St Andrews Gets "Kinky"

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So, here in Alba, we don’t get a Thanksgiving break, of course, but we do get an entire week’s worth of Reading Days. Mine got off to a running start with a visit from Katelyn “Kinky” Finley, whose reading week was just finishing. She arrived on Thursday evening. On Friday, I got up at 5:00 to cram for my chemistry test, and Katelyn got up too - for a slightly more fun reason; she walked to the gorgeous East Sands to see the sun rise. She then took the bus to Edinburgh for the day. But when she came back that night, I had finished both assignments and was ready to spend some time studying the properties of R-OH (organic has that effect on me - being incredibly bored and distraught while reading phrases like “the properties of alcohols,” “the formation of alcohols,” and “the reactions of alcohols” is not a recipe for success!).

Katelyn brought a bottle of Zubrowka (pronounced zhoo-brohff-ka), a famous Polish vodka. The label boasts that it’s made from the favourite grass of the European Bison. I’m sure you’re already familiar with the discriminating palate of the European Bison. Anyway, most vodkas are shooters, but this one is mixed with apple juice to make a drink called tatanka or szarlotka (meaning apple pie). It’s delicious - warm and spicy, with a nice hint of cinnamon and vanilla. We spent the evening drinking szarlotkas and showing each other pictures from our trips. Lisa “Luscious” Martinez also joined us later on. Her parents had just arrived to spend reading week with her, and since it was so cold and dark they drove her over to my dorm in their rental car. She said that her dad kept drifting over to the right side of the road! Eek - good thing there was no one else on the roads! Luckily, she and her parents survived their time in the UK, and when they got to Paris they stuck to public transportation.

The next morning, Katelyn and I strolled around St Andrews. She had already seen the castle and cathedral ruins, so I showed her some of the sights in town. I wanted to show her the beautiful chapel where I go to church, but it was closed. Alas. The biology building, however, was open, and - believe it or not - it’s actually very attractive. It’s an old grey stone building with a huge quad. There are lots of flowers, cute little benches, a giant tree with a very round top, and even a weird stone wall that looks like a place where Dr. Faustus might perform satanic rituals. After that, Katelyn did some shopping for her Polish relatives. I also found a little bottle of whisky that claimed to be the special formula of Clan Young. Since that’s one of my dad’s clans, I got it as a stocking stuffer for him.

Katelyn left St Andrews around lunch, heading off to London to see Rubaab and Rohan. It sounds like she is having the ideal study abroad experience - her classes are incredibly easy, she has hardly any reading, and her final exams constitute 100% of her final grade. So she’s free to spend every night drinking szarlotkas and every weekend meeting her relatives in Krakow or popping over to Lithuania. Plus, she was in Poland this summer too, so she got to explore it even more and even go to Paris! She’s definitely having the time of her life!

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Photos

Toasting in the traditional Polish way
We look a bit bleary in this picture, but that was actually our first drink! I think I have sort of a Mr Bean look here.

Run for the hills!
Katelyn shows off her Sasquatch coat.