A Very Lucky Girl

What I learned outside of the classroom of Thursday: Optional, but "encouraged," Shakespeare screenings are so not worth waking up for.  Getting bus sick is a thing and it's not particularly enjoyable.  North Americans are rad (and this in no way diminishes the rad-ness of people from other continents that I've met). Even the best Fish&Chips in Scotland can't beat a good chicken strip.  Hail down, hoods up, that's the way we like to hike.  Hiking to castles makes the end structure that much sweeter.  You'd think castle ruins are uninhabitable, but then you'd see a rat scurry across a crumbling bedroom.  When you're locked inside a castle and it's quickly getting darker, answering questions from a faceless boy who may or may not be trying to flirt is the last thing you want to do.  I think we have a 5th sense. It's like ESPN or something. We can tell exactly when a bus is going to leave a station and arrive mere minutes befo...

I embarked upon my first train adventure last week. A family friend whom I had never met before conversed with me via email and invited me to spend time with her and her family in their Scottish town of North Berwick. Nat and I purchased tickets and successfully navigated the giant Waverly station in Edinburgh to find the little train shuttling passengers to the wee town.  Jana and her family call New York home, but are currently spending a year in North Berwick while her husband works on a new business. They have lived there before and are old hands at understanding Scottish brogue and knowing where to find fried chicken.  Nat and I arrived in North Berwick around 3:15 PM on Wednesday afternoon and followed our ears to the ocean immediately. Jana had told me to email her when and where we were ready to be picked up that evening, but I never found WiFi again after disembarking the train in Edinburgh. Nat and I wandered the beach for an hour, marveling at the foamy waves an...

I went on a rainy adventure on Sunday. I got on a moving vehicle for the first time in two weeks! We walk everywhere in Scotland. Literally EVERYWHERE. I'm going to have killer legs when I return to America. We paid 6 pounds return to board the bus headed to St. Andrews and I tried not to think about the cars coming toward us on the wrong side of the road. Seeing backwards traffic literally makes my brain hurt. I've lived with the other way for so long! Someone is going to need to teach me how to drive again.  We arrived in St. Andrews around 11 AM and went straight to the beach. We did pass the St. Andrews Links golf course, the oldest in the world, but I went back later in the day to get proper pictures. I found a few seashells on the shore of the rocky beach and pulled my hood up to stave off the wet wind.  From there we wandered down the street until we found an alley that led us to the  University of St. Andrews! It was so amazing to stand in a quad that was 600 ye...

I hope you sang the title in your best "no one on the corner has swagga like us" rendition. I love my class schedule! Oh, pardon me, my module schedule. Classes are modules here and a major is your course of study. Slowly learning the lingo. On Mondays, Daniel teaches Scottish Literature from 1-3 pm in Dalhousie. And I am telling you right now that I will not miss a single class. For one, there are only 11 weeks of module instruction! Therefore, I only have 9 more of those classes! Tragedy. I could listen to his accent for an entire day. Weeks. But I'll take the two hours I get every Monday. I find it infinitely easier to pay attention to what is being taught when it is pleasant to listen to. Also occurring on a weekly Monday morning basis is the fire alarm for Belmont Flats. Similar to how the tornado siren is tested every Saturday at noon in Oklahoma, someone tests the fire alarm at 11 am every Monday. I expect Nat to remind me every week so that I don't pee my f...

Do you remember where you were on January 17, 2011? I was in an ICU bed at an Oklahoma hospital, recently diagnosed with Addison's Disease , missing a gall-bladder, and weighing in at 98 pounds. I was told that I wasn't the healthy 18-year old I thought I was. I wasn't the strong athlete I used to be. I wasn't the vivacious college student, full of promise and plans. I was a broken hospital patient, depressed and seemingly hopeless. Coming to terms with a chronic illness is weird. I don't like to think that who I am is fueled by how I feel or how many pills I'm currently popping. I hate the memory loss of most of my senior year and TCU semester. Friends will reminisce, "hey remember when?!" No. No, I don't. And I really hate the unknown. The questions. The why me? How does this disease even exist? Why does it target who it does? No one knows. There aren't answers for those questions. For someone who likes to know everything NOW, no an...

