A Year at St Andrews...

The next day, we had another high table. This one was and uber formal one, kind of similar to Christmas dinner and it was for the valedictorians (graduating seniors). At the end of the dinner, those who had served on the hall committee, this year or in the past, gave speeches. It was nice to hear how those who had been in St Andrews for all four years feel about their time here. I'd say it's sad to see them leave, but then I remember that I'm leaving too. There were funny speeches, crazy speeches, speeches that made people cry and ones that made everyone laugh and reminisce about life in Uni Hall. It was a great evening.

I went to this pub called the  Westport with a few friends for drinks afterwards. We went there in our  dresses/ suits and our red gowns. It was good.


The day after that, we had brunch. For brunch they serve us all the breakfast foods that we have over the entire three week rotation at a single meal, and they also throw in some extras like individually wrapped muffins. That afternoon, there was a garden party. The Garden Party is traditionally thrown by the newly elected senior students for the following year. We had had elections in hall a few weeks prior to this to elect next year's senior students, treasurer, secretary and computer rep. This new committee hosts the party.

I was tired from the antics of the previous night so I slept though most of it. When I went out, I saw people walking around in the deceiving sunshine, it was actually quite cold and windy. There was an inflatable pool filled with water  in the middle of the grassy quad and people were getting thrown into it intermittently. There were others walking around with water guns. There was a raffle going on and a BBQ as well. It was fun, but I had to leave soon because I was too cold in the dress I was wearing to stay for much longer. To end the day, there was a firework show for us at 10 pm. It was  fantastic.

A lot more has been happening. Classes are now over and it's revision week. Last night my academic dad took us out for drinks, which was nice. He's a fourth year as well, so I asked him about his experiences in hall and in St Andrews and what he feels about leaving. 

There so much more that I could talk about, but it's getting late now. And tomorrow, I'm off on a trip visiting castles in the north of Scotland for the next three days. Should be fun!

This weekend held the most weird and interesting of St Andrews traditions. I have briefly mentioned academic families to you all. Raisin Weekend is a celebration of these families.  The tradition goes as such: third and fourth year students 'adopt' Freshers and Study Abroad students (JSAs and JYAs), to be their 'children'. Their job is basically to help their children get acquainted with university life.


The festivities of Raisin Weekend start off with Raisin Sunday. In the afternoon, Academic mothers hold tea parties for their children. In days gone by there used to be mainly food at these parties, but now a days there's more drink than food. In the evening, the children are entertained by their dads' parties. Where lots more drink is provided. The parties can go on for a long time and almost everyone is at a party on that day.

The next morning (Raisin Monday) the mothers dress their children up in (usually funny) costumes and send them to collect their raisin receipts from their dads. The raisin receipt used to be a piece of parchment which acknowledged that the dad had received a pound of raisins as a thank you gift from their children in Latin. Now a days its written on almost anything. This receipt has to be carried to St Salvators Quad, where a huge foam fight takes place.  The kids get covered in shaving foam and everyone is completely unrecognisable.


My Raisin Weekend was fun. My mum's party was interesting, we had a lot of people there since it had hers and all four of her flatmates' kids. We played a few drinking games until everyone was too disorganised to play anything any more. Then there was just music and socialising. I went on to my dad's party in the evening and I had fun over there as well. Our hall was full of people having parties all over the place and it was noise and mess everywhere. I actually got to bed pretty early that night.

Monday Morning I woke up to go over to my mum's so she could dress me up. I was dressed up as a sheep and since one of our sisters wasn't able to come, my mum felt like her duck costume was going to go to waste and so I ended up having the head of a duck as well. A morphed sheep-duck is what I became. My other sister was dressed as a caterpillar. I went over to my dad's to collect my raisin receipt, but there was no answer when my sister and I knocked on his door. So we went to the foam fight without our receipt. That made me sad. Some of my friends had a tumble dryer as their receipt, some others had a pole with bottles attached to it, there was one who had a bust of Beethoven, and another who had a glove filled with canned food.

I made my way to the quad, and saw ton of people waiting outside with police keeping order all around. When I entered the quad with my sister, everyone was covered in foam. My sister and I locked arms and held our cans of shaving foam at the ready.  Within a minute of stepping inside, we were ambushed by two guys who covered us in foam. Then we went around spreading foam on anyone who didn't seem to be covered in enough. We saw our friends and covered them in foam as well. Then it was time to leave.

