Greetings from Scotland!

Yeay! I am here, and I am glad to be here notwithstanding a number of sacrifices and difficulties. I will be working with a university here on some research regarding, what else, Islam and Christianity. The details are obscure but I'll let you know when the books comes out some day in the distant future. I am here for fewer than three months but it will be enough to get used to the place and people.

It was quite exciting, yesterday, waiting for the shuttle at the airport and talking to other new international students arriving for the new semester. There was the American girl starting a masters in archeology who talked a lot bc she was nervous. There was French girl studying law who didn't talk because she was nervous. There was a really geeky young Italian guy starting his BS in Physics. I was the only guy starting work on a PhD, and I felt, let me say it, OLD. I mean, not really old, but older. But hey, I felt like that when I started studying for my master's degree, and that was like seven years ago. There was one other guy, a Korean-American from California, studying religion (same college as me), so that was cool, I might see him around.

You know you're in Scotland when you read a place name and think, wait--isn't that from a Tolkien novel? Have not tried haggis yet, but I will. This next week is set to be insanely busy with meetings, receptions, and the matriculation system which seems modeled after the Arab Bureaucratic Tradition, so I should get along just fine.

This morning I went to the local Roman Catholic church because a) I could walk there, and b) I really didn't feel like a long sermon. It is, by the way, the memorial day of Duns Scotus, and the Franciscan priest said he was hoping for the "Subtle Doctor's" canonization soon. The people there were really friendly and for such a secular land it seemed well-attended with a good number of folks from India and the Philippines as well as Scots, English, and a few folks from the Continent.

Salam bi ism irrab.
Abu Daoud, PhD candidate (assuming I can figure out the matriculation thing tomorrow)