A Year at St Andrews...

Whew! My exams are over!

Except for the um... screwup in the first one, they went well, and I've come out  learning a few lessons.

One, stress makes me study better. However, excess stress makes me worry too much. Too much worry can take you to scary places and can make you screw up. A calm mind really is important when writing an exam.
Two, it's okay to not know everything for an exam and exam grades are not the be all and end all. (Although I have a harder time accepting that)
Three, it would be nice if I could find a nice balance between stress and apathy when it comes to exams. It would also help if I had a better work ethic. (If wishes were horses....) I tend to swing to the extremes, although before this set of exams I usually swung toward the not-a-care-in-the-world side before my exams.

Hmm... there'll be a new semester that will start in three weeks, lets see if I can put into practice what I've learned. Till then though... freeeeeedom! Three weeks of it. There are things that I really need to do though, like clean my room :( it's a pig sty right now.  I also would like to read a novel during this time. The option of travelling is open, and I might visit a friend or two down in England and eventually, I want to see more of Scotland. Maybe that can happen another time. We'll see.
 Right now, what I really want to do, is relax.

In other news, I found a stone in my potatoes today. We have roasted or boiled new potatoes as sides for our meals. I don't know what kind of weird method they use to cook new potatoes out here, but I don't know if I even want to know how the stone got there. It was on my plate just sitting there and I thought it was a mushroom or a charred potato, until I tried cutting it with a knife. It was round-ish and would fill a teaspoon. I'm sure it was just a one time thing and it doesn't really happen often, but it really was the weirdest thing. A stone, good heavens what next? Cardboard in the bread box??

I am having a ncie time out here though, and the food isn't as bad as it could be. I'm sure some of you might have some stories about stuff you've found in your food that wasn't supposed to be there. Care to share?

This past week was reading week over here.  Reading Week is a week's break from classes, meant for students to catch up on reading and other work. Most people however, go home or go travelling. A few of my friends went to Berlin, a couple went to London, another went to Ireland and few others travelled around Scotland a bit.

I just stayed in hall. I was going to take advantage of Ryan Air's superb cheap flight deals, but I had an essay to write. I knew I would feel incredibly guilty if I went without having my essay done, and I knew that I would not be able to get the essay done before I went either. So I stayed here, stuck reading and writing about animal mating habits for my evolution class.

I found that living in the computer room in hall is actually not that bad. I like the lighting in there. It's a great place to study in, without being isolated. It's right opposite the dining hall, so that's convenient. It makes for a good spot to write essays, and it's nice when you have a friend in there as well.

One of my friends was writing an essay for his history class and so we'd both sit there tapping away at the keyboards, occasionally stopping to complain about how pointless it all was (me), to share a weird name in the text (him), or to tell the other about a funny passage (him and me). It might have lengthened the process a bit but it definitely made it less boring.

I did make it to Edinburgh for a night. I went there with a friend to see a play, which was quite interesting. I had fun. We had fun and spent the night at her friend's flat. We walked about Edinburgh for a bit that day, and did a tiny bit of shopping. We went to a store that had there really interesting dresses. One of them had heavy bead-work all over it, it probably weighed half as much as I do. I decided to try it on. It didn't feel quite so heavy when I was wearing it and it was reasonably okay to dance in as well. I definitely wasn't going to buy the dress, it costs something like £295! Definitely out of the question! I sneaked a few pictures of myself in the dress, though.

I worked on my essay a bit more after I got back from Edinburgh on Saturday. Then on Sunday, I had dinner with my academic mum and discovered that I have a brother on that side as well. He's quite a cheeky fellow, when our mum said she'd like to adopt him he said he wasn't sure because he had two other mums lined up and would have to decide who's the best.

The days here are getting quite short. It's four o'clock in the afternoon as I write this, and I've already had to turn on the lights in my room, although it's not completely dark just yet.  Yesterday was a dull day with heavy cloud cover and we didn't get to see the sun at all. Today was nicer, the sun showed up for a bit and it made me happy. 

This week is probably going to be uneventful, until the weekend that is. This coming weekend is Raisin Weekend, and is the highlight of the St Andrews social calendar. It should be fun, and I am looking forward to it.

I know this entry is a bit delayed, but I was too tired on Sunday and busy on Monday and well.... anyway, Halloween...

Yes, for those of you wondering, it is celebrated here. Kids do dress up and go trick-or-treating, and jack-o'lanterns are made as well.

Honestly, I don't know much more about  what people all around Scotland do for Halloween, but I do an awful lot about what St Andrews did. There were parties galore. Since it was a Friday night, there was the Bop as well. Uni Hall had its customary party vodka bar, and there was much dancing.  It was also the night of the James Bond film release and there was a special event for that at the cinema, it was black tie, with martinis and popcorn served.  A few of my friends attended that.

