Packing for Scotland found me in the proverbial area between a rock and a hard place, those areas being a) the practical packing of needed items, and b) the overwhelming desire not to pay any extra baggage fees. So, after two days of packing, rearranging, and surrendering shampoo,
I finally managed to fit everything (twenty-six tops, eight pairs of shoes, six dresses, five pairs of pants, four skirts, four items of the jacket persuasion, enough underwear and socks to last two and half weeks without doing laundry, a towel and a laundry basket, as well a few other miscellaneous items) into a rolling duffel bag of exactly fifty pounds, a hiking backpack, and a carry on bag of the hobo variety (impressive, I know--but I really couldn't have done it alone. A quick shout out to my good friends at FedEx/Kinkos who let me weigh my luggage on their awesome and super accurate scale on three different occasions). But enough about my amazing packing skills, what you really want to hear about is the trouble. You see, I packed based on the following assumptions:
1) Scotland would be roughly as cold as New Haven (I'd been checking Google Weather at it was holding pretty steady in the 30-40F range for much of January)
2) There'd be indoor heating.
Assumption 1: Pretty accurate
Assumption 2: Epic fail
Yes, I've been spoiled by Yale's chronic over heating (but, I suppose, no more), but I've gotten confirmation from a Norwegian girl who's from outside of Oslo (where the freezing of lungs from cold-air inhalation is a legitimate concern) that, yes, it is cold. The dealio is this: to save money (and, you know, the environment or whatever) the heat in each of our rooms is turned on by an invisible Heat Genie between 7.00 and 9.00am and 4.00 and 10.00pm. And, I should say, I use the term heat liberally. We've each got a little radiator and the "heat" is essentially sound of mechanical humming and a tepid block of metal that one must lean against to feel any semblance of warmth.
So what I'm trying to say is this, if happen to be wandering around St Andrews and you're looking for me, I'm the one sitting indoors with the puffy coat on and the hood up because I didn't pack enough sweaters for regular, sitting-around cold. On the bright side, a) I no longer sleep in my coat now that I've purchased a 15 Tog "Winter Warmth" blanket that I have come to love and adore, b) I'll hopefully be able to pick up some end-of-winter-sale sweaters in the next town over (Dundee) when I make a trip to the mall there this weekend to get a UK SIM card for the Blackberry.
Part II: Top 10 highlights / unnecessary information from the past week in no particular order
10. Me (on my flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam): Can I have coffee and orange juice?
KLM guy: You can anything you want. We'll just raise ticket prices next year and call it a fuel surcharge.
9. On our drive from the Edinburgh Airport to St Andrews (at night, I should clarify, and on a winding two-lane road), the driver apparently didn't have any regular lights on his fancy Land Rover (only high beams). Being the courteous driver that he was, he turned them off every time he saw a car approaching-- even if the car was several hundred feet in the distance. And thus we spent roughly 3/4 of our journey careening down country-dark (as opposed to that well-lit, city-dark, I mean) roads, breaking wildly at turns too dark and sharp to navigate without the hand of God. Which, apparently, was upon us.
8. St Andrews is actually spelled without the period at the end of St
7. This opposite side of the street driving makes crossing the street dangerous. I'm almost positive left-handed turns will be my down fall.
6. The above will not be helped by this: After a night out with some full-time students, the New York Times confirmed my suspicions that drinking is the Scottish national pastime.
5. This either: St Andrews has the highest concentration of pubs in the UK.
4. They have a Cake and Poetry society. Really, cake and poetry. Genius. (And to offset the cake, they also have an awesome hillwalking (hiking) society which I'm really excited for).
3. Disturbing/funny: St Andrews released their exam results today and I discovered at breakfast a terrible/ingenious loophole in the system. So, as it turns out, all work done during exams becomes property of the university which a) means you can't get your essays/tests back, and b) means that your professor can lay claim to your dissertation/thesis and publish it as his or her own. Which happened to a Ph.D. student last year.
2. Someone comes to collect my trash every day, and tidies up and vacuums my room on Mondays.
1. The way the housing system works here is that you eat all of your meals in your own hall (no transfers), which is just great because you get to know everyone in your hall really well, but also strange because you're missing out on a serious 6/7 of the student population.
OK, that's all for now. I have an advising meeting tomorrow so I'll figure out then what classes I'm taking/why they're apparently so intense. Miss you all lots!
No comments:
Post a Comment