A Sunny Day

There is a heat wave here in Scotland! Meaning it is 70 degrees. The house is stocked up with ice cream to get everyone through what is supposed to be a whole week of this temperature! Surprisingly, it did not rain ONCE today. Much to my dismay, I got sunburned. Again. Even after putting sunblock on before leaving! I guess that is my punishment for being spontaneous! I'll get to that in a bit.

I set off from Haddington this morning with the idea to do two museums: The Writer's Museum, and the Portrait Gallery up on Queen's Street. I did make it to the the Writer's Museum. It was an interesting, if not a very tiny place. The museum is located in Lady Stairs Close. Lady Stairs, a huge support of writers during her time, used to reside in the house that has now been converted into the museum. The floor tiles of the Close (the Scots believed 'enclosure' to be way too long) are engraved with quote from literary figures. I thought this one was particularly resonate for first-time-solo-travelers such as my self. It says "It's a grand thing to get leave to live."

The museum itself was interesting right away due to the architecture. Once you walk in the door, you are immediately faced with the option going either up or down a narrow winding staircase. Unfortunately, guests were not allowed to take pictures inside, but I think that the museum website may have some if you're interested. You can check out the link here. The museum features artifacts from three celebrated Scottish writers: Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. I think the RLS exhibit was my favorite, because they played an audiotape of someone reading Treasure Island as you looked at pictures of all the inspirational places he visited. He travelled so much to gather stories up in his head, fragments of experiences that later he would incorporate into his books. 

 From there, I decided to stop in Saint Giles Cathedral (fun fact, not actually a cathedral because no bishop has sat there). It can also be known as the "High Kirk." It was incredible. Someone was giving a very monotone sermon, I think just to provide a backdrop for visitors to the site. On the bus on the way into the city, for some reason "Call Me Al" by Paul Simon popped into my head. The lines that go "he sees angels in the architecture/spinning in infinity/he says 'amen' and 'hallelujah'" particularly kept going through. So it was amazing to walk into this ancient stone structure and see the statue of the angel. Just one of those weird coincidences I think. 

I did not manage to get a picture of it because I did not want to disturb the people in the far left chapel of the church, but there were actually wooden carved angels playing bagpipes! It was so unusual! I have passed a restaurant on the Royal Mile before that is called "Angels With Bagpipes," so now that makes sense! 

Edinburgh was absolutely BUSTLING with people today, all out enjoying the weather. I think there is already a kickstart happening for the Festival shows. You want to see someone juggling some inflamed item, you got it. See amazing art made right before your eyes, sure. Panto? Of course. I even saw someone dressed as a ghost singing opera, and another as a gypsy spinning wool into yarn. But here is one unusual act I saw today, a guy balancing a ball on various body parts, to "Teardrop" by Massive Attack playing on a boombox. Anything goes I suppose!

I continued down the Royal Mile a bit, contemplating whether I should start making my way back towards New Town to find the Portrait Gallery. It was so nice out still in the morning hours, that part of me just wanted to grab a coffee and fall asleep in Prince's Street Gardens again. But then I saw a sign advertising a free 2.5hour walking tour of the city, and on a whim just decided to sign up and do it. I am really glad that I did! Our Australian tour guide took us to many places I had been before, but provided so much history about the city I probably would not have known otherwise. For example, on top of the market post in Parliament Square, there sits a unicorn. I already knew that the national animal of Scotland is the unicorn (how awesome, to have a mythical creature as your national animal), but what I did not know that symbolically, this wild and unruly animal is considered tamed when it is shown with a chain around it's neck. Very telling, when you think about Scottish history and the many years of violence in which they sought their freedom. This political battle is still going on. Next year a referendum will be taken to vote to see whether Scotland will become independent. Very interesting!

The Scots during the age of enlightenment also considered themselves the "Athens of the North," believing their country to be the next great power, like the Romans. Throughout the ancient architecture you can see many reminiscent elements of that idea, including sphinxes on top of buildings, famous leaders garbed in togas (no one actually ever wore a toga in Edinburgh) and even the start of a parthenon replica they hoped to build. However, they got about 8 pillers constructed out of the 60 needed, and then ran out of money. This was quite embarrassing for the city! But you can still climb up the hill and picnic by those pillers now, and be reminded how Edinburgh tried, but failed, to become the "Athens of the North."

 Some other highlights: The tombstone of Thomas Riddell (and his son!), the inspiration for the name for JK Rowling's famous villain in her Harry Potter books. It has a different spelling, but she does claim this is where she got the idea, while exploring graveyards for interesting character names! I mentioned before about the Elephant Cafe, where Rowling used to sit and write. This back of the cafe overlooks Greyfriars Kirk and Kirkyard. 

The beloved dog of a nightwatchman, a terrier named Bobby, was buried here. He is famous for guarding the gravestone of his owner for 14 years, and was utterly loved by the whole city. When he died, he was not allowed to be buried in Greyfriar's Kirkyard because they could not be sure he was a Christian...so that is that. As you can see people still leave him tokens of gratitude. SOme of the more unusual gifts we were told about included unused German train tickets, inviting the spirit of Bobby to join the gifter for Oktoberfest! 

 After the tour, one of the girls I met on the walk and I decided to grab something to eat somewhere. She's an American student as well who is doing an internship in Dublin this summer. I also met a girl from Monmouth County who was studying abroad in London and spending the weekend in Edinburgh. It really is a small world! Here is the view from a balcony restaurant in OldTown. We did not eat here, but the little cafe we did go to is the white building on the bottom right with the tables outside! I had been there before, but I was not too hungry so I grabbed a smoothy. She decided to use the rest of the day to go to the castle (she was flying back to Dublin in the morning), so I wandered a bit more through the town before heading back to Prince's Street. 

