Scotland!

We're in Scotland now, in a town called Moniaive (pronounced Mo-nee-ive), which no one in England has heard of. It was fun riding in the cargo van with Emily and Gretchen, with about a jillion roundabouts, each time with the van stalling and asking to shift gears at strange times (like in the middle of several roundabouts), and seeing the changing landscape immediately after we left England. Suddenly there were way more sheep and low brick walls and thistles - oh, the thistles! 

That's my hand, playing Iso and Sam's new game, which involves putting your hand in a new state or country and yelling out, "FIRST ONE IN SCOTLAND!"

After that, we rode through lots of small roads that looked like this: 

and rode through the little passing ditch on the side. It was my job as the passenger on the left to announce when we were too close to the hedges on the side, since our driver on the right couldn't tell. Moniaive looked like this when we arrived. I wish I had caught a pic of the big blue "YES!" signs on the way in, saying that people were Indies/Independents voting for an independent Scotland.

Larry's first workshop song this afternoon was "I woke up this morning with my mind on freedom", and someone pointed out, we DID wake up with our minds on freedom and we didn't get it! I'm very curious to have conversations with my host families now that we're in Scotland, since I got a variety of opinions when we were in England, like "Britain should be able to vote on this matter, too" or "as a Scot living in England, my heart says yes, but the accountant in me says no", etc. 

Last night and the night before, we were at the Sage at Gateshead, where we were treated like rockstars and presented with ham & leek pies, cooked vegetables and individual chocolate mousses. 

The students there are in a program called "Community Music", which involved making music accessible to everyone, particularly in rural areas.  

Now, we're in a very rural area, with a primary school that has only 52 kids. We did a small concert at the primary school and a workshop with the P6 and 7 class (age 10,11 so like 5th/6th grade for us).  They were very shy, and had thick, thick accents. At the end of the concert, the P1 teacher asked the kids, "Do you know what 'harmony' means?" and in the cutest little accent, one girl said, "it's laik a tchune ware tew parrts seng tuhgehtherr tuh make bewtihful musik!" 

This was on the cover of the newspaper this morning...