Fried chicken. Barbeque. Chips and queso. A burger from S&B with a side of fries topped with cheese and too much bacon. Speaking of bacon...Bacon. Turkey bacon. All the bacon.  Tacos. A perfectly cooked steak. Gumbo. Shrimp pasta. Spaghetti with ground turkey. These are a few of the things Kylie and I talked about at the kitchen counter on Monday over our lunch of grilled chicken cheese. We get creative in Dundee. Make a grilled cheese and toss a slice of chicken lunch meat into the center, seasoned with my carefully stowed stash of Tony Chacheres .  We waxed poetic on ChickfilA. On the wonders of waffle cut fries and preciously formed nuggets of chicken. We dreamed aloud about a Mexican feast. Quesidillas and tacos and crispy tortilla chips. We lamented the appalling price of bacon. We sagged against the counter in imaginery ecstasy, remembering favorite American foods.  Grocery shopping in Dundee is different, that's for sure. But I'm starting to discover my fa...

I've been in Dundee for over a week now and I'm still constantly baffled by the coins in my purse. There are EIGHT different kinds. EIGHT. Isn't that too much? I'm used to the usual pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, maybe the occasional half-dollar. I can't imagine what the cash register drawers look like in shopping establishments here. I've dedicated some time this afternoon to really learn the shape, color  colour, and denomination of the constant jingle-jangle in order to cut down on my fumbling in check-out lines.  In order of value from least to greatest:   The one penny coin. Likely the one that registers most easily in my brain considering it's almost an exact replica of an American penny.  Hello, two pence. You are utterly useless. In what scenario is this coin absolutely necessary? "That'll be 2.02." "Here's two pounds and two pennies!" "What!? You don't have a two pence coin!?" That's th...

It's very humbling to come to a brand new (to me) country, that is in fact older than my own country, and interact with several different cultures at once. Classes don't start until Monday, but I've already gathered a wealth of facts that I never knew before. Boots are not the most comfortable shoes to get lost in It's never too soon to watch Orange Is The New Black with a new friend and then comment on the phallic shaped crackers in our soup. Thanks Nat.  Time changes are the bane of my existence. You mean I have finished lunch and my American friends have barely touched breakfast?  Always carry a grocery bag with you because you never know when you might come across Tesco/Poundland/Lidl and suddenly need to grocery shop. On a related note, large market trips are impossible.  Lemon vodka is the direct equivalent of Smirnoff ice and I will continue to drink it shamelessly. Sluuuurp. Don't believe Aussie's when they tell you they live in fear of the dropbe...

Based on the past few days, I've learned that an unfamiliar situation in which no individual has an upperhand in the ways of the culture is a surefire way to make friends. I cannot even count on one hand how many people I've met and names I've learned in the past two days BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY! I went to a welcome reception last evening where they served wine (hey, OU, take a hint) and I bonded with people I'd never met in my life.  Nat, Laura, Keira, Erin, etc. are women I'm going to know FOREVER. My friend circle has grown enormously in the past day, from Canada to Australia and everywhere in between.  I sat in a circle with Erin, Nat, Kylie, and Laura last night while we traded stories of mysterious flatmates and horrific jet lag. Our group grew when Keira from Canada and several girls from the Netherlands took the initiative and pulled their chairs up to ours.  I'm so glad they did! We came up with the idea for a facebook group for all of us studyin...

It is currently 11 pm on Saturday in Dundee, Scotland and I am lounging in my bed, settled into Belmont Flat 35, Room 2.  I caved to jet lag and took a nap this afternoon and I already can't wait to go to bed again tonight.  Screw you, time zones. It all started on Friday morning when I arrived at DFW for the 10:25 flight to Minneapolis, the first stop on the journey overseas. The Delta desk attendant informed me that my preciously packed suitcase was 10 pounds overweight and gave me an ultimatum: Unpack those 10 pounds or pay a fee. I needed every ounce of the 61 total pounds, so I forked over the cash. Small price to pay to be warm for 5 months.  Upon takeoff from Dallas, Kylie clutched my hand so hard I still had marks even after we had reached our cruising altitude.  We both listened to music since Pitch Perfect failed to download from icloud in time...no diggity.  We landed in Minneapolis, Minnesota with plenty of time to spare and took turn...

"She is whatever she wants to be...She's got the world at her fingertips."--Ben Rector I've never been more proud of anything in my life than I am that I'm hours away from sitting on an airplane bound for Europe.  I dreamed of studying abroad since high school, fleeting thoughts of "oh, how cool would that be!" I thought a little more seriously about the prospect when college came around, but I didn't intensely pursue it until a year and a half ago.  And a year and a half later...here I am. Ready or Not, Here I Come.  I worked and saved money, I filled out applications, I got advised twice for good measure, I scanned documents, I made copies of valuable papers, I went to the dentist, I sat at a kitchen table and counted pills to make sure my prescriptions would last for six months. I said my goodbyes, some hard, some flippantly easy.  I did this. I made my dream come true.  I know my time studying in Dundee, Scotland will pass far too q...