Exiting Sallies Quad on Raisin Monday

This week has been an interesting one. I'll start off from last weekend.

Last weekend was lovely. On Saturday we had a bunch of Uni Hall Alumni visiting us. The Uni Hall Choir (of which I am a part of) and Uni Hall Ensemble put up a cabaret for the Alumni in the evening. We also got the privilege of being able to talk and mingle with the Alumni over drinks in the afternoon. It was fun to talk to them. Most of them were women, as Uni Hall was built (in 1896) as a female student residence hall, the first one in Scotland and remained a women's hall for a long time. Now, however, it is mixed.  They told us tales of what Hall was like when it was women only, how they were only allowed to have male visitors in their rooms during the early evening and sometimes had to be chaperoned as well. All these rules were strictly enforced by the wardens. It was nice to hear these women talk about what they did when they were young and lived in hall and interesting to think that they once occupied the rooms we're now using.
Later that evening I went over to a birthday party. One of the other EAPers celebrated her birthday with a movie night. We had to go outside to light the candles on her birthday cake for her to blow out, in order to avoid setting off the fire alarms. It was the first time since being in St Andrews that all seven of us on EAP were together. Later, we watched the old version of The Producers and it was all in all a good night.
On Sunday, we had our Uni Hall photograph. We all wore black and white, and those of us who had them, wore the red gowns as well. It was cool to see the flocks of students going around town in their gowns. Makes me wonder what it was like when students were required to wear them all the time. Sunday evening, My academic Mum and her flatmates and all their children had dinner together at Zizzi's and Italian restaurant. I ordered pizza and would have not done that had I known how hard it was to cut a pizza with a fork and knife. After dinner we all went back to their flat for some Sangria that my mum had made.  Oh, and this means I also have a picture of my academic family from my mum's side. We're a lot smaller than my dad's family, but still awesome.
Here:

The girl in the white is my academic mum, and weirdly enough, she's a few months younger than me.

So, that was last weekend-- fun, magical, delightful. Then came Monday, and Monday sucked. I really won't go into the details here, but lets just say that I was upset and it ruined my mood for the first half of the week. And the rest of the week didnt really get better. It was all a bunch of small, seemingly meaningless incidents coming together in unfortunate ways and I felt like fate was conspiring against me. But at last, Friday arrived, and I decided that it was the right time to party. We had our first free vodka bar of the year (barring the freshers week events) and it was lovely. The theme was "Plastic Fantastic" and we had to make fancy dress outfits out of plastic. I have to say that the guys were a lot more creative than the girls in the whole, because most girls resorted to black bin bag dresses. Of course that wasn't all bad, as a group of girls from Wardlaw created the most amazing black and yellow dresses, that looked like designer prom dresses.  I made my dress an hour before the event out of a blue and white shower curtain.  After the vodka bar in hall we all made our way to teh Union and the Bop. We had quite a lot of fun over there before we decided to call it a night.

So the past few days really have been a roller coaster, and I guess I have to take it as it comes. I have no doubt that I will be upset again at some point through the year, but I also have no doubt that I will have some amazingly magical moments as well.

OK, I know that title sounds completely crazy. But, let me explain.

St Andrews has a tradition, where older students 'adopt' younger students and help them settle into university life. It's like your own little family at university. On Raisin Weekend some interesting stuff happens regarding these academic families and I will elaborate on that at a later date. (It involves alcohol and foam.)

So, I have an academic mum and an academic dad. I was adopted before the end of the first week itself. I was sure it would take longer. I met both parents during freshers week events.
We've since had "family" outings and I've met my siblings as well. I have seven siblings on my dad's side (four brothers, three sisters) and only one on my mum's side, but she might adopt more kids.
My 'dad' arranged a pub crawl for his kids last Thursday, and we went around town and got to know each other.  My dad is from northern Ireland and he spent this past summer teaching orphan kids in India. It's cool because he learned a bit of Hindi and randomly says things in Hindi to me, albeit with a northern Irish accent.
On Sunday afternoon I had coffee with 'mum' and sister. That was really nice as well. My mum is from northern California and she was really excited to adopt me. It will  be really nice to be able to see her when I'm in California as well.  My sister Isabel is English and she plays the piano. She's a fresher and is really nice.

It's a cool feeling, having an academic family.  Here's a picture of my family on my dad's side:

Oh, and if you're wondering, the guy in the middle of the picture (grey jacket) is my dad.