Ceilidh

So, this past weekend I went to my first ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee), which was the second one Kelli has attended since we've been here. This particular ceilidh was a fundraiser for our church, who is sending a team to Uganda.

For those who you who may be ceilidh illiterate, a ceilidh is a traditional Scottish dance (click here for more info). Scottish children grow up learning the dances in school, so they are all extremely familiar with the dances. It is one of those really cool pieces of culture in Scotland. The guys wear kilts and the girls usually dress up.

This ceilidh was at a random location downtown in a place called The Tunnels. The Tunnels is a venue under the street level in what were literally tunnels under the street. Pretty random, but it makes for a cool location. Here are some pics.



The first pic, above, was of the most random dance they did. This dance had a certain number of couples dancing in a large circle, and at one point two of the couples came together and spun around with the girls in the air. One group took a pretty awesome spill!

The band, below, is a group of the students from our university ministry who threw a band together for the evening. Two of the members play together in a ceilidh band normally, so they ended up being realy good (despite only one practice together!).





Here, above, is Kelli and I not dancing. We kept it that way through the evening even through ridicule. I kept persisting that WE were pregnant which meant that I couldn't dance as well. When that didn't work, I assured them that becoming a theologian was based on two decisions: 1) wanting to rock the sweet look that theologians pull off; and 2) not having to dance.

Below is a fun pic which doesn't really capture the quickness of the ceilidh dances but is a cute picture of two of the students from our small group (who are dating) as well as two of our friends talking on the left. We tried to get some videos up but we weren't able to for some odd reason. We'll see what we can do.