The Royal Burgh of St. Andrews

I'm not sure where to even start. St. Andrews is incredibly beautiful. The campus has buildings that overlook the Firth of Forth and there's a ruined castle right on the edge of town. I live in the David Russell Appartments which is the furthest residence from campus.. I have about a 30 minute walk to both my classes (and town) but there's a bus service for 80 pence ($1.60) if I ever need it or have groceries. As a sort of thank you for dealing with the distance though we all have internet in our rooms. I live in a room by myself. Own bathroom and all, despite the fact that it's a joke of a bathroom. I have 4 flatmates though who i share a kitchen and living room with. Two of them are dating, and then there's Alec a Russian guy and Alex an asian girl who's from Hong Kong with a boyfriend in France and who speaks perfect american English... They're all really nice but all St. Andrews students and so they're settled. Oh well, good thing i have my IFSA-Butlers. Plus once the semester starts it should get better and everyone will be out making new friends. Anyway Alex is going to take me to boxing with her tomorrow. So I'll finally see the Athletic building and get registered and just maybe sign up for soccer or something else to keep me busy. I live really close to the Athletic building since it's out in the sticks with me.

We've finished with all our registration and matriculation so I am officially a St. Andrews student as of today. To celebrate finishing orientation Ciara, my fellow IFSA a girl from Queens that i adore, and I decided to go on a pub crawl with some of our other Americans. best worst idea ever! I think the night ended at like 5am and I met some really brilliant people.. too bad they were all out of towners just in for their mate's birthday. Leave it to me to get on really well with people who aren't staying. Oh well. We pub crawled and flatpartied until the wee small hours and it was a blast!

Then the next night I went to the ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) and Ciara, who's an irish step dancer, taught me some of the traditional dances. Then i met up with the out-of-towners again and resumed the pub-crawling extravaganza. Another late night, another fantastic night. Of course though, now i'm sick again. Just a head cold this time, but it still blows.

Today i sat through my first lecture. My Monday class is Plantagenet and Bruce, basically from 1250-1340, the period Braveheart was based around, and indeed, we have a topic on Wallace. I'm woefully unprepared for the class having never taken a medieval history course before, really. So i'll have to do more background reading than anyone else, but there's 2 Americans in my class so maybe we can be brutally unprepared together. My next class is 11-1 Thursday and it's on the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires. We'll see how that goes. That covers me for lecture classes, 4 hours... however the reading lists make up for the rest of the hours, and I'll have tutorials next week as well (thank god really).

I'll post pictures of my flat soon. Last night we had a superbowl gathering at New Hall. The game didn't come on until 11:25PM here so you can imagine it went really late. So we drank beer and cider and ate doritos in honor of the bowl. There were Bears and Colts fans but my fellow Bears fans got all the up front seats so we were really obnoxious, especially with that opening play. I left about 2am because i have a long creepy walk back to my flat. So i watched the rest of the game in my bed. It's a damn shame... stupid Rex.

Anyway, I'm having to learn how to cook here since i'm in a self-catered flat. I made my first real meal last night. Chicken and noodles in a creamy muchroom sauce with peas and carrots. Tonight Alex and I are going to make spaghetti with meat balls and garlic bread. it's kinda fun cooking for myself and I feel a lot healthier doing so. I haven't eaten out anywhere here yet. I'm trying to make sure I have everything i need before i start treating myself to meals out.. besides the drinks are expensive. At least they're stronger so you don't need as many to get utterly pissed lol. Anyway, i'm starving so it's spaghetti time...

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