Greetings from the Fringe!

Greetings from Edinburgh! It's been a long few weeks for everyone, but it's also been a week filled with theatre and dance, music and museums, impromptu bus adventures and artistic discoveries. After seeing several plays done by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, the group's move to Edinburgh was a shock for some and a relief for others.

The main attractions of the moment here in Edinburgh are the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Festival_Fringe) and the Edinburgh International Festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_International_Festival). These festivals, among others taking place here at the same time, make for a whirlwind of activity and an array of theatrical productions, both mainstream and alternative. Students from our group have been lucky enough to see everything from adaptations and productions of The Glass Menagerie and Our Town (respectively) to more edgy productions like Beautiful Burnout, a physically extreme play about boxing, and The Author, an intense, audience-based play by Tim Crouch that explored the line between appropriate artistic representation and that which becomes ethically dubious.

In addition to the constant opportunities to see both traditional and non traditional theatre, students have been taking advantage of the numerous other attractions the city has to offer. The National Gallery and National Museum both house high quality free exhibits, for example; says Mckenna Mitchell, "I was most interested in the fact that they had such an eclectic range of art; it didn't seem to be primarily Scottish at all. They had a lot of impressionist paintings (Van Gogh, Monet, Degas), and art from other countries  all right next to each other, which I was thought was very interesting. You look at Degas and turn the corner, and a Van Gogh painting is right there. There are no filler artists."

Students have also been taking advantage of the bus systems; convenient day passes allow us to get to any part of the city (and sometimes out of the city) with only a little research and a bus route map. Hannah Rae Moore decided to hop on the first bus she saw, and ended up in a small town outside of Edinburgh. Carrie Steingruber and other friends and golf enthusiasts are already planning a day trip to St. Andrews this coming weekend, and can't wait to explore the world's oldest golf course (not to mention find the beach where they filmed a famous scene from Chariots of Fire).

Lastly, being at the world's largest arts festival has given us unprecedented educational opportunities. We've been to educational lectures and poetry readings by the likes of Hanif Kureishi, Roddy Doyle, Kwame Kwei-Armah, and Paul Muldoon, and several students got books signed but Roddy Doyle and/or Paul Muldoon (a novelist and a poet, respectively, whose works we're studying in our classes).

All in all, these past few weeks have been fast paced and had their own unique challenges, but they have been rewarding. Greetings from all of us to all of you, and thank you all for your prayers and encouragement during this journey. We can't wait to tell you more about our adventures as they happen! Peace and Grace!