A sparkling day of bright sunshine yet frigid temperature greeted me as I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac at Aberdeen airport, 22 hours after Daniel had whisked me away from the warm climes and familiar setting of our home in Taipei. The taxi drove me past fields of verdant green with languid, black faced sheep snug in their wooly jackets and I noticed for the first time the rows and rows, streets and streets of brilliant silver granite houses and buildings as we made our way into the city. "The Silver City" and "Granite City" tags that I'd read about now struck me up close and personal and continue to amaze me as I enter my 5th day in this beautiful Scottish city.I'm attending the IATEFL conference in Aberdeen as a little bonus in my role coordinating ESL at the school. Previously I've resisted the urge to go anywhere and have encouraged others in my department to travel in previous years, much to their delight. I decided that it was about time that I familiarized myself with the latest and greatest in English language instruction and the changing trends and paradigms that are such a part of the teacher's life (that sounds good doesn't it?!) I was also keen to gain a European and UK perspective, as the American school seems intent in just focusing on that side of the world on the far reaches of the Atlantic. I've been pleasantly surprised at how stimulating I've found some of the talks and practical sessions I've been to although some have been fairly apalling as well. I was also pleased to discover that the model of instruction we helped to pioneer at our school is still very much in its infancy here. In fact, I went to a workshop entitled "Immersion: a new and magical approach", where all the benefits of immersion and our peculiar model of "sheltered immersion", were greeted with wide eyed amazement by many of the delegates. If only I could get motivated: I'm sure the great Gurecki and I could rock their socks off over here. Anyway, enough with the teacher talk: there have been a number of other distractions!
The Atholl Hotel, not surprisingly, is a granite building of great beauty, a former very large house now divided into 40 hotel rooms of excellent quality. One big attraction is the free broadband in every room and the school laptop I brought with me has done sterling service, allowing me to make posts on Pointyhat, check the news in Taiwan and Australia and most importantly, keep up a continuing and very verbose dialogue with my darling back in Taipei! Being away for a week, especially in a foreign country and away from anyone you know is certainly an experience I hope not to replicate too often; as Cass and I have both noted this week, we have a renewed respect and insight into the lives of our single colleagues...not the best of lives, especially when you're not used to it! The hotel has lots of other features, not the least of which is an excellent restaurant which supplies me with a pre-paid sumptuous brekky each morning. I've had my fill of sausages, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, toast, Scottish tatties (kind of like pizza bread) and the infamous black pudding! I've wolfed down loads of Scottish roast beef and gravy for dinners and even tasted the equally infamous haggis the other night preceded by a very strange ceremony to honour its presentation. In fact, the breakfasts have been so large that I have only eaten 2 meals a day, but I can feel my spare tyre round the middle expanding with every meal regardless.
I have tried to offset this feeding frenzy with at least one walk to town each day and return. The walk takes about 40 minutes and the words "bracing" and "hypothermia" do spring to mind at regular intervals! The city is superbly manicured and the individual houses are works of art, so I've enjoyed the walks immensely. It has been a real treat to walk the pristine streets, down suburban roads which feature endless rows of granite houses and impeccably tended gardens and lawns. The trees and flowers are reminiscent of Japan: the cold climes encouraging fields of daffodils and streets draped with blossoming trees of white and cherry coloured flowers.
A 50 minute coach ride away are Drum and Crathes castles, both excellent examples of 16th century castles maintained to this day in nearly original condition. I caught a bus out on Saturday afternoon. It took about an hour to get there (they’re about 5km away from each other), and we were ushered out of the lesser castle, Drum, after only 15 minutes as they were closing! We had a much better tour of Crathes, a castle built in 1550 by the Burnett family. Steeped in history and with some fascinating highlights, including exquisite hand painted vaulted ceilings and beams surviving from that time, I was most intrigued by the boar’s tusk hollowed into a horn that hung above the fire in the main room. It was given to the Burnett clan in appreciation for their help by Robert the Bruce in 1300!! It was awe inspiring to wend our way through 4 floors of rooms with trick stairs, tiny slit windows and trapdoors and 7 foot thick walls all to fight off the enemy. The family actually lived in the castle right up till the mid 1950s when it was given to the National Trust. The grounds and gardens were also a credit to the maintenance crew in charge. On the way to and fro, I got a bit more of a taste of the Scottish countryside. Interlocking snakes of wee stone criss-crossed the fields of the bonnie hills of Deeside laddie (sorry, got a little carried away!) and the outer lying areas of the city were a little closer to the scenes described in Rankin novels of the poorer suburban areas of Scottish towns. In a way, it was refreshing to realize that not everyone lived in a million dollar granite showpiece!
After 22 grueling hours and missing more than ½ a day with time zone differences, I stumbled in at about 9pm Monday, Taipei time. Cass has had such a busy time with the play this weekend as well, that we’re both a bit exhausted…off to bed, may write more on reflection next week. Photos: The Atholl, granite masterpieces, nice pub and food and Crathes castle.