Dè tha 'dol? Pt. I: A Canadian in Glasgow

Halò a h-uile duine!

So, it's been over a month since I've posted anything, but that doesn't mean I've not been busy. Rather, it just means I've been lazy with keeping this up. In fact, I've been up to so much, I need to break it into about five or six posts.
"Dè tha 'dol?" [jay ha doll?] is Gaelic for "What's going on?" and is a rather common alternative to "Ciamar a tha thu?" [kimar a ha oo?], meaning "How are you?" And, before I go any further, I might as well tell you, in case you haven't figured it out already, "Halò a h-uile duine!" [halo a hoola dune-ya!] means "Hello everybody!", Halò of course being an ancient Gaelic word that was stolen by the English many centuries ago.

Anyway, enough grammar for now. What's been going on? Well, the answer is a lot.

On Argyle Street

I went to Glasgow the last weekend of September to get some new shoes as well as just explore a bit. I think it was the warmest I've been since I arrived. A friend I've met here lives just outside of Glasgow and was going down to visit his family, so I tagged along and wandered the streets of the city while he was with his family and we met up each night [It was rather hard to avoid that given that we were both crashing at his friend's house downtown] 
Though it is a fair bit bigger, Glasgow reminded me a lot of Halifax. Where we were staying was right on the outskirts of downtown, so it was easy to walk to Buchannan and Sauchiehall Street, the main shopping streets which are almost entirely just for pedestrians! At the same time, we were close to the west end which is the more artsy end of town where the University of Glasgow is.

Kelvingrove Park

I took the train down from Mallaig on Friday afternoon and was in Glasgow by about eight or nine. I met up with someone else from SMO on the train and Sgotaidh [Scottie] and I ended up meeting up with them that night for a pint at one of the three "highland" pubs in Glasgow.
I spent the next day discovering all the neat things that Glasgow has to offer. Kelvingrove Park was essentially right next door where there were a nice collection of trails to explore. I also found a sweet little coffee shop and used book store to hang out in for a few hours. Biblocafe was it's name if anyone's interested. One thing I noticed about Glasgow though was the abundance of cafes...and Indian take-out. I'm pretty sure there were no less than two or three in every block, so no worries there.
The rest of my day was rather uneventful as I hunted for shoes that would stand up to the rather sporadic Skye weather. There were a number of buskers around and I'm sure they were making a killing since there were no cars to compete with. Perhaps I'll get some busking in before I head home. It was neat to watch the style of busking change throughout the day. I saw harpers, accordion players, pipers, fiddlers, violinists and singers of all genres. Surprisingly, there were relatively few panhandlers. I wonder what that's like? ;)

Thoughtful Graffiti

That night we stayed in and made homemade pizza which was delicious. I loved being able to cook again!
We caught the train back up to Skye on Sunday and had a nice chat with two native Welsh speakers who were touring around the area. It was neat to talk about the differences and similarities between Welsh and Gaelic, but, sadly, I am no better at speaking Welsh. Ach well!

That's it for now, a' chàirdean!


Gus an ath-thuras! [Goose an a-hoorus!]
Until next time!