A ceilidh (pronounced "kay-lee") is a Scottish party centered around traditional dance and music. It's a very, very Scottish thing, so people have been telling me since my very first days here that I have to go to at least one. (Even the friendly bank employee who opened my bank account told me that...)
And then a great opportunity came up: the same friend in Stonehaven, who invited a couple of us from my master's course for Hogmanay (New Year's), invited the same two of us (both Americans) to come back again two weeks later for a ceilidh her running club was hosting as their big yearly fundraiser.
It was so much fun! I truly can't give adequate words to how much fun it was. Watching the dances, participating in the dances (only a little bit, though – unfortunately all the spinning makes me way too dizzy), chatting with everyone. People in Stonehaven have been so friendly and welcoming, both times I've been there. My friend who lives there told a bunch of her friends beforehand that they had to ask us to dance, but I'm sure they would have done it even without her prompting, because everyone is just so nice!
(Sorry, these are all horrendous, blurry cell phone photos, because I didn't think to bring my camera.)
When I first moved here to Aberdeen, four months ago now – it's hard to explain, but I often had this odd feeling that I just didn't feel very much like I was...in Scotland? Generic UK, yes, sure – the shops and the street signs and everything were different from what I was used to, and were clearly British. But much of the time I felt vaguely that I could be anywhere urban and British, because things around me didn't feel specifically, particularly Scottish.
Which is unfair, of course! What, do I expect everybody to act like a walking Scottish cliché all the time? But, I don't know, the other places I've been in Scotland have had such a specific atmosphere of their own – Edinburgh, the Highlands, the Western Isles. Aberdeen is nice, but I don't feel I've discovered its own specific culture yet. (This is probably the fault of spending most of my time at a university, which is very international – so I'm indeed not in a particularly Scottish context much of the time.)
Anyway, at that ceilidh in Stonehaven I felt more like I was really, truly in Scotland than at any other point so far. It wasn't just that there was Scottish music playing, and almost all the men were wearing kilts, and at half-time they served stovies and sticky toffee pudding. It was more that I was in a big room surrounded by Scottish folks, a community of friends hanging out together and just doing the stuff they like to do anyway (chatting, having a beer, dancing dances they all learned growing up). And, again, they were all so friendly and cheerful and welcoming. I really appreciate how international the university is (my 6 flatmates alone are from 5 different countries!), but when living in a country, it's nice to get a chance at least sometimes to be truly, deeply immersed in that country.
It makes me really glad, too, to see people still embracing and living their own traditions.
In addition to the dancing, there was also a ceremony of awards and prizes (since this was a running club event, so they recognized various people's achievements in running). And then, as a fundraiser, there was a bottle slide. A what? Two bottles of gin were set on the floor at the front of the room, and people rolled £1 coins towards them, and whoever landed their coin closest won the bottle. Hilarious, and apparently raises a lot of funds for the club, too!
After the ceilidh, I caught the next-to-last train back to Aberdeen, then hurried to catch the night bus that would take me back home, so I wouldn't have to walk the whole way (about an hour). But it turned out the night bus I got on was...the wrong night bus. (Even though it was the right route number, which I'd looked up beforehand.) So the driver of my wrong bus caught up to the right bus, and pulled up in front of it so I could run off of his bus and onto the other one.
Take away of the evening as a whole: Scottish people are so nice!
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