Beltane Fire Festival

The Beltane fire festival was very interesting. Thousands of people attended on Carlton hill, which has fake ruins and a beautiful view of the city. The ceremony starts with the extinguishing of last years fire, and the lighting of a new fire, welcoming a new spring. The fire progresses outward, the one lightening all of the new fires. However, the performing groups are small, there were no speakers, and so many people in attendance that no one could really see or hear what was going on. The energy of the crowd, and the idea behind the festival was wonderful, but as far as pulling it off most people just went to hang out, drink, or smoke.

Happy Cats

So far I have only posted about the exciting things overseas, but I wanted to share the pictures of our cats as well; they adapted very well to being shipped overseas, and seem to be happy. We were especially worried about Gabby because of her age and dragon like attitude. But she seems thrilled to have her own room, and loves the wide window sills that let her sleep in the sun all afternoon. And then she is all rested up to cause mischeif at night.

Oban

I finally got out to the highlands! On Tuesday I went to interview for a position at the Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary in Oban, in the Western Highlands. The train ride went through Glasgow, and was gorgeous. Blue skies, water, green rolling hills, absolutely wonderful. Oban is a beautiful water front town; busy with tourist and as a port it has a thriving downtown without all the craziness of a large city like Edinburgh. The sanctuary is very nice; it is small, but does seal rehabilitation and has two resident seals and otters. The staff is very nice, easy going, but haven't had much experience with marine mammals, so my position would be to help run the rehab, training, enrichment, and research with the seals and otters mainly. The position seems to be a good fit for me if school doesn't work out (still waiting on those grants). It is also just a few hours away from Edinburgh, and it would be nice to be so close and be able to visit marc frequently, fingers crossed.

It was a busy day when I interviewed; in honor of the royal wedding tomorrow, the sanctuary had a wedding of its own. The two otters, Lewis and Isla, were married and even had a little herring cake to celebrate. However the newly weds were not very thrilled about the arranged marriage; both refused to come out of their den for the ceremony.

Happy Easter

It is a lovely spring day in Edinburgh, with all of the Japanese Cherry trees in full bloom. They are all over, and this one is particularly nice as it has both colored blossoms. It is from a grafting of Japanese cherry tree to the typical wild cherry tree of the area.

To celebrate easter, our cats received an easter egg made of yogurt and catnip. They seemed to enjoy it, and spent most of the day sleeping it off curled up in the sun.

Hippies in the trees

So most of my time is currently spent being nerdy and living in the library with Marc. He is studying for final exams next week, so we haven't been exploring much. However, he did give me a tour of the schools Easterbush campus, which has the sheep and dairy farms, vet clinic, and research institutes. Including the Roslin Institution, home of Dolly the cloned sheep. Since we were in the area we also stopped by the Rosslyn Chapel made famous in the Da Vinci Code. And tucked in the trees is also a hippie colony; a few years back they wanted to demolish a bunch of trees to create a bypass, but about 20 Edinburgh residents protested by creating tree houses and living there. It is perfectly legal to live in tree houses in the UK. I am kicking myself that I didn't have my camera; i need to start carrying it around everywhere!!!

Pics fife coastal path

Walking along the east coast of Scotland...and geocaching along the way :) We started at the base of the bridge connecting North and South Queensferry, and ended up on the other side.

Catch up on old pics - Lambing

Here are some of the pics from when I visited Marc during his lambing work.