Wow. I am a blog fail. Really. I have some excuses that are simultaneously valid and lame, so I’ll spare you the details. Really, I’ve just been neglecting my blog. I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been doing so many thrilling, all-consuming things recently, but I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
So now I’m flipping through my calendar trying to remember what I’ve been doing for the past month, and am therefore pretty sure I’ve aged about 70 years since 5 minutes ago. My activities seem to suggest otherwise, though, as I’m reading things now like “Do essay for Scottish Fiction,” “Get tickets for May Ball,” “Beer pong tournament!!!,” “Skype w/ Mom and Dad” and “Pint with Aisha.” While I’m not sure any of these are entirely blog-worthy (but here they are, nevertheless), some of the things I’ve been doing are, I swear. Observe:
11 April: Classes begin again. Grudgingly. Lectures are attended, novels are discussed, professors are asked stupid questions, written Scottish dialects are deciphered, 5,000,000,000 (or 2) essays are written, notes are taken, exams are looming. I had forgotten about the “study” part of my study abroad experience; on the 11th of April, I am reminded.
13 April: Get tickets for May Ball. What is May Ball, you ask? On May 8, you will find out. For now, know that I waited 5 hours and watched the sunrise to get these tickets. They were a big deal.
15 April: St Matthew’s Passion. Bach, anyone? Yeah, so I’m a big of a music lover and a bit of a musician myself, and when my orchestra decided to go see the St Matthew Passion in Perth, of course I knew it was an opportunity not to be missed. It didn’t disappoint. Though we were in the cheap seats, we spent the evening listening to some beautiful baroque music on some crazy baroque instruments (I think the oboists played about 5 different types of oboe). It really was a lovely evening, and I had reverted back (or forward) to the old woman I truly am.
On the 20th of April my calendar reads, “PRINT FLIGHT INFO! 7.40-9.35 bus, 12.00 Edinburgh – Copenhagen 14.45. Email Mom when there.” Yes, yes, I really did go to Copenhagen, Denmark and not blog about it for weeks. This, really, does have an excuse. A simultaneously more valid and more lame one than the rest of my non-blogging. I forgot my camera.
See, Mom, I haven’t changed all that much since leaving the country. Nevertheless, the friend I’m visiting in Denmark, Rachel, another study abroader from Knox, lets me borrow hers, and we have a big fiasco at the airport, me forgetting to give it back to her, trying to figure out how to get the pictures on my computer, failing miserably, sending it back to her, Rachel trying to figure out the best way to get them to me – email or Facebook, and not having discovered this yet. She’s also been busy getting back home, so I don’t blame her at all. I mean, I’m the stupid one who forgot the camera.
So this is your spoiler alert: pictures of Copenhagen are coming. Of course, on my calendar for 25 April is written “12.00 Copenhagen – 17.50 Edinburgh. Departure terminal 2. Email Mom when back.” I had a wonderful almost-week.
26 April the reality of being back from vacation set in. “Party with Jessica for her birthday” is written, and I’m wondering, if this is reality setting in after vacation, what is it going to be like when I return home to the States and have to start work the next week? I really don’t want to know.
Regardless, the 27th of April brought a classy wine and cheese and quizzes night. I like to think I dazzled my British counterparts with my knowledge of the dates of Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination, the order of the U.S. presidents, and pi out to the 9th decimal, but they knew a hell of a lot more British history than I did. In all fairness, we all made our respective countries proud.
The next day, I meet my parents in Edinburgh. Yes, parents! They have ventured to Scotland for a whole two weeks, just to visit me. Well, OK, not just to visit me. My Mom’s wanted to go to Scotland her whole life and because it’s their 25th wedding anniversary later this year, my Dad figures, what the hell, let’s make a trip of it. That, and I think they wanted to see me. I wanted to see them, of course, and I was eager to mooch off some free food from them.
So we spent that half day in Edinburgh, eating good food I wouldn’t have been able to afford with out them, seeing some old house museums I wouldn’t have been able to afford without them, and not taking pictures because my mom was. They may or may not turn up on her Facebook page, and I may or may not add them in here. So Friday the 29th, my parents best friends, who I basically consider my aunt and uncle, and who have also decided to make the trek to see Scotland, me, and my parents, arrive in Edinburgh, on none other than the day of the Royal Wedding. We sit in a nice tea place and watch most of it. Everyone around us is dead silent and watching, as well. As much as they pretend not to, the Brits really love their royalty, and the whole time we’re taking the bus to Crail, where my family is staying, we see garden parties for the wedding. All I can think is, the groom? Yeah, I shook his hand once.
Because I can, I spend the night in Crail in the house my family has rented for the week. It’s really lovely – a seaside town 20-25 minutes outside of St Andrews, if I remember correctly. We get fish and chips and I have to do some translating of Scottish accents for the Americans with me. I have vague recollections of, oh, yeah, I used to not be able to understand it when they said that word, or, oh, yeah, I used to think a pint was kind of a lot of beer. It’s like some weird form of déjà vu.
30 April: I take my family to St Andrews. I’m a little nervous they won’t like it or something, or, more accurately, that they’ll expect me to know things I don’t, or, even more accurately, that I’ll expect me to know things I don’t. But these things don’t really happen. St Andrews is small enough that even the directionally challenged don’t find it extraordinarily hard to navigate. My family likes St Andrews. We see some things I haven’t seen before. I am knowledgeable enough to show them around a bit. All turns out well.
