"wait, what happened in Scotland?"

I'm so glad you asked. I didn't forget I've just been all over the place... aka Amsterdam.

Going back to Edinburgh was a lot of fun. It's something we talked about so much I can't believe we actually made it back to the festival. Our hostel was literally right on the Royal Mile, so that was perfect. The first couple days we saw a bunch of comedians, which was fun, but also hard because so many of the jokes were culturally geared towards a European or mostly English audience. But it was funny nonetheless, just no Dane Cook or anything....

We spent some time shopping on Princes Street, had lunch in the park, ate at our old favorites like Est Est Est and TGIFridays - which we swore used to put way more alcohol in their drinks... or maybe we were just really cool back then... haha.

On Wed, the 9th I believe, we saw a play called The Exonerated. It was absolutely, jaw-droppingly incredible. It was one of the best pieces of theater I have ever seen. It was originally an off-Broadway show that was a huge success in New York. It is sort of Laramie Project Style. All the dialouge is taken from interviews with six people who were wrongly convicted of crimes, placed on death row and then found to be innocent and realised free and clear. All six stories were so rice and full and captivating. The monologues were so real and touching that I lost count how many times I got the chills. The best thing about the performance was the tone, which is something that is so hard to achieve. It was the perfect combination of serious story telling, humor and hope. Hope being the most important. One of the monolouges at the end talked about how when your car is broken no one talks about what's right with the car, only what's wrong with it... and that's kind of like America right now, it's broken, but people forget to talk about what's right with it. All of the actors were phenominal, but there was one who stood out from the rest. Sunny Jacobs, I think her name is. She was the first woman to ever be placed on death row. And the woman playing her seemed slightly different than all the other actors... it wasn't that she was bad she just didn't seem like an actress...but as the play went on she got very emotional and she was very moving... it turns out the woman was the real Sunny Jacobs. Sitting there on stage. Reading her interviews. Talking about the 16 years she spent in jail, convicted for a murder - along with her husband - for a crime that neither one of them committed. Her husband was actually executed before she was released from prison and in one of her last monolouges she talked about how her life is now a memorial to him and all he will never get to do. So intense. So important. So moving. I don't think I can fully explain it... but not only was the entire audience in tears, but also most of the cast. Full standing ovation at the end. It's moments like those when you have like a "wow, this just all makes sense." And by this maybe i mean life, maybe I mean hope, maybe i mean love... whatever it is, it made sense at that moment in time. priceless.

After the show, we had really good stir fry for dinner - yay for details, right mom? Then we went to see Harvard-Westlake's show called Mac Daddy and Lady Beth which is basically the story of Macbeth, mixed with rock and roll music. Adam Cochran was the lead and he was wonderful - as always. We really enjoyed the show and afterwards we got to talk to Schrode for a while. It was so nice to see him. He seemed a tad on the stressed side, but you would be two if you brought 102 people to Scotland for 3 weeks, don't ya think?

We went out that night to Frankenstein's, a bar we used to sneak into when we were 16... funny how things change. Then we (mel, sasha, adam, reznick and celeste) went to another bar where met up with Bryce Goodman and were later joined by Fishbach and Adam Howard as well as other members of the HW faculty. Being graduates we finally got to drink with them... fun times. Mel has some priceless video of Mr. Dan Fishbach being, well, a drunk Dan Fishbach.

We didn't get back to the hostel until close to 3 and then I was up by 6:30 to get to the airport and get to Amsterdam.

So to answer your question, that is what happened in Scotland. PICTURES!!