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!

06. what's my age again?

Sorry to everyone I haven't been in contact with. Scotland makes me ridiculously busy so that I have not even checked facebook in a day or so (gasp!). Except I am ridiculously busy...doing a lot of nothing sometimes. My Saturday night was spent cooking and drinking red wine with My Fellow Americans (secretly I want to call my group of Junior Study Abroad American friends this. I don't think it will catch on. But it's also a great band name no?) and now I am going to sleep so I can wake up early and do laundry while all the young whippersnapers are still abed and hung over. Then I plan to go for a hike topped off by reading my novel for class. My weekends! They thrill! I am now about thirty!

Oh, whatever, you'd be tired too if you spent your nights at pubs and your days running about.

Cheese, wine, chocolate: procured

Everything else: unimportant

05. like a blister in the sun

Original title: why does it always rain on me?

That song was playing in a consignment shop I visited the other day looking for cheap boots (elusive creatures in a European tourist town) and it seemed to fit because, yes, Scotland WHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN ON ME? Scotland, you see, is tricky. I got here and it was sort of cold and cloudy and misty in the mornings but that was pretty, all dewy and fresh. I am totally on board with this Scottish weather! I thought. I am a natural at this cold and rainy stuff and laugh at lesser whiners! Then around Thursday the rain started in earnest as my friends and I walked back from a flat on the other side of town about twenty minutes from our dorm at 2am (hi parents and grandma, we were totally drinking water and discussing literature!). Over the next five or so days it did not relent...nor did it pour. It was just a steady light rain and freezing cold, beating you down until you felt like you were undergoing Chinese water torture and the next drop would send you flying straight out of your skin which would lay for all time in a soggy puddle on market street.

This was made worse by the fact that my Scottish adventures lately have been entitled Banks Hate Me. When I went to the local bank to open an account they first refused to open one because I had a letter from the university with the information they needed but it wasn't the letter the usually got. So basically they said “We could use this but we hate you.” Well, fine then, I thought, I'll just cash a traveler's check so I can buy my damn umbrella (yes, I did forget to bring an umbrella to Scotland, stop laughing). But OH NO we can't have money changing hands in a BANK and the freakin' genius teller decided to accuse me of having different signatures on each check, as in some of them were forged. So, basically, she accused me of forging my own signature. We had a little standoff (ways to make me assertive: dump rain on me for four days then deny me access to funds to buy an umbrella...and okay by assertive I mean “I cried”) and she eventually admitted she was mistaken. I very graciously did not respond “You bet your obvious gray roots you were mistaken, whore.”

But I got my money, procured an umbrella...and then the sun came out. Hooray! I decided to celebrate by hiking part of the Fife Coastal Path in...long jeans and converse sneakers? Oops. I fell in the mud and pushed a stupid button on my camera and wiped all my pictures. But it was so pretty it was quite worth it and words cannot describe it. I will take more pictures as soon as I can go out again because, I regret to say, I am currently sitting inside on a sunny day because I have developed a hideously painful blister on my left heel and if so much as a ballet flat touches it, it does the silent blister-y equivalent of wailing “AHHHH AHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHH! OH THE AGONY!” This may be positive though as it gives me incentive to do things like register my phone and clean my room (even though the cleaning service comes three times a week and does my laundry. I know! Scotland is so magical it even has house elves! Though they are actually very nice ladies who probably would not appreciate me equating them with fictional characters who look like this) and, oh you know, do some of that homework stuff I hear universities like to give out.

What? You didn't know I was actually taking classes? Honestly they fooled me too with all this free haggis and dancing and nice British students inviting us over to watch mock news shows. It was quite a shock to wake up at 8am after getting in at 4am (long night of water drinking and retirement planning! Hi mom!) and trudge off to lectures about Scottish fiction. I like the class, though it's mostly Americans, and we're reading Waverly by Sir Walter Scott for it which I like well enough eleven pages in. My other class, British Popular Culture from WWI-1960 meets Thursday in a building I still can't find. Uh. I'll let you know how that goes. Also, yes, I do only have two classes, its how they roll here. I also only have lecture/tutorials for four hours a week. This is good as it leaves time for traveling. This is bad as it seems to rely on me to keep up with the reading and plan responsibly. Here is a story about me and planning responsibly: I once passed out because I forgot to eat. And by once I actually mean “on multiple occasions”

Don't be fooled, I like to describe my misadventures because it's funny but I am having an amazing time here and meeting great people and reading and writing and generally being incredibly happy. The alcoholic cider helps with the happiness a lot. Seriously. I will bring some back and you'll see. This place is really starting to feel like home now, I have my favorite coffee shop (it's run by volunteer church ladies and no one is ever there and they actually make good American coffee) and my shortcuts and routines. This clearly means I will have to start traveling soon, yes? For now, however, I will only be dragging my blistery self to an upstairs kitchen for tea with friends.

