The SNP, It's a Party

This week was my second to last week in Parliament. I spent it mostly on short briefs, Christmas Cards, the December newsletter, and other miscellaneous items. 

The SNP Christmas Party was Thursday night. It was so much fun. We went home from work and got ready. We walked over to the venue around 7:45. It was held in The Caves, it's a UNESCO World Heritage site. It's not underground, which I was expecting, but the walls were low archways and stone and it was very cool. The SNP is currently the majority party in the Scottish Parliament. The party was for all the SNP MSPs and their office staff. 

The party was so much fun. It started off with a speech from the First Minister. My MSP played the bagpipes for a little bit and another MSP played the guitar for a little bit. A lot of the men wore kilts, which was fun. One guy wore a sweater with a kilt and it was a great combination. 

The First Minister making his speech

I spent a lot of time talking to my MSP and the people who work in my office. They are all really friendly people and it was really nice to talk to them. My office consists of me, the other intern I work with, Josh, two office managers, Iain and Niall, and my MSP, Stuart. 

Me, Iain, Stuart, Josh, and Niall

The party went by so fast. After I talked to my office for awhile, I went and joined the Ceilidh. I knew how to Ceilidh a little bit because I had at the EAP Thanksgiving event, but it was with all other Americans who had no idea what they were doing. I had already danced one ceilidh dance that night with my two office managers. It was a fun dance that you danced in groups of three that went around in a big circle. I danced one that involved two big circles spinning and another that was two lines that involved a lot of hooking your partner's elbow and spinning around. It was so much fun. 

When the Ceilidh was over at midnight, the 'disco' started. They had a very strange playlist that was very fun to dance along to. Most of the MSPs left, but most of the office staff and interns stayed. They played everything from Nicki Minaj to Teenage Dirtbag to the Jurassic Park theme song to California Girls to 80s rock music. Everyone just jumped up and down and twirled and spun each other and danced around. There was the perfect amount of people dancing because it was crowded enough to where you didn't feel silly dancing around, but not too crowded so you still had room to dance. The only thing I worried about was that  someone's hair was going to catch on fire from all the candles they had lining the walls at ponytail level. It was great to talk to everyone throughout the night and everyone had so much fun together. The party ended at three and there was an after party, but my roommates and I were too tired, so we headed home. 

Today I gave Erik a tour of the Parliament. After work, we headed to the Scotsman, a very classy restaurant near the Royal Mile on North Bridge to have high tea. It's really fun to get tea and it is surprisingly filling. 

I got 'Famous Edinburgh' tea. We each got our own little pot of tea. We also got trays full of food. There were ham, chutney, salmon, and egg finger sandwiches (I tried all except the salmon. The egg sandwich was my favorite!). They also had scones with clotted cream and jam. For dessert there were these mini super sweet desserts. There were flapjacks, tiny vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, mini macaroons, and these little shortbread, caramel, and chocolate squares that was really good. 

After that we walked in the pouring rain back to our flat and five of us watched Mean Girls. 

This week I will just be trying to pack, clean, and shop!

Edinburgh Christmas Market and Linlithgow Palace

There is so much more that I want to see in Scotland, so I will come back! I am trying to maximize my time here so that I can see as much as possible, so the first weekend in December when we had a three day weekend we went to the Edinburgh Christmas Market, which was a blast. Yesterday, we went to Linlithgow.

This post is going to have a lot of pictures, I hope you don't mind!

November 30 was St. Andrews Day. St Andrew is the Patron Saint of Scotland so we got work off. I think we got work off because we work for the SNP. But in any case, we didn't have to go in to Parliament and it also happened to be the day that the Christmas market opened in Edinburgh. It's on Princes Street (the big shopping street near our flat) and in the gardens below the castle. The night before it opened they had a tree lighting ceremony and they lit fireworks over the castle, which me and two other interns went to. It was absolutely freezing, so when the show ended, we hurried home to defrost.

On Friday we got to the market at 3:30, which is after the sunset. It was still light out, but quickly got dark. Erik told me the market is run by some Germans, so it made sense that it looked like a Christkindlmarkt. There were little wooden booths selling knitted items,  mulled wine, and ornaments. It was packed. There were also rides.

Taken at 4:30

We then went ice skating, which was our primary goal. It was a blast. 

We also went on the Ferris Wheel!

Arthur's Seat is in the background

On the Sunday after Julianne and I got home from Barcelona, we went to Linlithgow with some of the other interns to check out Linlithgow Palace. On Saturday morning, I had a Facebook message from Oriel saying to meet at Waverley train station at 12:30, so we got dressed, walked to the train station, bought our tickets (student discount with our railcards!), and hopped on the 12:35 to Linlithgow. I really like taking the train places in Scotland. It's a pretty comfortable way to travel and you get to look at the scenery. It was only a 25 minute train ride. We got off, walked around aimlessly until we found a map, and then walked to the palace. 

Everyone at the palace was really nice. Linlithgow Palace is in ruins, but it is still really cool. It overlooked a loch and some beautiful Scottish countryside. Scotland is incredibly pretty. 

I've been to palaces that are still intact and furnished to make it look like it was back in the day. Those are really cool to tour because they're pretty and you can picture what life was like back then. However, I had so much fun exploring the palace ruins. First of all you're pretty much allowed to go wherever you want and climb on whatever you want because it's already in ruins so there aren't any like valuable breakable pieces of furniture or anything. So we spent a couple hours just wandering up every nook and cranny of the castle, running up one of the many spiral staircases, ducking through narrow hallways, wandering through open wide windowed ceilingless rooms, and looking out at the views through the glassless windows. 

It was spooky and cool and so much fun to explore. There were dark, unlit basement rooms where the floor was covered in gravel, crumbly stairs and columns, and pieces of rock sticking out from the walls. 

The best part was all the picture taking though. It just kind of started accidentally, with Oriel and I climbing on a ledge to take a picture, but we started a photoshoot. We kept taking more and more pictures and the building was so cool that I love how all the pictures turned out. We kept trying to do stranger things and we had a blast and were cracking up at all the pictures when we went through them on the train home. We took a ton of pictures and it was so much fun because we were just goofing off running around a ruined palace. 

There was also a tall tower that we climbed up to watch the sun set. The whole thing was really cool and I'm very glad we went. Julianne filtered all the pictures we took and I think it makes them look cooler, so I included those.

We got on the train home. My only complaint about the palace was how cold it was. But it didn't have any ceilings or windows or heating, and it's Scotland, so it made sense. When we got back to Edinburgh, we decided to go out to dinner. We found an Indian food place tucked off the Royal Mile. It was so delicious. It's been a while since I've had high quality Indian food. We had butter chicken, spinach chicken, creamy vegetables, tandoori chicken, and garlic naan bread. We kept saying "Naan for you" when we passed out the delicious bread and thought we were really funny. 

Today I had work and I wrote another motion about an award that was given out in the region my MSP represents. I also wrote a paragraph about the potential post-independent economy in Scotland for a Q&A my MSP is doing next week. I have a lot of papers to write for my class that are due soon, so I've been working on those as well. I have stuff going on every day this week, so it should be a good and busy week! I'm looking forward to everything!