Tuesday may tenth 2011

Tuesday may tenth
Skye is amazing! It is absolutely breathtaking. We woke up in Inverness, left the hostel and boarded a train towards Skye. The train ride was breathtaking. We followed the ocean pretty much the entire time. It was raining but sort of perfect. When we arrived, the van was waiting and we piled our giant backpacks into the van. When we got to the university it seemed small, what we really found out is that its even smaller. Tiana and I are roommates again, we are used to living with each other and she is really easy to live with. Our room is pretty much identical to a dorm except you get your own bathroom and small kitchenette. It even has burners a microwave and a mini fridge. It's small, but a definite upgrade from the hostel. After getting settled in, we ate dinner in the cafeteria. They offered breaded pork, salmon or eggplant parmesan. I almost got eggplant because it's my moms favorite but I went with the salmon. The cafeteria is in front of the ocean, how could you not order salmon.The food was good, I bought a crew neck from the college for £5 and it's cozy. To explain more on the college, it is called Sabhal Mor Ostaig. It is the only Gaelic speaking college in Scotland. It has fifty resident students. It Is in the middle of nowhere but it is beautiful. After dinner, we had a discussion on an article about the Gaelic language and whether or not it should have government funding to try and revive the language. It was a heated hour and a half debate that touched on the preservation of culture. It is comparable but not entirely similar to the Native American culture in the U.S. My opinions that if we offer Latin courses at alma college, Scottish colleges should offer more Gaelic. It is our heritage, history and culture. You can't deny it nor run away from it. From what i gather, the Scottish want independence and their history should treasured by honoring it's founding language. Though it could be argued that if the british government funds the preservation of one language, it should fund all languages, I think Gaelic is pretty important to Scotland and should have funding. It can be debated for hours, but the students here are very passionate about their culture and language. After the discussion Tiana, Ryan, Hunter and I decided to go to the beach to make a fire. We didn't know how to get there so we asked this random girl. Her name is Chrissy and she was very enthusiastic about speaking english and sharing the location of the beach. As she was talking about her reason for coming to this college, she was taking us through this path in the forest. I had no idea where we were going but we followed her. Trying to follow her dialect, I looked up from the path to see the ocean. And then a beach. And then a bunch of rocks  in the most beautiful, exclusive, and breathtaking beaches I have ever seen. It was foggy but you could see the mountains lining the ocean. There were purple flowers in the chiseled rocks that were perfectly placed along the beach. The waves were intense and the city across the way was all lit up and beautiful. It was getting dark and I was nervous for the walk back uphill but we went with it. Chrissy had left us to ourselves but gave us a major reason (the scenery) why someone would go to this college. We tried to make a fire but the wood was too damp. We walked along the shore climbing rocks and looking for what was ahead but decided to go back before it was too dark. When we finally got back to campus, we noticed the bar was open. Naturally, we went in and got some drinks. Then Tiana and Ryan went to get more people from alma to the bar. We then started talking to four students, one was from California, one from Toronto, one from somewhere in Scotland and one from a couple miles down the road. They were very nice and gave us some valuable information about the campus and their way of life at a Gaelic speaking university. They were musicians as well and incredibly interesting. It was a good day.