I Feel Like a Real Person Again

So, now that I've finally settled in and started classes, I feel like I'm actually living here rather than just visiting for a while! My classes are great and so interesting (plus there are only three of them, which is great haha)! I'm taking Celtic Civilisation (see, I've even started spelling like them!), Modern Scottish History, and Irish in Scotland since 1800. It seems like they will all be really good, but the workload is a bit strange. Instead of just giving you a syllabus with pages to read, for each class there is a reading list of about 15-20 books that you could read "as you feel you should." Its a bit stressful actually, since I'm so used to being told exactly what is expected of me!

I've started exploring the city a bit more too, and I'm loving it even more! There is so much to see and do here, I feel like I could never do it all! There are tons of museums and historical places that I would love to check out. Meeting the occasional colorful person is also interesting as well, as evidenced by the old man who ran into us last night at 1 in the morning, and proceeded to hit on my flatmate and tell us about his war experiences. There were also the guys who told us they were Finnish reindeer farmers, yet they had suspiciously Scottish accents...I guess they thought that since I was American I would believe anything.

Speaking of Scottish accents, I'm getting better at understanding them, but put me in a crowded bar with lots of noise, and I always feel bad that every other word out of my mouth is "WHAT??" I can't even understand bartenders half the time to see how much my drink is haha. But I'm picking it up slowly, and have even started saying things like "cash machine," "queue," and "hob" instead of ATM, line, and stove. I also went to a ceilidh, which was SOO amazing and fun! I only did two dances, since obviously I didn't know what I was doing, but it was so high energy and exhausting! There are couple dances (which Sarah and I attempted and pretty much failed) and group dances (which I was a little better at). And yes, there were plenty of men in kilts dancing :)

Yesterday I took a day trip to St. Andrews, and it was so beautiful! Besides the fact that it was cold and windy, we had a great time exploring the ruins of St. Andrew's Castle and Cathedral, and climbing up the never ending staircase of St. Rules Tower to get spectacular views. We even went down into a "mine," which is an underground tunnel in the castle. It was gross, muddy, and I had to bend over halfway to get into it, but it was pretty awesome. We also saw the golf course and the club (which had an abundance of things saying "members only" - I think they might be a bit snobby lol) and walked around the whole town (which wasn't hard since it consists of about four streets). The drive there and back was great too, since I haven't actually seen much of Scotland except for Edinburgh. We went over the bridge spanning the Firth of Forth and drove through Fife, passing Loch Leven, Loch Leven Castle, Cupar, and a lot of sheep and cows. It was pretty beautiful :)

Well since my camera ran out of batteries, I will try and steal my friend's pictures and put some up later. I'm going to London this weekend, so hopefully I'll have some stories and pictures from there as well! Cheers!