Blair Castle, Dewar's Whisky Distillery, And Getting Punched In The Face

Hello, all!

So. You're looking at the title of this post going "HwaaaaAAA?! Punched in the face? What can she possibly mean?!"

Well. I shall tell you.

But first I shall talk about what I did today, while I have your attention! :-D

I got up at 6:30 this morning, walked down to the bus stop with Erica, went to the train station in Stirling, took the 8 o'clock train to Edinburgh with the gang, and was on a bus up into the highlands from Stirling at 9:30!

We went up to Blair Castle first, which has been the home of the Dukes of Atholl since forever, pretty much. And yes. Say "Atholl" several times, 'cause it's funny!
Of course, though, they wouldn't let us take pictures in the castle (but I assure you it was really cool! Many Jacobite relics!)! So, instead, here's pictures of Erica, Amber and I OUTSIDE!!



So anyway, the castle was really cool, and next we headed about ten minutes away to Pitlichry, which is a great little town filled with OUTDOOR SHOPS GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! I bought a really cheep backpacking backpack for 19.99, and gaiters (which are things that cover the top of your boots up to your knees, and are ESSENTIAL in Scotland) for 9.99! It was great. I now have everything I need for backpacking in the highlands! I have all my own gear! This is really exciting for me. :-)

So, as I was saying, we got to see Pitlochery, and then we went to Dewar's Whisky Distillery, which was about ten minutes away, and we got to go see how whisky was made. I, being the brilliant kid I am, already knew about the barley malting process from my semester in Crops class, but the distilling process was pretty cool! If you want to see more pictures, you'll just have to WAIT, because I'm in the process of upgrading my Flickr account, thanks to my Dad, and I have to wait to get a password before I can put more pictures up!

And, lastly, I shall tell the tale of being punched in the face.

So. This is how it went, for all of you that don't already know.

I was walking with Erica, Amber and Sandy down town in Stirling on Thursday night, and we'd just come from one pub and were going to another to meet up with my flat mates for a pub quiz. We were heading for the bus stop right off the main street. All of a sudden, I see somewhere in my peripheral vision to the left, a girl get up from a group of a few others and start walking in the path between us and the bus stop. Suddenly she's saying something rather angrily (but we can't understand her, partially because of her heavy accent, and partially because of her apparently intense intake of alcohol during the early evening, this being only 8pm). Sandy and Amber quickly walk by, and Erica and I try to, but the girl waylays Erica and starts yelling at her. We still can't figure out what the problem is, and I don't want to leave Erica there by herself, obviously, so we ask the girl what the problem is. In answer to this, she shoves Erica quite hard two or three times, and I, thinking that this could be a bit of a problem, step in between them, still trying to ask the girl what's wrong, while also trying to grab Erica and get past. The girl then says "You shoudn'ta done that." and hauls off and hits me fairly hard in the jaw.

In reaction to this, I grab Erica with one hand, my face with the other, and we move down the street to where there's a bunch of people waiting at the bus stop (and as we leave we hear the girl yell "F*ckin' Yanks! Go back to your own d*amn country! We don't want you here!" so that was apparently what that was about). I was still so surprised that I wasn't quite sure what had happened, except that my eyes were suddenly watering and my lip was bleeding rather badly. Sandy asked if she should call the police, and I said no, since I wasn't sure what the procedure is for that sort of thing here. Erica and Amber flagged down the bus and we all got on, and I finally got a hold of myself before we stepped off at the other pub. My awesome room mate Will felt really bad about it, and told us that although this kind of thing is very rare, it does happen, and he was so sorry that it had happened to us.

Now, don't anybody get upset or anything! I'm fine, and everything is cool now! My lip is all healed, and the small bruise is gone, and it's just one of those interesting stories I get to tell about my time abroad. And, being an anthropologist at heart, and knowing that people are more likely to attribute poor behavior to personality instead of circumstances, I wonder if maybe something bad had happened to the girl to make her think that way about things. For all I know her dad could have been killed in Iraq two days ago, in which case I'm not sure I wouldn't have taken out my sadness in a similarly destructive way. The point is that it's a lesson to be learned, and now I'm more prepared in case anything like this should happen in the future.

I still think it's an interesting story, though. :-)

So, I'll update again as soon as anything interesting happens! This week is classes, obviously, and then this coming Saturday I'll be heading back to Edinburgh for the Six Nations Rugby Championship between Scotland and Italy! Hurrah!

Talk to you soon, folks. :-)