Ah yes. To bring the account of my homestay to its final resting place, I must now conjure up poetry to fill the ears, honey-soaked words that describe the beauty of ... Aberdeen. Sadly, though, such visual imagery would not be appropriate, for Aberdeen, while being at times picturesque, was not a city to inspire great novels or fantastical paintings. Yet there was a certain aura of history to it that seized the imagination--and while we were stuck behind the lines of cars and tour buses pouring into Aberdeen for the day's football (that's soccer to us Americans, which came from the word "as(soc)iation"), we had plenty of time to look around. The day was windy, as many winter days here are, and the sea was dark and forebidding, with only a few brave idiots in wetsuits trying to venture past the surf.



We started our tour on the University of Aberdeen campus, where Calum's ancestors once owned about half the land. One house, Powis House, is named in honor of his ancestor who once lived there. The campus was very traditionally made laid out, with the new and old intermingling. The charming cobblestoned roads, which can turn an ankle or snap the heel of a woman's shoe, only added to the atmosphere of antiquity. The weather was drizzly and dreary, so we made short work of the campus, stopping to take a gander at the main quad, a Ottoman Empire-inspired parapet gate, and a few other oddities.



Moving on from there, we spent the rest of our visit near the harbor, where we explored a quaint little fishing village. Some of the buildings in this small community that looked out upon departing tankers had doors shorter than myself. While I felt slightly self-conscious, I did not restrict myself from peering into window after window, inadvertantly disturbing at least one occupant, who looked less surprised than stuck in a perpetual state of peevishness over the constant intrusions. Close the window shades, I say, but who listens to an American?



And with that trip coming to an end with a return into Aberdeen, we popped out of the city to meet the bus, where Keith and I joined our fellow globe-trotters (or at least Scotland-hoppers) to return to the comfort of our prison cell dorm rooms (For the record, my main ceiling light just burnt out, so I'm just a bit turned off about this room right now).

So the recount of the home stay is finished; now we can get, eventually, to the business of exploring the rest of Scotland, including the fair city of Edinburgh. Tomorrow morning I am climbing Arthur's Seat, the 800 foot peak that rises right at the edge of the city park--I'm sure I'll come back with some boffo pics. But until then...

Cheers!