That night, after my family has gone back to their little house on the edge of the sea in Crail, I take part in a famous St Andrews tradition. One that requires unyielding strength, determination, a dash of insanity, a warm towel and a hot shower. Yes, you probably guessed it: I jumped into the North Sea. At dawn. On May Day.
Here's what some of the crazies looked like:
And here's what we looked like after the dip.
You might (in fact, you probably are) wondering why anyone would subject herself to this type of torture. I'll give you four reasons:
1) I'm from Wisconsin. We do this on January 1st, in Lake Michigan, which, for the record, was made by a glacier. This is tame.
2) It's tradition.
3). Supersition.
4) Peer pressure.
I realise, the superstition part of this list needs a bit more explanation. The May Dip is supposed to cleanse students of all kinds of academic sin. Academic incest is one form of this, (at the beginning of the year, students form academic families: older students take on a younger student as their "child" and by the time the first semester is over, every student here has so many academic mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles and grandparents that its hard not to commit some kind of incest), and another is stepping on the PH fitted into the cobblestones write outside my hall, a marker for the exact spot at which Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake. Charming. Student rumor has it, you step on the PH, you fail all your exams. Unless, of course, you jump in the sea on May Day. This is like the St Andrews version of "step on a craack, break your mother's back," but so much worse because it actually affects you, not just your mother.
Cleansed of all my sins (academic ones, at least) I take a hot shower and snuggle under my duvet for the rest of the day, fairly satisfied at the fact that I'd just successfully completed my first all-nighter.
5 May: I spend another day in Edinburgh with my parents. We see some more old house mueums. We hang out. We eat obscene amounts of seafood. My mom takes all the pictures - sorry. I say goodbye for good, since my parents' friends are leaving tomorrow to go home, and my parents are leaving tomorrow to go to the Isle of Skye. I take the bus home.
7 May: Sallies Day lasts all afternoon and into the evening. We grill (well, I say "we" - really, it was a select few grillers, myself not included) hamburgers and bratwurst (or sausages, as they call them here, rather vaguely) and drink lots of Pimms, a British summer drink that's sweet and contained whole strawberries, cucumbers, pineapple, kiwi, and whatever other random fruits and vegetables the makers picked up. Pimms is the summer drink in the UK, I gather, and some people tell me they've had it in the States, as well, though I've never heard of it. Regardless, the BBQ is a good time. Croquet, some form of beach volleyball and a champagne fight ensue. Fun is had by all.
8 May: Charity May Ball. Really, it's just a ball. But with carnival rides, and it's therefore so much cooler than just a plain old ball. I try to kill people with some Bumper Cars (or Dodgems, as they like to call it here. I think this is a fundamental difference in the way Americans and Brits play the game. Here in the UK, you're actually trying to dodge, we in the States are trying to bump. Possibly a metaphor that goes beyond carnival rides? Who knows.) and dance a lot. A lot, a lot. It's a good night, overall, though when I realise the dance floor is made up of more people "snogging" than dancing, it's really time for everyone to go home.
9 April: "Bus to Dundee for class (Verdant Works)," my calendar says. Verdant Works is a textile (jute) mill in Dundee, and my professor wants us to see a more industrial Scotland than St Andrews provides us. We tour the mill, but mills are much the same everywhere. Women and children worked in them. They went deaf because of the machinery. They had poor air quality. They got their hair and skirts caught in the machines. The working conditions were horrible. At every turn, I'm reminded of my mother telling me about my great aunts and grandmothers who worked in the Lowell Mills in Massachusetts. They're pretty similar in Scotland. Still, its a nice change of scenery, and I haven't been to Dundee before. Though we don't get to see much of it, it seems to me like a pretty cool, industrial city, with a lot of shopping. It is, though, a bit like the Detroit of Scotland.
10 May: Orchestra concert. Baroque Orchestra, baroque music, recorders, baroque violin bows, a couple of flutes, a successful concert. Some of my friends come to watch, and say they enjoyed it.
12 May: Chariots of Fire at cinema, 11.00, or 23.00. This was filmed partially in St Andrews, on West Sands. After the film, some slightly creepy or overly friendly (probably both) guys say, "Hey, want to go have a race on West Sands this Sunday?" "I don't run on Sundays," I reply. You'd have to have watched the film.
14 May: "Exams begin," my calendar reads. "14.00-16.00 Scottish Fiction exam in Younger Hall." So it begins. And that's why much of the rest of my calendar is blank, except for my next exam, on Monday. And writing this really is just a break, I swear.
Tuesday the 17th, when I went to Edinburgh with friends for the day, was also just a break, I swear. The best kind of break: one that invovled Scottish microbreweries, a trek up Calton Hill, on which stands this, a half-finished national monument (they ran out of funds)
And from which you can see this, the rest of Edinburgh:
We also enjoy ourselves at an independent whisky shop, at which they take your whisky order directly from the casks and stick the labels on themselves, and got our fix of American burgers with shakes, fries and ketchup (I hadn't had any of the above, well except fries, but called chips, in an obscenely long time). At the National Museum, I learn, among other things, that Scotland used to be a desert, and bemoan my coming here several thousand years too late, otherwise I might have gotten a tan, or at least some freckles. We take the bus home and so begins studying.
Operation: Scotland: nearing completion. Operation: getting pictures from Denmark and possibly from my mother: hopefully in progress. Stay tuned. That wait, certainly, won't be as long.
