Hello. . .

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Greetings, my lovely blogees! Well, the original plan was that I would upload one entry for every day of my two-week tour of England and Scotland. However, even that modest goal has proven to be too much for me. So, I hastily finished my Scotland entries, accidentally leaving out several fascinating titbits (British for “tidbits”), and now I shall try to complete the earlier entries whenever I have a spare moment. The first London entry should be finished soon, and it will give you plenty of background information on the differences between the UK and the US. Those details will help you understand all the remarks I make in the Scotland entries! But although the Scottish entries do talk about Scottish culture, they mostly focus on the history behind the places we visited.

First, I'll explain how the St Andrews programme works. This year, fifteen people from W&L are studying abroad at St Andrews. There are junior biology majors, junior chemistry majors, sophomore chem majors, and one senior bio major, but the common link is that we’re all taking organic chemistry (except for the senior, who took it last year). Since chemistry is taught on a different schedule in the UK than in the US, our class was specially designed for American students. Right now, it includes all 14 of us, plus about ten British first-years who need to brush up on their high school preparation before taking regular St Andrews chem classes. The British students will leave the class after the first half of the semester. I'm also taking evolutionary biology and geography of health, two regular St Andrews classes. They seem really interesting so far, and they don't have too much work, which allows me to focus completely on the dreaded organic.

Tuition is much less expensive in the UK. Scottish students can go to Scottish unis (universities) for free, and English and Northern Irish students have to pay only about three thousand pounds per year. Even international students get a break, even when you allow for the fact that one pound equals two dollars (Side note: this does not mean that something that would cost $5 in the US costs £2.50 in the UK. Au contraire! Instead, it costs £5, and you need to pay $10 to get that £5.). So, there is a disparity between what we’re paying to W&L this semester, and what W&L is paying to St Andrews. Therefore, the extra money was used to take us on a two-week tour of London, Oxford, Durham, Edinburgh, and the Scottish Highlands. We spent five days in London, one day each in Oxford and Durham, three days in Edinburgh, and four days in various parts of the Highlands. We stayed in really nice hotels (in Durham, we actually stayed in a castle!) and visited all the most famous and exciting landmarks in each city. One of my only complaints is that we never broke out of the tourist bubble. Since there were so many of us and we did not know any native Brits, we did not get to see anything from an insider’s perspective. However, now that I'm in St Andrews for the next two months, I’ll have plenty of opportunity to see Scotland in more depth. England may have to wait for my next visit!

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