Ceilidh and Confucious

Last night I participated in what is now, officially by the guys at Guinness, the World's Largest Ceilidh. Which was a bit of a let-down.

What is a ceilidh? And how do you say it? Well it's a traditional Scottish dance party. It's similar to a contra-dance in that there's a live band playing traditional music and a caller telling you what to do. It's different in that there's a lot of drinking, so the dances are much much simpler. It's still fun though; I went to one Freshers' Week. It's pronounced KAY-lee.

The venue is supposedly one of the best clubs in Europe: The Arches. Its the, well, arches and vaults beneath Glasgow Central Station, and was actually pretty awesome. Not my kind of place to hang out, but I could definitely appreciate it. The problem was that it didn't work well for a ceilidh. Most places you could not see the demonstrations, and you could not understand the caller. The drinks were overpriced too. But it was cheap to get in, and I had a good time. And I'm now part of a random bit of trivia.

You might be wondering about my classes. I'm taking Issues in Modern Education, class of seven, where the issue is diversity (racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, etc.). Central and East European Studies, which is a bit of history, culture, language - a good overview for people like me who don't know anything. The Independent Kingdom of Scotland, 1100-1707. It's a history course, wicked interesting. And I'm unofficially auditing Celtic Civilizations. This is interesting because it's a history of people who didn't leave much written record, so I can learn about the methods involved there. It's a wicked fun class, but I'm allowed to take only three classes. So I'm just going to the lectures of that one. Here's a tidbit of info - Celtica stretched from Orkney to Morocco to Turkey. And the Celts who lived in Orkney, meaning the Land of Young Boars, would drop initial 'p's from words. If the didn't the Island would have been called 'Porkney'.

And Confucius:  One of my neighbors is a direct descendant of one of the founders of Confucianism. She even has his surname. UPDATE: Apparently that's not hard: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8275269.stm