Things to come: pictures

Days in a country with socialized health care in which I contrarily do not get sick: 8

Verdict on haggis: tasty

Bank account: opened, bitches!

Thing I am most excited for: Club fair on Saturday at which I may sign up for MOUNTAINEERING club. Or maybe even Clay Pigeon Shooting Club. They totally have one. Tell your dad I may be one of the only people in the UK with a gun soon Kat.

Things they have here they should start having in America: Afternoon tea, alcoholic cider, ruins of castles and dramatic beaches right across from my classroom, a bar in the student union, accents

04. all statistics no stories (for now)

Things I did successfully today: Metriculate, buy an umbrella, cash traveler's checks, grocery shop, find my book list

Things I did not succeed at today: Buying boots, opening a bank account, cleaning my dishes, realizing my phone was in my pocket before I tore the room apart looking for it

Things I was accused of doing today: Forging my own signature.

Things I want to see in the ocean that are apparently there: Seals!

Things I will attempt tonight: Scottish dancing

03. grow up and blow away

I typed up a blog entry last night that basically went “um, my room is weird, I have my own bathroom and a queen sized bed and a temperamental radiator” except it took me almost a page to say it. I think this was because yesterday was a bit lonely. After a mostly uneventful journey (except for the part where I went through the security gates, started taking off my shoes, and then realized I had left my laptop with my father. Cue me sprinting back to the glass partition and jumping around wildly, waving my hands to get my parents' attention and then pantomiming typing while they stared the stares of parents who have just realized the child they're sending away to foreign country is mentally unstable and will be on the streets muttering to herself in about a week. “Laptop! LAPTOP!” I mouthed. People edged away from me (yeah, fun places to start acting crazy: post 9/11 airport security lines). My parents stared some more. Finally a security person took pity on me and went to get it.) I arrived at New Hall and found...no one. Evidently the woman who normally works at the front desk took a holiday. So I wandered around the biggest dorm in the world for awhile before a janitor found me and my giant suitcases rambling forlornly about the second floor and took me back downstairs where she dragged some woman in a blazer out of a back room. Blazer Woman gave me a packet of information mostly consisting of how not to set off the freakishly sensitive fire alarms (the shower apparently sets them off quite a bit) then let me “show myself up.”

There was nothing on the orientation schedule for that day so I unpacked, took a shower (in my own bathroom! That I share with no one!) and then took a nap only to wake up confused and lonely and jet lagged. This mood was not improved by internet troubles and trying to navigate St. Andrews which was planned by medieval architects. A word on medieval architects: do not let them plan your town. They have never heard of grids. I was too tired to properly appreciate anything except to note, with a gleam of hope, that there were half a million pubs and coffee houses and two bookstores before buying some honey cheerios (not honey nut in the UK, insert your own pun about lack of nuts in Europe here) and “orange squash” (super concentrated orange juice) at a chain grocery called Tesco's and scrambling home. The one person I talked to all day was a nice boy named Tom who showed me where the library was. I managed to kind of offend him a bit in the first couple minutes of our conversation thusly:
Him: So you're new around here?
Me: Oh, yes, just got off the plane today. I'm American...but I guess the accent gives it away?
Him: No, actually you don't have a very strong accent at all.
Me: Oh, um, good? Are you from around here?
Him: No I'm from England, but I guess my accent gives it away too.
Me: Actually I thought you were Scottish at first, I'm bad at accents.
Him: (laughing) How rude!
Me: I'm sorry! Was that? I don't know!
And then he laughed at me and told me no one can understand Scottish people and showed me where to turn for the library. I thanked him, he hesitated, I whirled around and raced off before realizing oh, wait, I was supposed to give him contact information there! This is how people make friends when they don't already know everyone on campus! The library couldn't fix my internet and all told I went to bed hungry (cheerios, they are not filling, but I hadn't yet found where to buy silverware or plates) and a bit dejected.

