March Week 4 - Superheroes in St. Andrews

Hiya! (typical Scottish greeting) Hope all is well wherever you find yourselves. This week was the last one before our two week spring break. I was, once again, frantically trying to finish all my work. (I feel like this is becoming a theme... hmmm. Not good.) I had a presentation for class (although it was not graded, which I still find weird). (This is the building I have all my classes in.) Anyway, I managed to get done with everything and then headed out on Thursday night to an Albany-sponsored Superheroes and Villains theme party at a bar called the Vic. It was fabulous! Charmaine and I spent most of the evening perfecting our costumes and particularly our utility belts. I went as Wynott Waitawhile, the Procrastination Villain (how fitting), and Charmaine went as the Safe Sex Hero. Alas, we did not win the costume competition even though our costumes were definitely the most original and the coolest. Sigh. Anyway, pretty much everyone has been leaving over the rest of the weekend, so now I am hanging out all by my lonesome in the house. So I went for a walk this morning and photographed more of St. Andrews. A photo of part of the West Sands (this is where they filmed Chariots of Fire, so you can often see tourists running epically in slow motion toward each other on the beach). Here is a view of the East Sands from the pier. Albany is right between the big shiny roof and the row of cars, if you are zooming in. It is a gorgeous day, and not even too windy for kite-flying. Luckily, I leave the empty house tomorrow for Paris. Woohoo! Amanda (one of the other JSAs) and I are going to meet my flatmate Becky to wander around Edinburgh during the day and then we fly out tomorrow night. I promise to take lots of pictures and learn many nerdy historical details to report. For now, I'll say "Au Revoir!"

More Ireland Photos!

Here are some of the other photos from the Ireland trip...

Torc Waterfall. Apparently "torc" means wild boar in Gaelic. Who knew?

Along the bike path... I just thought it was pretty.


Bridge somewhere near Lough Lein.

Muckross House. This belonged to the English family that owned the land that now makes up the national park. It is quite common that the only land that was preserved in Ireland once belonged to wealthy English landowners. I think if you click on this photo, you will be able to see that the sign in front of the house is written in both Gaelic and English. This was one of the things that most surprised me about Ireland. Nearly all signs were written in both languages and on my flight the announcements were made in both as well.

On the way back to the airport. Notice the daffodils all along the sides of the road. There were gazillions of them!

March Week 3 - Interstudy in Ireland

Hey all! It has been yet another eventful couple of weeks in St. Andrews. Last week I frantically tried to finish much homework, as usual, so that I could go to Ireland over the weekend for my other interstudy program excursion. So, I met up with 20 other students studying around the UK and Ireland for some exciting activities and hang-out time. The first night we got Chinese take-away and settled into the Neptunes Hostel, which was very nice and homey, with sunflower duvets and yellow paint. Then on Saturday we left the hostel early for a nerve-wracking but fun day of kayaking and mountain-biking around the National Park just outside of Killarney. (We also did a bit of spelunking!) Those of you who know of my poor record with such activities will be happy to know that I made it through the entire day without serious injury - it was a miracle! :) When we got back (absolutely knackered!), we went to a pub to watch the final match of the Six Nations Rugby Tournament. It was Ireland vs. Wales and Ireland had not won the Grand Slam in 61 years. The second half was incredibly exciting and Ireland managed to hang on for the win. It was a great time - the pub practically erupted in cheering! That evening we went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant and I had my first steak of my overseas experience. It was delicious! We then went to another pub after dinner and drank our requisite pint of Guinness. It took me all of Sunday to get home, but the trip was well worth the time and exhaustion - what a blast!

More ball/party photos - I couldn't help myself!

I am obviously wowing everyone with my groovy dance moves... :)

This is my academic family: Mom Becky and Dad Gerard. I got adopted at the rave, since I missed Raisin Weekend, which was in November. If anyone wants an explanation of the academic family phenomenon at St. Andrews, you will have to ask me separately, because it is too long and confusing to write here...Ceilidh dancing at the ball - it looks like a party, huh!?!
This is one of the bands from the music night - they were excellent!

Here is us at the Oak Rooms, where we went for dinner for Connie's birthday. L-R: Connie, Jen, Me, and Charmaine. That's all folks!

