lunes, 27 de junio de 2016

My 2016 Summer Trip: Scotland

"What did you do this summer?" is generally a first-day-of-class kind of question, but I will take the chance to answer it in detail here.

I don't generally travel far and wide during the summer. I'm a homebody, which means I enjoy staying home and working or doing things that count as working but are actually fun.

This summer, however, I went to Scotland to the Edinburgh 2016 Symposium of Mexican Studies and Students.

Yes, that is a pineapple. (No it's not, it's a thistle.)

I gave two oral presentations; one about conflicts of interest in Mexico, and another one, which I worked on with two colleagues, about corruption and the energy sector in Mexico. If you're curious about what I said, we can get some coffee and talk about it.

My example to explain conflicts of interest involved Lady Gaga.

Besides the academic stuff, I took the chance to do a bunch of other cool stuff, which I will list below:



1. Went to the National Museum of Scotland and had mixed feelings about it. I may teach globalization and international relations, but I am not a fan of museums that put dead animals or entire cultures behind glass. Nonetheless, historical textiles and Mary, Queen of Scots, are two of my favorite topics. If you want me to go on a tangent, those are good topics to bring up. 
Una foto publicada por Francisco García González (@franciscogrgz) el


2. This piece of street art in Glasgow is famous, apparently. A bunch of taxis were driving around with balloons to commemorate something about it while I was there. Also, I stayed with a friend who told me the weather would be warm, but it was cold and wet the entire time I was there. Hence the thrifted jacket and pants.
Una foto publicada por Francisco García González (@franciscogrgz) el

3. If you're old school enough to have played Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, you know what happened in Stirling. If not, google it, along with "Highland Rape" by Alexander McQueen. It is not all fun and computer games. Sometimes you visit cool places where ethnic cleansing also happened.

Una foto publicada por Francisco García González (@franciscogrgz) el

4.  Edinburgh was wet, beautiful, and strange. I loved it. My friend Iván and I took two tours around the city, walked around a lot, ate lots of delicious food, and wondered what that sign in the bathroom of the University of Edinburgh meant. If you like Harry Potter, you need to go to Edinburgh.

5. There are about 1,000 calories in this plate, and I ate all of them. Make sure you try haggis, neeps and tatties with whisky sauce before you let anyone tell you what it's made of. You won't regret it.

Una foto publicada por Francisco García González (@franciscogrgz) el

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