Getting Settled In

To pick up from where I left off last, I guess I should fill you in on the last couple of weeks. Saturday, Jan. 30, I had my orientation for school and met the rest of the exchange students. There are quite a few of us (probably around 100 give or take a few) from all over the world. A lot of the people I've met so far are from the U.S. from places like Wisconsin, Indiana, a few from the northeast, one that I know of from Nebraska and then others from Canada, Asia, Austria, Germany, France and many other various places in Europe. I have primarily been getting to know the other students from OU which there are four of us- three girls and a boy. On Saturday we wandered around the campus trying to get a feel for things and ventured to the grocery store which was much further than we anticipated and were exhausted when we returned to campus for our advisements for school. After advising we finished unpacking and headed for a local pub for dinner and drinks. The pub we went to was called the "Bobbin" and had a great deal for a burger and beer for only 3.95. The food was really good and the drink was good too. For the drink I didn't go too far out of my comfort zone and stuck to an Irish cider which was really good...Magner's was the name of it. The atmosphere of the pub was great! A rugby match had just finished when we arrived so the place was pretty packed for the game. On Sunday the school offered a free two hour city tour of Aberdeen so that filled up most of our day. The city is quite beautiful. The university I am attending sits in "Old Aberdeen" and was the first college founded in Aberdeen (there are now two colleges here). One of the buildings that I have class in is actually the oldest granite building in the world. The streets around campus are all cobblestone and pretty narrow. The beach which looks out over the North Sea is about a fifteen minute walk from my room. Most of Aberdeen borders the coast and is actually the reason it has prospered as it has. The city is the oil capital of Europe and if you saw how many major oil companies have buildings over here you'd believe it too. It's also a major harbor and access point for fishing/ oil industries. There are many large parks in the city as well which in the Spring are known for their flowers and gardens that they contain. Throughout Scotland and maybe all of Britain? there is a competition among the cities/regions for who has the best gardens and Aberdeen almost always wins and was actually asked to remain out of the competition for a few years so that other cities had the chance to win it. I hope this shows you how beautiful and important the landscape is here. There is also a city center which consists of shopping, movie theaters, public library, art gallery, performing arts theatre and other things of that nature. Overall the tour of the city was great and from a bus we could see just about everything.

February 1st brought the first day of classes. The first day was interesting and with a few swapping of classes had a set schedule by Tuesday. I have classes Mon-Thurs and none on Friday (yay!). I start at 9 am everyday and am out by noon which is really nice. I am only taking two classes which doesn't seem like a lot but because of how their credits work it's actually a full time student at OU. The first class I am taking is: The Pilgrim City- Medieval Christianity from 500-1500. Basically, I'm learning about what christianity was like in those days and the different practices of the time. For this class I will hopefully be earning a Non-western civilization credit from OU (upper division). The second class I am taking is: Slavery to Sputnik- the two superpowers. This is a history class and covers Russia and America from the 1850's to 1991. The classes are similiar to OU being that I have three lectures a week in each of them and then one tutorial (discussion) class for each of them as well. In my christianity class my teacher is actually from the US, Orlando, but his parents are from Oklahoma. He is really nice and hopefully will be very helpful in the weeks to come! The odd thing about the classes are that different teachers teach different parts of them. Teachers that are specialized in US history only teach the US portion of my class and vice versa for Russia. Same goes in the Christianity class, the teachers that are trained better in one area or another teach that section. In both classes I will have to write two essays for each and have only one exam at the end of the semester. There is no homework and they don't require you to buy any books for the class. Instead they give you a list of books that you can read as supplemental to the class. I can't decide if I like this or not to be honest. I like not having homework, but I hope I do well on the other things!