I went to the Uni Hall party, dressed as Flora- The Goddess of Flowers. It was a little bit of a cop out as I had been Flora two years ago, and some of you may remember my stories from that Halloween (wink, wink).  The thing about the costumes here is that girls tended to dress up scary, as opposed to cute or  sexy or pretty like they do in America. There were a lot of vampires and witches among the girls, and the Joker from The Dark Knight was the predominant choice among the guys. Fake blood, face paint, white powder, dark eyeshadow and black eyeliner were all significantly used among both girls and guys. There was one guy who painted himself red and stuck a note on his chest that read "Why the Irish need sun cream". It was quite a laugh. There was a girl who was "a molested Snow White", in the pretty snow with dress, but with fake blood all over her arms and knees. Slightly disturbing, but still, pretty innovative.

I enjoyed myself at the party, and later against my better judgement decided to go to the Bop. Not that I really lost anything by going, but I felt like I should have used that night to relax a bit, and maybe have done some work the next day. But I went, and partied it up even more out there. There were more crazy costumes at the Bop and it was a lot of fun dancing. I stayed till the end, and I came back quite late that night and chatted with a few friends online, before finally going to bed.

Pictures form Halloween are up in My Pictures now. 

 I feel like I've been posting less and less lately. I suppose that's because things are getting to the point where they aren't that new and exciting anymore. On one hand that's a good thing, as it means I've settled in and adjusted to life over here, on the other hand I don't feel as inspired to write about things anymore.

The weather here has been atrociously windy this week. I almost got blown away twice. It has also been raining, well drizzling would be a better way to describe it. It has only rained heavily a couple times since I've been here. It is pointless carrying an umbrella because of the wind, I really don't need any help with getting blown away.  Most of the time when it drizzles, the sun is out as well, this means that there is plenty of opportunity to spot a rainbow. I have only seen one pretty rainbow so far, but I'm sure I will see more in time.

On Wednesday, the Cinema here had a special showing of The Dark Knight at 11pm. I had not yet seen that movie although I had heard a lot about it. From what I'd heard, I felt like it was a movie best seen on the big screen and watching it after it came out on DVD would not be as good. So, having made sure I'd completed my assignments, I set off to watch the movie with a bunch of friends. It was a small adventure getting there because we were half afraid that they would be sold out. The movie was great and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I got back to my room at about 2 am and stayed up for a while before going to bed. The next morning, I was sleepy and tired through my 9 am lecture. After the lecture, I went straight back to my room and took a nap.

Friday was a fun night as well. I really did not intend to go out, but I found a bunch of people who were, and so I figured I might as well. We pre-gamed in one of the girls' rooms and headed to the Bop at 11. The theme was "school disco". Boys came dressed in school shirts and ties that were tied loosely around open collars. One of my friends, a guy, had straightened his collar length black hair and looked so much like a young Severus Snape in his outfit. Most girls wore short pleated skirts and shirts and loosely tied ties as well. A lot of girls did their hair up in two ponytails. Obviously, it's not the kind of stuff you'd wear to school, it's more the kind of thing you would wear if you were a rebel and would get into trouble for. But we're in Uni now, so we can do whatever we want, which I think is the spirit of the Bop.

Yesterday,  one of my friends threw a small dinner party. She had found a recipe for Pumpkin Risotto and was eager to cook it. She invited a few friends and held the event in our lovely common room. We dressed up for the party and had a great time with the food and wine. I went to bed fairly early for a Saturday night, but it was only because wine makes me terribly sleepy. I even forgot that the time  had "fallen back" in the night and I went down to breakfast an hour early this morning. I didn't figure it out until I had a conversation with another girl in the computer room (where I was waiting for the dining hall to open) and reminded me.

So, that was my week. Like I said, not terribly interesting any more. Next weekend is Halloween however, so I may have spoken too soon. We shall see...

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.

I figure I should tell you all something about where I'm staying, i.e. my dorm or hall as its called here.

I live in University Hall, and as I've said before is the best hall out here. I also happen to live in the coolest wing of the hall as well. The building is called Wardlaw and it is a mini castle. It's quite old (both inside and out), but is young compared to most buildings in St Andrews.

My room is on the top floor of the building and it has turrets on the sides. I also have two windows, which is amazing, since I get lots of light because of it.

My windows have lovely views. One of them has an amazing view of the golf course, and the north sea, which is absolutely fantastic. The first thing I see when I wake up every morning is the sea. The other window looks out on to some trees, a few old houses and the path below that leads up to the front door.

I absolutely love my room!

Pictures are here.

If you want my address, email me and ask. I'll send it to you.

I would totally appreciate receiving some mail! And if you want me to send you some, email me your address as well.