Into the City

1.11.08

I have now been in Glasgow for about 4 days, and with everyday I’m learning more and more about the city. On Friday we had our second and last day of international orientation at the university. We learned more logistical information about being abroad, and in the afternoon took a bus tour of the city. Before coming to Glasgow I didn’t know what to expect of the city, but I can say I’ve been happily surprised by it. The city itself is much larger than I had previously thought it was, with a massive city center with more shops and restaurants than I would have expected. Friday night the international society held another event for us called a "ceilidh"(picture on the right) which is like the Scottish version of a ho-down. There must have been more than a hundred students there, all dancing the traditional Scottish dances. After the ceilidh was “Cheesy Pop”, which is basically an alcohol influenced middle school dance where they play tons of old songs from the 90’s the whole night. This was a lot of fun and we all seemed to meet a lot of new people that night too.

Saturday morning we got up relatively early and headed into the city center for the day. We walked around the Sauchihall Street area which is closed to cars and then moved down to Buchanan Street which is much the same just with higher-end stores (think of a Scottish version of Newbury street, but closed to traffic). We then went to the Gallery of Modern Art (below and to the left) in the city center which is free of charge. Our guides for the day were Chris and Gary, two Scottish students our friends had met in the dorms. They were extremely helpful and took us all over the place. Saturday night we went to another one of our friend’s apartment which was about a 15 minute walk from campus to teach her German roommates some American drinking games. We taught them beer pong, kings, and some other card games which they were seemed to like very much.

This afternoon we went back into the city to the 1 pound store to buy some things that we need around our apartments. I got some cups and containers, dish and laundry detergent and even some food for very cheap. After this the girls went to do some clothes shopping, and me and two of the other guys decided to explore the area a bit more. We found a great kilt store, and if I have enough money left at the end I will definitely be buying myself one! Some more of our friends met us in the city center that night to see Slumdog Millionare which was one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. Something interesting to point out is that we saw the movie in the world’s tallest movie theater! The building was literally a skyscraper filled with massive movie theaters. After the movie we went to a restaurant to watch some American football, and watched the Giants lose to the Eagles much to the dismay of my friends from New York.