14. so I'm still bad at remembering my blog exists

Okay, new plan guys. Here is how I am going to cover all the exciting things I did on Spring Break:
Step 1: You buy me a drink (it doesn't even have to be alcoholic! I am just that gracious. Also I enjoy a good smoothie)
Step 2: You make eye contact (it's important for good communication!)
Step 3: You say "Tell me about your spring break Caitlin"
Step 4: I tell you. Probably with wild hand gestures.
I think this is a viable plan. Let's roll with it on the 29th when I fly home.

Today was not so much exciting as intensely nerve-wracking as I took my first timed final in years. Knox, you see, just requires me to submit portfolios which I can write in my sweatpants at 3am sitting under my lofted bed and occasionally yelling/throwing random things at my roommate. St. Andrews, however, requires you to wear clothes with, like, zippers and buttons and stuff, and go sit at a desk and not talk or throw things at anyone and...generally behave like a human being rather than a zoo animal. Naturally this was trying for me and was made worse by having to answer questions about the theme of betrayal in post-modern surrealist literature. But I think I did pretty well, knock on wood, this morning other than almost falling off my chair in jittery panic when a proctor tapped me on the shoulder to ask me to move my jacket. Because apparently jackets are NOT ALLOWED. COLD IS PART OF THE EXAM. Or something like that.

So that done I rewarded myself for my excellent non-zoo-animal behavior by buying some ice cream and wandering around enjoying the nice weather and taking pictures. These pictures, let me show you them:





Scotland is actually super pretty when it's Sunday


Look at this here artsy shit


Pretty arch-thing on the way to the harbor


A couple of the baby bunnies that are EVERYWHERE now that it is spring

Anyway, I'm off for celebratory drinks before I plunge back into studying for my next final which will ask me such exciting questions as: "What does the ‘transformation’ of music hall c.1880-1914 tell us about contemporary
attitudes towards popular culture?" I don't think they will take "Uh. Lady Gaga or something?" as an answer.

09. I made you this lame video because I love you

So, yeah, the weather here? Kind of unpredictable. It's sunny! It's raining! It's snowing! It's...been two hours! But almost always it is windy. So here are some photos and a silly video I recorded while I was taking a walk in the rain.

My favorite beach and a street in the snow:



The ocean in the rain:




aaaand last of all another awkward video shot with my camera in which I am weirdly fascinated by how windy it is and nervous the whole time that someone will amble along and see me shooting it and muttering to myself:

07. lets get busy

I did not have very much to do before I came to Scotland. In fact from November-January my life basically consisted of retail work, eating cheeseburgers in the food court where my retail work was located, eating cheese and drinking beer at home, getting fat (comparatively, no one start yelling at me about body issues okay?), whining about getting fat (comparatively!), reading Dorothy Sayers detective novels, and watching bad TV. Going out and having fun was my “job” after retail hell ended and finding ways to have fun was my only occupation. I was something like a Victorian heroine, or, not the heroine but the ladies around her who had nothing to do but devise amusements because they don't have the distraction of being a governess or finding Epic Love or fighting destiny or being a symbolic object or whatever. It was stultifying. I am really, really surprised, however, that now that things are picking up here I don't really miss it because I am very, very lazy by nature. Which is all a long-winded way of saying that classes are picking up, I've joined societies (they call them that rather than clubs here) and I am now actually obligated to do more than laze and...that's perfectly okay with me. Weird.

Part of this may be that I am now quite familiar with St. Andrews. I understand the (not so crazy after all) medieval town structure. I have my favorite coffee shop, I know how to find my room in my enormous dorm, I know the character of all the pubs, and I have a routine down for my days. I have also come to love cooking for myself. I'm not good at it by any means but I find that making a proper meal for yourself makes eating a lot more satisfying somehow and I do make proper, if easy to prepare meals. Last night was chicken kiev, steamed vegetables, and some white wine. Tonight is pasta with marinara sauce, more steamed vegetables, and white wine. Basically I think I'm pretty cool because no part of my meal involves adding water and microwaving.

This weekend I'm going down to visit my friend Alicia in Edinburgh who intended to study abroad fall semester and whom the Scottish still haven't been able to kick out of their country. We'll be spending Friday in the city then exploring some highlands places with her friends Saturday and Sunday which should be awesome.

And now...pictures! I have eighty million so this post will be confined to photos of the town.


Haggis. I totally ate it.


Plaques like this one about protestants and catholics going "You suck," "No YOU suck," "I am going to kill you horribly," "Yeah well I'm going to kill your mom horribly," are all over town. This makes me picture ancient Scotland as a ye olde version of middle school except with, like, beheadings instead of slam books.



The mean streetz of St. Andrews



Some of the buildings here are, like, really old and stuff.


Cool old graveyard




The harbor. I plan on coming down here lots in the summer-ish months to eat ice cream at the stand there and visit the ducks.






Going down to, at, and then walking back up from the little beach right across the street from my Scottish Fiction class where I finish my coffee before going in.

Scottish people I have met: 2 (everyone is British!)
Pub crawls survived: 3
Out of town excursions: 1 (Dundee)
Places I want to go over Easter break: Ireland in general, London, Paris, Normandy, Florence, Berlin
Probability I will be able to do this: High, actually!