Arrival in Edinburgh

Recipe: Ming Wei's Hard-boiled Eggs in Sauce.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was a dish in our first flat-mate dinner, cooked by my awesome flat-mate, Ming Wei, who brought a rice cooker that could feed about ten people, Soy Sauce, and a muffin tin when she came here from Taiwan.  Told you, awesome.  Unfortunately, none of my flat-mates seem to measure when cooking, but their stuff always turns out great.



Ingredients

Green Onion
Garlic

Ginger
Chicken legs (cooked)
Soy sauce

Sugar
Eight star (star anise)

Hard-boiled Eggs
Salt (to taste)

Instructions

Fry green onion, garlic and ginger in vegetable oil.  Then, throw the chicken legs in until they soak up the flavor.  Take the chicken legs out, add soy sauce, sugar, and eight star (star anise) and wait 30 minutes with this on low heat.  Add the eggs to the sauce.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    It seems that whenever you arrive in a new place, the first question anyone asks (well, besides, “What’s your name?”) is “Why are you here?”  In Malawi, my answer was pretty standard, “I came here to learn, to teach, and to see more of the world.”  In Edinburgh, my answer is a bit more multi-pronged.  On the surface, I am here for graduate school, studying toward a Master’s in International Development.  That, however, doesn’t go near to explaining why.
    There are many reasons why I chose to jump across the ocean for my studies.  For one thing, it’s cheaper, about three times less than a Masters in the States would have cost.  I also liked the look of the program I’m in - its interdisciplinary nature allows me to take pretty much any class in the University, so long as I can link it in some way to development (and provided there’s space, of course).  I thought living abroad for a year would be a cool opportunity, and that it would be interesting to get to know a new city and country.  Most of all though, it’s Scotland, and ever since I started visiting here when I spent a summer in London five years ago, I’ve been searching for any excuse I could find, to get back.  

My flat-mates!

    So far, I have no cause to regret this decision.  Since the moment I stepped off the plane, it’s been amazing being back in Scotland.  I knew it was going to be a good experience when the customs officer (this is customs in Edinburgh) smiled at me, welcomed me, and wished me good luck with my studies.  Riding out of the airport I shared a cab with Salome, a girl from Georgia (the country, not the state) who turned out to be in the room next to mine.  There are three other girls in my flat, and they are pretty much the best flat-mates anyone could ask for.  Wendy and Susan are from China, and Ming Wei is from Taiwan.
          The building I live in is called Mylne’s Court, and it’s situated next to Edinburgh Castle, on the Royal Mile, which is one of the main tourist streets in Edinburgh.  To get to my building you duck through a small stone archway that opens up underneath a building.  After traveling through a small tunnel, you reach a courtyard surrounded by three interconnected buildings, one of which I live in.  This means that my entire dorm, instead of lying on one street, is actually between two.  

Mylne's Court, where I live

      The buildings themselves are converted tenement houses, which means that they have some more interesting aspects to them than I feel your typical new apartment complex would have.  For one thing, the rooms themselves are formed a bit differently.  My flat-mate Susan actually has a filled-in fireplace in her room, while I have a bookshelf built into my wall.  When I first found out I was living in Mylne’s court, I was a bit afraid of what living in an older stone tenement house would feel like, but, in fact, it’s kind of nice.  It’s gothic, but paradoxically enough, it’s gothic in a welcoming and homey sort of way.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that my view is out the back of the building, over the spires of the Divinity School, on to Prince’s gardens, and back out over the city all the way to the harbor.

    Perhaps my favorite part of the building, though, is that it illustrates one of the more interesting facts about the city: Edinburgh is built on top of Edinburgh.  I was told this the day I moved in here, and saw it first hand when I crossed over a bridge and, looking down, saw another street level, thirty feet below.  More recently I took a tour called “The real Mary King’s close” where we went below a building and toured streets that had been covered over centuries ago.  At one point on that tour we went over a bridge and... you guessed it, when I looked down, I saw another street level, thirty feet below.  Thus it is, that when you enter my building, you come in on the fourth floor.  I live on the sixth floor, but on the back side of the building, and when you look down from my window, you find you are about ten stories up.  Nifty!  

View from my dorm window

    As for the school and city, both are pretty amazing.  I still haven’t quite gotten used to living in a city that still has cobblestone streets, and a handful of castles; or the fact that I go to a school that was founded before my country.  I went on a literary pub tour of Edinburgh where we went to various literary sites in the city - punctuated by breaks at pubs with live folk music - and it was incredible to see how many of these references exist in the city.  This is the place of Darwin, Conan-Doyle, Stevenson and Hume (you know, last name type people).
    Even modern day, my program is pretty cool.  There are fourteen people within my major, and we’re from all over the world, with incredibly diverse experiences.  As wonderful as undergrad was, I don’t remember being able to discus with other students what working for the EU for the past three years was like, or being with anyone who could list “helping in the revolution” as part of their extra-curriculars.  I also don’t remember going to a huge dance hall called a Ceidelh (Kay-lee), which is a shame, because it’s unbelievable amounts of fun.  Especially when a surley caller is looking out over the dis-organized mish-mash of the crowd shouting (in an extremely strong brogue) “Well, I sure hope yah all can run a government better than yah can organize tah dance”.
    All in all, I’m looking forward to this year.  Especially the part where I eat deep-fried Mars bars, Haggis, and black pudding.

A note: From now on my blog can also be found at: Mashsdigests.blogspot.com.  All old posts from Malawi will be there as well, I am currently in the process of uploading them.