My mood was still low when I awoke this morning and went to the library tour which was mostly just confusing with a few other people who didn't talk to each other. Visions of spending the next four months completely alone drove me back to my room where I sent Jacque, a sorority sister who studied here the year before last, an e-mail basically going “AHHH ahhh AHHH!” and then moped about setting up my internet stuff until about 4:30 when I looked out my window and saw...a bunch of big grey lumps. What the hell? I thought and pushed open my window to look out at the blurry things which eventually resolved themselves into...ridiculously fat rabbits. Somehow seeing the St. Andrews campus answer to Knox's squirrels made me feel better and I forged on out determined to go get myself lost in Scotland.


The rabbits though you cannot really make them out.

I started out walking away from the town center and, now that I was rested, actually took time to look properly at what was around me instead of frantically searching for the library/a food source/a bank. You know in Galesburg or Albany when you come across something beautiful in the most unexpected place, a bunch of ivy growing over an old fence or a building with some of its original facade? Imagine a whole town built out of those bits and pieces and you have St. Andrews. It really is the most beautiful place I've ever been, the grass is greener, the air is cleaner, the sky at sunset is a prettier blue, the buildings are older and within walking distance of my dorm there is this:

The Atlantic Ocean!



The colors are really like this, I haven't edited these at all and I didn't even use a flash when I took them. It's just that damn pretty here.

I walked along the coastline till it got dark, taking out my i-pod earphones to listen to the waves and feeling better by the moment. I can't really express how lovely it is or how much better I felt after walking around and seeing this coastline as well as some old ruins and the harbor with its duck families (too dark by then for pictures) and thinking I get to see this every day for four months. There were plaques everywhere with history and commemorations for martyrs and...this:

Reads: "The memorable beach scene from Chariots of Fire was filmed here 1981" Clearly on par with epic religious struggles, political intrigue, and the grand scope of medieval history!

By the time I got back to Market Street (main street) it was pitch dark but I somehow stumbled on another supermarket where I bought some more groceries and actually found some silverware. I then returned to the dorm to an immensely helpful and reassuring message from Jacque and a message from the other Knox student studying here, turns out she is in my hall and so we are walking to the informational talks together tomorrow. So I'm staying up to talk to my mom and then going to bed tonight much happier than I ever was disoriented.

I leave you with this little video I made to test out my webcam and demonstrate the accent I am embarrassed to admit I have already begun acquiring after two days (though after an hour or two in my room it seems to have gone away). Also you may have to turn the volume up as I have sort of a quiet voice.



Amount of haggis consumed: None
Number of days in a country with socialized medicine where I contrarily remain healthy: 2
Times I have set fire to the kitchen cooking for myself: 0

I'm doing pretty good.

02. pack rat packing

Packing was an ordeal.


Bags: 2
Number of hours spent trying to make phone UK acceptable: 3
Percentage of success: 0%
How crazy I am making my poor family on a scale of 1-10: 8 (I have now taken to yelling "I KNOW" whenever anyone even breathes at me. I realize .5 seconds after I say it what a horrible way this is to repay the people who are encouraging, paying for, and in all ways enabling this venture. Secretly it is because I am going to miss them too much.)
Over-thought travel themed playlists made for ipod: 1
Hours till departure (for the airport): 9
Stupidest thing I have done so far: Realized about an hour ago that I had no idea what my room number was or where to find out that information. (I found it...but still have no idea about keys or how to get in to said room. I figure I'll just stand outside and look sad until someone tells me what to do)

01. you haven't lived afore you've left

This is a travel blog. You've probably all seen one before so we won't have any confusion, yes? Good.

Blog title/title of this post from this song ("Miles From Minnesota" The Lower 48):
I like it because it sounds less like a song and more like two people just singing in the car.



Anyway, groundwork: I'm leaving my tiny Midwestern college for large-ish St. Andrews University in St. Andrews Scotland. I'll be studying English there from February 2nd-May 28th. I am frequently anxious about it, pre-departure, because there is nothing at my tiny Midwestern college I want to leave behind. Also I have a propensity to injure myself in new and exciting ways if I so much as sneeze, get lost in towns small enough not to need a traffic light, and lose official documents (they typically spend five minutes in my possession before escaping to hide under the couch cushions or behind my desk) so international travel seems risky. Still, everyone says I'll regret it if I miss this so here I go! Wish me luck.

Days till departure: 2
Bags packed: 0
How crazy I am making my family and myself on a scale of 1-10: 7.5 ("NO MOM I'M NOT FORGETTING ANYTH--...wait where's my passport?")