SO that is how I got off track and did something completely different than I expected to, and got very sunburned in the process. Tomorrow we are going to Loch Lomond Shores, a shopping center on the Bonnie Bonnie Banks!

National Museum of Scotland

This morning I took the 9:45am bus into Edinburgh, with the goal of spending the day in the National Museum of Scotland. After wandering about for a bit down the Royal Mile, I eventually found my way to Chambers Street. I'm really bad with street names, I mostly go by landmarks, so I was pretty lucky I stumbled across it on my walk. The majority of the museums in Edinburgh are free, so all I had to do was pick up a map and start my independent tour. It was great! I picked the perfect day to go - rainy, cool, and quiet. The museum has something for everyone. Between learning about the history of Scotland (geographically how it was formed), the spirituality of early Scottish people, the introduction and spread of Christianity, developments in science and technology, art, and the natural world, there was so much to see.

Ancient ritual carvings. Reminds me of Gallifreyan writing from Doctor Who. Inspiration, perhaps? 

This necklace, which is believed to be a symbol of aristocracy and possibly also military rank, was found buried in the town I'm living in!

On the second floor in this hall, there was a balcony cafe, where I had my lunch. 

Earth Witness - my favorite Buddha pose!

Each one is so unique!

View of the castle from the terrace of the museum!

I spent over four hours in the museum, and there were so many things I did not even see. But I think I am going to try to go back soon, as they are setting up a exhibit on Mary Queen of Scots! After the museum, I walked down the road to the Elephant House, where JK Rowling famously spent time writing some of her books. I met a Canadian family outside, and took their family photo for them. In return, they took one of me! I went inside the cafe thinking I may grab a coffee before heading back to the bus, but it was absolutely packed. As it was raining outside, I decided just to walk back to Prince's Street and safe a coffee there for another day.

Lovely little apartments. How could you NOT be inspired by this city?

View from the very front of the double-decker bus

 Tomorrow it's off to the Royal Yacht Britannia! I am exhausted, so it's bed time for me!

Assessments

Basically, getting a phone has been extremely confusing. As I mentioned yesterday, I purchased a phone from Tesco for 30 pounds. So that is approximately 50 US dollars. After setting it up and

Tree lined walk to the hospital

trying to get it to work (which is not very easy, especially when switching from an Iphone) I decided to top-it-up for about 10quid so I can use the data when I go to Edinburgh and then England this weekend. What they didn't tell me is that you cannot use a USA registered credit card to do any top ups. This goes for both for paying online and over the phone! So that means each time I need a top-up, or anyone else who uses the phone, they would have to buy a voucher. I wish I would have known this when I purchased the phone so that I could have gotten a voucher at the same time. Welp. Guess I know what I'm doing after work tomorrow!

In other news, had an interesting day at work, too! But in a good way! I was allowed to start scoring some psychological assessments. It is all very Clinical Psychology.

CORE

First there is the CORE, which is supposed to measure how the client has been feeling in the past week in the areas of subjective well-being, problems/symptoms, life functioning and risk/harm. This assessment is usually done at the start of therapy and at the end to measure therapeutic outcomes.

DASS: Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale

The final assessment I was able to scale today was a DASS, or Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale. This was probably the most straightforward self-report of the bunch. You just had to calculate the total scores and simple scores for each of those targets (D, A, and S) and then interpret it using a "severity scale." So that was fine.

The hospital on this rainy morning

DES: Dissociative Experiences Scale

Finally there is the DES which is the Dissociative Experiences Scale. These questions to relate to the client's experiences in daily life with dissociation. A high score may be a flag to further investigate Dissociative Identity Disorder in the client. When we think of DID in the states, we generally think of multiple personality disorder and the extreme case of Sybil -something we have always thought to be very rare. Apparently not so here. Most of the cases involving complex childhood trauma I have been told have some connection to dissociation (though nowhere near as severe and dramatic as the Sybil story). I find this all confusing just because it really goes against what I have previously learned. I am curious whether this is an issue here and we don't see it because of our most common treatment module: CBT? Though CBT is still popular here, CBASP, or Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy is used for the complex trauma cases (the ones that I'm told experience dissociation the most). From what I've read, this theory involves a great deal of interpersonal transference, which is what psychodynamic theory revolves around. I am just wondering whether there is a connection between the lack of diagnoses of dissociative disorders, since psychoanalytic therapies are seldom found in the states due to insufficient insurance reimbursement guarantees. Maybe out of the CBT mindset we would acknowledge more dissociative traits in clients? I don't know. Just a thought!

Anyway, the DES test is rated on a Likert scale from "Never" to "Always." Here are some samples:

"Some people have the experience of driving or riding in a car or bus or subway and suddenly realizing that they don't remember what has happened during all or part of the trip."

"Some people find that they become so involved in a fantasy or daydream that it feels as though it were really happening to them" 

This was in the interpersonal therapy book I
was reading today! All textbooks should have
Harry Potter references!

After that, I sat in on a teams meeting coincidentally about exactly what I was planning on doing with some of my time here. Apparently a few weeks ago, before I arrived, the NHS administered a survey to the staff asking questions about what they think is working well in the system, what is not working so well, and what can be done to change those issues. This is EXACTLY what I was intending on doing. I have a copy of all of the responses. What is interesting is that very few people from the Psychological Therapies team answered it because they did not want to point fingers at other aspects of the overall care team! Being new to the team, I basically just sat back and listened to all of the different comments. We broke into two different task groups during the three hour period, so I was able to hear the concerns and solution proposals of a wide array of mental health professionals. It was really beneficial! Not sure what tomorrow has in store for me (except a trip to Tesco) but we shall see!