out the area of the city I feel comfortable navigating expands. This was another aimless photo adventure just to see what was there, so I ended up having to put several places on my mental list to explore later because my camera decided I was working it too hard and it wanted to go home and sleep.

This rather nicely sums up one of the differences that I wasn’t necessarily expecting. A lot more people here smoke a lot more often. It’s also perfectly fine to smoke in front of the entrance to a building. It’s overall an interesting study in the differences in cultural views of tobacco.
Also, streets and roads are often uneven because that’s just the way they are rather than because the city hasn’t properly maintained them. But my main point is the smoking thing.