Scotland: The land that some of my ancestors thought was crappy enough that they moved all the way across the world to get away from

Yesterday, I handed in the final exam for the course that I am teaching and taught my final lecture. This means that I am more or less finished with that aspect of my life and I must try to finish my thesis and graduate. To that end, I leave for Scotland today to attend a conference and to go to some summer school. I will be there for 17 days. I wish I could stay longer but I have to come back to mark the final exam for the aforementioned course.

There are two things that I really want to do while I am there (other than going to the conference and the school). The first is to climb Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in the UK. The second is to go to Hadrian's Wall. I want to go to Hadrian's Wall, because it is the wall that, for about 2000 years, has kept one group of my ancestors from ransacking the villages of another group of my ancestors. I want to climb Ben Nevis because I have never climbed a tallest mountain of anything (even if is is just the tallest mountain in the UK, which is still pretty wussy). Both of these things will be difficult, since I am strapped for time, but I think I will be able to do both as long as I don't have any other commitments with the summer school.

I will be updating this blog much more frequently in the future, since I expect more exciting things to be happening to me.