Student Bloggers

By Jonny S., Museum Studies Internship Program, Scotland

Last Saturday, friends and I went out for a picnic in a park near our apartments, which was actually really nice. We just sat around and relaxed. That is, until it rained of course. Later that night, we had people over to our apartment, and than headed out to a pub, which was awesome. On Sunday, Dan, Amanda, Lexi, and I decided to watch Lawrence of Arabia in the theater, a part of the Edinburgh film fest. While the theater was packed, and the movie was really long, I still enjoyed watching it.

My week then started again... The interns, Dan, Rob, and I, were taken to Hopetoun House, the place we will be working at in the next few weeks, to meet the manager and check out the grounds. Hopetoun House is an estate with a large house and an even bigger backyard that overlooks the Forth bay. Seeing the house, and knowing that I would be working there, was very exciting. I knew from this visit that the coming weeks would be the best days of my summer. We ended the day back in Edinburgh, meeting with our instructor, David, about the museums we had visited.

On Tuesday we had history class, which was one of the longest ones I had ever experienced, about three hours. It was important because we got through a lot like the early kings and queens of Scotland, such as Robert the Bruce and Mary Queen of Scots. After that, Dan, Rob, and I went back to the National Museum of Scotland with David. Except this time, we visited a special exhibit called Celts. This exhibit was all about the mystery of the Celts in the British Isles and showcased ancient artifacts. It wasn’t the best exhibit and David didn’t really like it, but it was really cool to see a new perspective on the ancient Celts.

The next day, David decided to take us to three art exhibitions around the city. Our first stop was at the National Gallery, which featured nature in art. The paintings were really beautiful, yet the exhibition didn’t really feel like nature. The second exhibition was at a modern art center. It had some interesting sculptures, as far as modern art goes, but it was still fun to see. The last exhibition, however, was my favorite, the Endarkenment exhibit. This exhibit showed a darker side to Scottish art. It was very interesting and kind of creepy, but it was really cool. Afterwards, some of the others and I went to a museum called The People’s Story. This museum talked about the daily lives of commoners in Edinburgh history. The exhibit showed differences between the drama of the kings and queens compared to the regular people, which was pretty cool.

After a long night of searching, we finally found a pub doing a pub-quiz. This was basically a team trivia quiz in which we were asked about different topics and whoever won got beer. Regretful to say, we lost.

The next day, we had our history class again, in which we talked all about the Jacobite Rebellion. This was a very interesting time in Scottish history, which is talked about a lot in Scotland so of course I was interested. After that, we walked with our instructor, Jen, to the National Portrait Gallery. I had already been there, but it was fun to go again since it was in New Town. Later that day, we joined David back at the National Museum to address some other criticisms he had of the exhibits, which was pretty interesting.

Friday had come again and we had another excursion with everyone. This time we went further away than we had ever gone before, closer to the northeastern coast of Scotland to Angus. This trip was a bit different from our other two excursions because instead of going to a lot of museums, we went to visit a bunch of Pictish Stones. The Picts were a society of people who lived in Scotland from the 5^th century to the 9^th century. Pictish life and culture is fairly unknown because most of what they left behind was large stones with seemingly indecipherable ancient symbols on them. We visited a lot of these stones, walking through fields or private properties. It was cool to see over a thousand year old carvings out in the natural landscape of Scotland.

We were also able to go to the coastal town of Arbroath, where we saw the ruins of an old abbey. The ruins were massive and right in the middle of town, which was awesome. We also went to St. Vigeans, a small church on a hill where a multitude of Pictish stones were found. If I had been on my own, I probably wouldn’t have found these stones on my own so it was really cool getting to go see a lot of them. While I hadn’t gone to as many places as the two weeks before, I still felt the experience was just as great as the previous weeks.

Jonny is a student at Iowa State University and is blogging from his summer abroad with the Museum Studies Internship Program, in Edinburgh, Scotland.