March Week 2 - Balls and Birthdays

Hello again, wonderful people! This post is going to be devoted almost exclusively to the Albany Park Ball, which was held in Dundee on Friday night, and to Connie's birthday celebration, which was yesterday. Other things happened this week as well, but since all pretty much anyone was thinking or talking about was the ball, it seems to have rendered everything else pretty much irrelevant. I was worried about feeling okay for the ball earlier this week, since, as mentioned in a previous post, I came down with a nasty cold that kept changing and developing new symptoms in an effort to make me feel as miserable as possible. Luckily, by this weekend the only symptom left was a cough (which I still have, btw... sigh). To make matters worse, though, I came down with pink eye. You'll probably notice the redness of my eyes in the ball pictures, but I didn't spend the evening crying in the bathroom (although there were a few people that did - sad times). It was a pain, though, since the whole evening I had to go put drops in my eyes every two hours - there are photos of that, too (thanks, Jessa - not), but they aren't on facebook yet. But I digress... Anyway, the ball was held at the Apex Hotel in Dundee, which is about 20-30 minutes away from St. Andrews. We had a reception in Albany, complete with bagpiper, before boarding coaches to travel to Dundee. Once at the hotel, we had another champagne reception and then enjoyed a delicious 3-course meal. (Table 15 photo - the coolest table of all.) After dinner, there was a ceilidh and a disco, so we danced to our hearts' desire. At 12:30, the people with normal tickets went back to Albany and the rest of us took the coaches to a club in Dundee called Fat Sam's. We hung out in the VIP Lounge and then danced some more until coming back to Albany about 3am. (Above photo L-R: Xander, Adam, and Stefan, whose birthday was also on Saturday.) All in all, it was a fabulous evening! Everyone looked great in their dresses, suits, and kilts! Yesterday, after having a lie-in, as it's called here, Charmaine, Jen, and I went out with Connie and her mom and brother to dinner for Connie's birthday. Later that evening, we went to a music night that the transition town that Jen is working with for her dissertation was putting on. The music was great - there were two live blues bands - and we danced a whole bunch more. (My knees and toes are very sore today!). Anyway, that was my crazy weekend. I have done absolutely no work, though, so I will really have to buckle down tomorrow, especially since I am supposed to be heading to Killarney this weekend. For now, though, I best go into town and get myself some groceries... I promise to write again soon - no more 3 week breaks!

March Week 1 - Party Time!

Hey again! Last week was an odd combination of extreme homework levels and many exciting social engagements, including a "Walk of Shame"- themed birthday party for Svenya, a German student that lives in Albany and a murder mystery dinner party planned and executed by my own house 33! (Connie's and my best walk of shame faces.)Unfortunately, I also came down with a rather nasty cold that kept developing new symptoms (more about that in the next post). Here we have "Chocolate Bertrand" aka Connie, "Dr. Doris Johnson" aka yours truly, and "Little Fitz and Ziggy," aka Neil and his teddy. In this photo you can see our lovely table set-up, as well as Maria Von Schnapps (Becky), Sigmund Fraud (Charmaine), Chocolate Bertrand, and Doris. And now the whole murder mystery lot. Notice Mike Bison (Adam), lefthand side of front row, who turned out to be the murderer. What a fantastic evening - everyone looked so great, even the ones we called in at the last minute! Not much else to report from last week, really. I like my classes more, now that I've had them for a while, but I still feel a little dubious about the class structure. It seems silly that I pay more to attend uni (more Scottish/UK vocab) here and only get 4 hours of class per week than to attend Augsburg and get 12 hours per week. Also, I lack the satisfaction that comes from being able to say that I finished all my reading/homework for whatever class. Since the reading lists here are massive, you aren't expected to read everything, but it still feels like there's always more you could be doing... None of the satisfaction of getting everything crossed off your list. Still, though, I am learning loads about the Middle East and about Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Erasmus (although thanks to Reformers, I already had a background on him...). Clausewitz is up this week. I guess that's all for the academic side of things right now, but I suppose I should mention that as of this week, I have completed half of the graded work for each of my classes for the semester. I only had 4 assignments total for the continuous assessment portion and I did two of them this week, so there you go. It kind of freaks me out how fast the semester is going! Pictures from the Albany Ball and Connie's birthday will be in the next post... Hope you're enjoying yourselves! (Here's a picture of the castle and castle sands taken on my way home from tutorial the other night... be jealous! Much love!)

February Week 4 - London Trip

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been so long since my last post (so much for one a week, right?)... I was swamped by homework and my incredibly full social calendar! ;) So, three weeks ago, I headed down to London via train for my interstudy theater night excursion. Although I still think it was a bit of a waste to spend two days traveling for one day in London, it was pretty fun and I got to meet some of the other interstudy students, who I will be seeing this coming weekend when I go to Ireland for a mountain biking/kayaking trip... ick. Hopefully it will be fun and I will not end up injured because of my bad balance! Anyway, in London I ventured to the Natural History Museum in the morning before meeting up with the guys from my program for some rugby-watching at the pub near our hostel. The museum was free to get into (I wanted to see the Darwin exhibit, but tickets to that were sold out, so I had to be content with the entire rest of museum... oh well) and it was chock full of informative and cool exhibits. In the evening we went to a Spanish tapas restaurant (the food was very tasty) and then went to a production of Avenue Q at a theater in Leicester Square. The show was great and Leicester Square was insane - there were zillions of people there! All in all, it was a good trip, I probably would have looked less like a crazy person at the museum if there had been someone there to laugh at the ironic bits of the exhibits with me... next time, I guess. Besides, I got to see these cool nuclear reactors on the way back - go alternative energy! Miss you all!