Ghosts and essays

The past week or so I have been somewhat busy writing two 3000 word essays for classes: one about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the other about two of Richard Wagner’s operas. Both are due next Friday. Between listening to Beethoven and reading Wagner’s completely ridiculous writings (Wagner really needs to stop), a few exciting things have happened. The most notable was probably the Chamber Choir concert on Saturday. It has really been a pleasure singing with the Chamber Choir – the standard is extremely high and the music we do is quite difficult. The concert went quite well – we didn’t get out of tune in places that had been problematic in rehearsals, and we got an excellent review in one of the local newspapers. Im sad that I will be missing the group’s tour to Malta in July, but we will be going to Saint Andrew’s (college town north of Edinburgh) this weekend to do another concert. After the Chamber Choir concert we celebrated Anna and Courtney’s birthdays with a very classy “posh party,” which required little preparation on my part because I was already wearing my classy new old suit. Two days ago I went on the “Edinburgh Ghost Tour” with Cindy and Rachel. Apparently, Edinburgh is one of the most “haunted cities in Europe” – its old stone architecture and rambling alleyways are certainly suggestive of ghostly goings on. Knowing my tolerance for horror movies, I was a little concerned about this expedition. This particular ghost tour went down into the abandoned vaults beneath the concealed bridge over the Cowgate. Apparently very poor people used to live in these lightless chambers back in days yore before they were finally sealed off sometime in the nineteenth century. I actually wish the tour had given us a little bit more of the city / area’s history – the guide mostly told us stories of the various supernatural encounters experienced by customers on the tour, the worst of which involve a ghost named “Mr. Boots” who smells like whisky and leather and pushes people in the dark when they least expect it. So yeah the ghost tour wasn’t too scary. Yesterday I hung out with Aditi Chakravarty, a Barnardite senior whom I know through voice lessons and Bach Society. Aditi was visiting friends from her junior year study abroad program in Australia who are now in Edinburgh. We had lunch at a Thai place (the Scots are very good with Indian and Thai food, but for some reason they make Chinese food very bland), and then walked to the Royal Scottish Gallery, where we hung out for a little while. IN the evening, I made curry with Rachel and Marie Clare, and enjoyed some delicious Orange Hobnobs, which I am going to miss very much upon my return (Americans just don’t have an equivalent to British biscuits). So that’s been the main excitement – I had a mild moment of culture shock the other day when I was talking to Andy from Chamber Choir and learned that the place that he works at – Ladbrokes (they are all over the place) – is not the electronics store I had though it was (lots of TVs inside), but rather a betting agency! Andy’s first college job was working as a bookie! Pretty badass.