A day in Edinburgh Castel

On Saturday morning, we departed to Edinburgh to visit Edinburgh Castel which dominates the city of Edinburgh like no other castles in Scotland, and Edinburgh Castle is unequalled in the whole of the British Islands. Over one thousand years of history sit on the top of the famous Edinburgh rock where over a million visitors a year visit Edinburgh.

"The visitors to the Castle are awarded with magnificent panoramas in every direction when they visit the Castle. No matter whether you are on the lowest levels of the Castle, or the highest points, visitors are delighted by what can be seen. When you look to the north, on a clear day, you can see the mountains of The Kingdom of Fife in the distance and immediately below you have the world famous Princes Street Gardens. Princes Street is unique in that the shops along its length are only on the north side of the street, so from them you have an uninterrupted view of the Castle. Beyond Princes Street is George Street the most original of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town Streets - with shops along its length. Continuing to the north you have Queen Street which runs parallel to it. Beyond Queen Street the remaining New Town Preservation area is mostly residential, and the city can boast of having the most intact Georgian city in the whole of Europe, and has UNICEF World Heritage Site status."

For more information about Edinburgh Castel, visit the following link:

http://www.edinburghcastle.gov.uk/index.htm

After the beautiful tour in the castle, we spent the afternoon shopping and finally we left Edinburgh and went back to Dundee.  

Mackays Jam Factory

The schedule for this weekend was really busy. On Friday morning, the plan was to visit the jam & marmalade factory. At 11 o'clock, we arrived at Mackays jam factory in Arbroath and we had a great welcoming from Mr. Paul Grant, the factory manager. After we gathered at the meeting room, Mr. Grant talked about the history of Mackays jam factory which is a family business.  <!--[endif]-->

 

"Mackays, the family-run business, has been making world famous marmalades and preserves for over 70 years. They are now the only remaining producer of orange marmalade in the Dundee area of Scotland following the demise of the famous Keiller family who built the first marmalade factory there back in 1797."

Mr. Grant explained after that the way and the process of making jam & marmalade in which they are one of the few remaining jam manufacturers in Europe that still use the traditional ‘open pan’ method of jam-making which gives the preserves and marmalades their delicious ‘homemade’ taste.

    

              

After he showed us a short movie about Mackays Company and answered  the girls' questions, he took us on a tour in the factory to see the actual process of jam manufacturing. At the end, he gave us a gift “jam” and we spent the rest of the time at the factory shop buying jam and marmalade for our families at home. 

For more information about Mackays Jam Company, you can visit the following link:

http://www.mackays.com/our_company.html

We departed from the factory at 1 pm going to Al Maktoum College to have our lunch then we spent the rest of the day on the final project preparation.

Pesentation Day: Bu Tinah Island

On this day we were very busy with the presentation rehearsal. A group of us went to the Central library.  It was our first time to go there, and we had the opportunity to get the membership cards to use the library services. After printing the voting cards and the posters which were related to the Bu Tinah Island we went back to the college. We hung the posters and organized the voting cards; the rest of the group continued the presentation rehearsal.     

 

At the time of the presentation we were a little afraid, but when we started to present we were very confident and pleased with our job. Also the students of the other universities and the teachers were pleased with our presentation. The rest of universities did a great job as well.
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After the presentations we were ready to have fun, so first we went shopping at the Willgate and the Overgate Malls, then we went to the Pizza Hut restaurant to have dinner.  We enjoyed our delicious meal and we went to the cinema to watch a film together. On this day we worked so hard and we enjoyed the team work; it was one of the memorable days in Dundee.  

Music film making project

On this day, we had the music film making project, so we went early to the college, and then we started the song training with Emily. The class hall was full of lights and modern equipments of film making which made the project very exciting. We enjoyed the song and the film making although we were recording for many times to reach the final result. It was a non-forgotten experiment.

After the music film project, we went to the hotel to complete our project, which was about Bu Tinah Island.  We also took a lot of pictures for our presentation. We exerted a huge effort on the preparation, but Al7amdlilah we did a great job and finished the project at the right time.

Day in the College

Today we had an academic workshop held by the staff of Al Maktoum College. At the beginning, they talked about the future vision of the college and the future goals that they wanted to achieve.  Dr Hossein Godazgar and Dr Al Haji mentioned that Al Maktoum College will be changed officially to Al Maktoum University in 2020. Then they talked about the programs that will be held in the next year such as the Intensive Master degrees within just one year and PhD program. In addition, they introduced the programs that the college offered recently. All these programs are related to the Islamic matters such as the study of Islam and Muslim, Islamic finance, Islamic Law, practical ethics of Islam, Islam and Development, Gender and Islam…etc. After that, each coordinator of these programs talked more in details about the programs. 

After the coffee break, we had a Scottish music project Rehearsal by our coordinator which was to be recorded and shown in the graduation ceremony .

Finally, we visited Loch Leven Castle which is stunning fresh water located in the Perth & Kinross region of Scotland. It is an important place in Scottish history as it was the prison of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1567.

When we arrived at the hotel, we began to work in our presentation which is about one of the UAE’s great cultural aspects. We will let you know about it later..;)

A weekend in the High Lands

2/July/2011


We left Dundee on Saturday to the Highlands to spend our weekend there. The coach departed at 9:30 announcing that our journey had started. On our way to the highland, we stopped by The House of Bruar in Pitlochry. The girls had time to walk through the falls of Bruar and go shopping at Bruar unique shops. 