On Tuesday I also attended my first Ceilidh which is a traditional Scottish dance. The school put it on, and it was actually really fun. The dancing is a lot like square-dancing for us. At the event they also provided samples of real Scottish whisky (yes the school sponsered this! so different than Oklahoma!) and also samples of shortbread, and of an orange soda that is unique to the area which was not very good and neither was the whisky! Also, this week we took a walk to city central which is about a 30 minute walk from campus. On the way we stopped at a second-hand bookstore where I bought five of the Harry Potter books and the other girls bought one each. One of my goals this trip is to read them all! So, with 5 large books in my bag-not such a good idea by the way- we wandered around the city to pick up some things and stopped for groceries on the way home. Let's just say carrying books and groceries in the slippery, icey, wet sidewalks was exhausting! It took us over an hour to walk all the way back to our rooms. Next time I'll think twice about carrying so many things at once! We also experienced our first trip to the Watering Hole- the pub downstairs in the central building of the dorms. While I only finished two glasses of cider, one of the scottish girls had already finished one glass of cider and three other mixed drinks and didn't feel a thing! I hope this tells you the tolerance that they have on alcohol. I've never seen anything like it. Also, it's not like the drinks are cheap either. You'd think they would be, but it's very similar to at home and seems like a waste to spend all that money just to drink! But I guess if my college was free too maybe I'd have some more money to spend on those kinds of things! haha

Over the weekend we walked along the river by our dorms which led to the beach. We also managed to visit the public library, art gallery and see a movie. The library was smaller than expected considering the size of the building but the art gallery was really pretty nice. The price of the movie was 5 pounds which is about the same as at home with the price difference. On Sunday I attended church at a local Church of Scotland only a couple minutes walk from my dorm. The cathedral was just outstanding. Church of Scotland is equivilant to the Presbyterian church in the states. In fact Scotland is the founding of the presbyterian church. The services were very similar to those in Chelsea at our church. The most surprising thing was the lack of youth at the church. For being so close to the university I expected more youth, but I heard later that very few people my age attend church at all in Scotland/Britain. The other folk at the church were very nice though and welcoming. The congregation wasn't too big...around 100 maybe? Overall, it was a great experience!

This past week hasn't been too adventurous. I have mainly been getting used to everyday life here trying to form some kind of a routine. On Monday I did happen to take a run along the river down to the beach which was such a surreal experience. I had the beach all to myself and watched the boats off the coast and just took it all in. It's probably my favorite thing about the city being so close to the sea and being able to enjoy it like that. Other than that I went to city central for coffee/study and grocery shopping again.

On Friday the four of us (OU students) set out to Edinburgh for the weekend. We stayed in our very first hostel for Fri., Sat, and Sun. nights. It was located right off of the Royal Mile (the main street of Old Town in the city). Friday night we went to Mary King's Close which was a set of streets under the city where people lived in the 1600's, but are no longer in use in modern day Edinburgh. A "close" is another word for a small street or alley. We also went to an amazing Italian resturant near our hostel which was really good! We got up early on Saturday and started the day by visiting the Queen's Palace (the one she stays in while in Scotland). It took about two hours but was really fascinating. After that we stopped in at a pub to eat lunch and watch Scotland play Wales in rugby. The place was crowded with people watching the game! It's a huge deal here and was actually pretty easy to understand. After that we walked around some more seeing various things including the museum of scotland and the Greyfriar's Bobby. This is a statue of a little dog that sat by his masters grave for 14 years after he died, and they put up a monument in his honor. Later that night we went to another pub for a few drinks and live music (mostly Beetles and American music). It was really fun! I think the reason people drink so much here is because everything closes at 5pm here except pubs/bars. It's literally the only thing to do later in the night. We woke up at 5am on Sunday and set out to climb Arthur's Seat and watch the sun rise there. Arrhur's seat is an inactive volcano just on the outside of town. It took us about an hour to climb to the top of the mountain/volcano but we finally made it only to be surrounded in fog! haha It was worth it though! We got a lot of pictures on the way up and on the accidental alternative route we took on our way up. Exhausted, we ate breakfast and the other kids visited the castle, and since I had already seen it sat at Starbucks and finished the first Harry Potter book! After that we took off to new town which is just on the other side of the city and looked around at all the shops and scenery on that side. For our Valentine's Day dinner we tried Mexican food...which we decided not to disappoint ourselves with trying again while we are here. It wasn't bad, but definately not up to par with home. This morning we got up early again...4 am to be exact...and headed to the train station where we took the 5:30 am train back to Aberdeen so that I could make it for my 9am class!

Well, that's an update for the last couple of weeks and now hopefully my posts will be shorter since I'm all caught up!