Halò! Ciamar a tha thu?

Today we did a quick tour of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig UHI and learned a little Gaelic! If you’re interested in learning, this university is a full immersion program and they also offer distance learning classes!
The bottom pic isn’t exactly the prettiest, but I wanted to get a photo of all the Gaelic signs at the university. There was usually an English translation attached, but on many signs, posters, and flyers, it was just Gaelic!

How many universities offer a view like this? I wanted to sign up as a student just so I could stand here every day!

Another really cool aspect of this university was the television studio. Our guide said that several programs are actually filmed on the campus. It was a really impressive setup!

After our tour of the university, rather than driving the full distance back to Oban, we took the ferry (which I didn’t get any pics of). I don’t think I’ve ever been on a ferry large enough that cars drive on, so that was definitely a new experience for me and most of our students.

Our next destination was Fort William (which is still part of the Highland area and is on the coast of Loch Linnhe) for a tour of a sawmill and then a stop at…McDonald’s 😑 This McDonald’s is the closest one to Oban (which is an hour away), so the Scottish students were thrilled (I’m not even being sarcastic) about this stop, and the American students were excited, I guess because it was something familiar?

But as you can tell from my face, I was less than thrilled. At least they had Irn Bru!

The final stop of the day was at a student’s home for dinner. You’d never guess that we were from a small country town in North Carolina because our students were obsessed with chasing and catching the chickens…and then putting them on their heads. 🙄😂 I wish I was joking about that.

The girl’s relative was there practicing for the highland games, so one of our students, and my fiance of course, got in on the action. Those Scottish men who participate in the games are STRONG.

The students stayed to play, but we were exhausted and caught a ride back to Oban after stopping for a view of Castle Stalker! Castle Stalker is actually a privately-owned castle, but they do schedule private tours.

A lot of people had laughed when we told them we were visiting Skye, but despite some bad patches of weather, it was really beautiful, and I’m so glad that I got to see more of the country!

Tioraidh!