To have more information you can visit the following link:  http://www.houseofbruar.com

After we had our launch, we continued our journey to the CairnGorm Mountain. We used the mountain railway to reach the top of the mountain where we saw one of the most spectacular views in Scotland looking across the Cairngorms National Park and beyond.  It’s no wonder that CairnGorm Mountain is one of the country’s leading visitor attractions in the Scottish Highlands. You can get more information about this place through this website:
http://www.cairngormmountain.co.uk/

Our final destination was MacDonald- Aviemore Hotel where we spent our night. We had time before dinner to discover the area around the hotel. Through the following link you can know more about this place: http://www.macdonaldhotels.co.uk/aviemore/

At 9:30 on Sunday, the coach departed to Inverness where we explored the area around.  After we got some souvenirs from the Clansman Hotel shop, we had the chance to take the boat which took us to the Urquhart Castle through the Loch Ness. You can get more information about Inverness, Urquhart Castle and Loch Ness by click on the following links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness

Visiting Aberdeen University

1/ July/2011

We went to Aberdeen University in the city of Aberdeen. When we arrived there the professor Jane Stevenson gave a presentation about the Lost City and the Old Aberdeen. We saw many pictures of the old city in 1639 and she showed us the cover page of Aberdeen–the oldest book of Aberdeen. Also we knew that the university till the 20th was only for male students, at that time female students were not allowed to enter the school or have the chance to learn.

After lunch, Professor William Naphy gave us a presentation and talked about how ^Arabic language was the language of trade. Also he talked about many scientists such as Robert Wilson and John Forbes. After this presentation we had the chance to give them a gift from our university and at the same time they gave each university student a memorabilia gift from the Aberdeen University. 

Then we went on a tour to see the new university, we met some Arabian students, and walked around the buildings. In addition, we went to Old Aberdeen and saw the old buildings, at the time when we were walking we saw a wedding and we took some pictures there.

 We really enjoyed the day although the way was very far to Aberdeen.

Visiting the Scottish Parliament

30/ Jun/2011

30Th of June was an important day because we went to the Scottish Parliament. Although it was so far from our hotel, we were very excited to go there because it was the first time for us to visit the parliament or one of the legislative authorities. When we arrived, they gave us cards to enter the committee room and debating chamber where the issues that related to Scotland were discussed.

At the beginning, we went to the committee room that contains a major table for representatives and sub-chairs for public. In this room we discussed general topics about the parliament and we asked several questions at the end. Some of those questions were related to the authority voting system. In addition, we asked about how the public participated in the parliament life and the future vision of the Scottish Parliament. 

      Next, we moved to the Debating Chamber where some politicians discuss and argue certain issues.

 

The hall was very huge and was divided into three sections. The Government members sat in the middle and the parties sat beside them. These two sections are on the ground floor while the last section is special for the public and it is on the upper floor. We saw the argument   between the government and parties who want to support their opinions and arguments and decisions that they wanted to be applied. It was a serious argument and intense discussion. We really enjoyed the visit and we wished that we could share our ideas during session and the entire discussion.

Visiting the Lord Provost of Dundee

29/June/ 2011

Today we departed from Al-Maktoum College at 9:30. After arriving to the college and having a warm welcome from Dr. Hossein Godazagar, we started a lecture about globalization and multiculturism. We defined both terms and discussed them. It was an interesting discussion with various points of views! 

After that, we had a 15 minutes break to get some coffee. Then we moved on to a whole new category which is music. Our instructor for the day, Emily Hunter, lectured us about voice and vocals. We got a chance to learn a new song and rehearse it. 

After lunch in the Al-Maktoum College, we went to meet the Lord Provost of Dundee city. They welcomed us over there and told us about Dundee and the history of various lords of the city.

 

Then we got the honor to see their “Symbol of Authority” and “Chain of the office”. 

Later, we got a chance to do some shopping in order to prepare for the ceilidh.

The ceilidh is a social gathering where Scottish music is played and Scottish dancing is performed. That is what we did. We learned many different Scottish dances and we had so much fun. We got a lovely gift from them as you can see in the photo below.

This day we had so much fun, we are excited for the next tour :)

Dundee Challenge

28/Jun/2011

Our schedule for today was really busy in which we had fun and we were challenged by participating in a great competition. The first thing that we did was attend a lecture given by a representative from Dundee municipality; she talked about Dundee’s past, present and future. In addition, she explained for about one hour the different aspects of life in Dundee such as: business, education and culture. If you need more information about Dundee " one city, many discoveries” you can visit the following website: www.dundee.com

After this interesting lecture, we had a short break before the challenging competition was revealed!

The challenge was in a form of a competition between 6 groups of students in which each group had to talk about 4 places that are related to specific categories. Our group got the business and financial category to prepare a short presentation that includes facts about the places and pictures of the group in these places.  The challenge was announced at 12 pm and we were asked to be ready at 4 pm. The group started working hard by searching first about business and financial cities in Dundee. After we ate lunch very quickly to save our time, we requested a taxi to go to the places that we picked. We wanted to take photos of the group in these places and get more information about them at the same time. Actually, we had a great time doing that task. We felt as if we were in a race and we had to win, it reminded us of the TV show “The Amazing Race”. Therefore, we did our best to get the pictures in a short time in which we were the first who came back to the college after we had done the mission perfectly. We used the time wisely to prepare our final presentation and we tried to make it fun by preparing some games for the audience. 

 

 

It was really a great opportunity to examine our skills as a group and individuals. We learned a lot from this experience and from the other group's experiences too. Beside all that, we had fun and we really enjoyed the challenge.