First week of classes

This week has gone by so quickly, probably because we're actually occupied during the day instead of sitting around watching bad British television.

Tuesday was the first day of class, and let me just say it was the most confusing first day of school I have ever had. I walked to my English class with ten minutes until class started. The entire way along, I was assaulted by people handing out flyers and selling snap packs that offer discounts all year long. Considering we get about thirty through our door every day anyway, I decided not to collect any more. Before we start getting more flyers, we need some tacks so we can put the ones we already have up on the wall.

I found the classroom alright, but everyone wondered if we had all showed up in the right place, because the professor didn't show up until five minutes after the hour. It looks to be a good class, though, and there are only 11 students, which will make a great class, I hope. However, our assignments every week are posted on WebCT, a program that Edinburgh uses. You must be registered for a class in order to access that class's posts. Though I am registered, it won't let me in, so I had to e-mail the professor to try to get it corrected.

Next, it was time to try to find where my philosophy class would take place. The location was not to be found online, nor was the location of the philosophy offices. I asked a receptionist in the David Hume Tower (where many of the departments have offices) if the philosophy department had an office there, but she said no. By this time, it's getting to noon, and I know that I have a meeting at 1:00 for the student newspaper (cleverly called Student, but it was founded by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so I guess I can forgive it). I went to the Arcadia office, where we are always welcome if we need help, and asked them if they could help me find the philosophy department.

Three phone calls later, we had not only the location of the department offices, but the location of my lecture. This is when it started to rain.

I took a fifteen-minute walk to the Pleasance, the optimistically-named home of many of the clubs and societies, stopping to grab a cup of tea and a bagel at one of the police box coffee shops (approximately 5 ft by 10 ft, standing on sidewalks) on the way for my lunch - which the Brits call dinner. There were a few people already there: the film editor, as well as a couple of freshers. Five minutes later, though, the large room was absolutely full with about sixty or seventy students wanting to write for and help produce the newspaper. At Wooster, we only have about 10 regular workers.

I signed up to do copyediting and to write for the film section, which means that if they like my writing style I'll get to go watch new movies on Friday afternoons for free and then write a review. But I had to leave relatively early, because my long-lost philosophy class was a fifteen-minute walk away.

This was the only class of the day in which we learned anything at all. The most important part, though, is that my lecturer has the exact same accent as Sean Connery, a trait not altogether common in the southern parts of Scotland.

After this, it was time to come home for a little while and eat an early dinner, because I didn't think I'd be back until 9. My Italian lecture was supposed to last two hours, after which I had to cross the Meadows (a huge park with a bad rep at night) with Joni to get to swing dance.

I went to the location that the online resources said that we would have our introductory meeting. There were about thirty of us in the classroom, but the professor was late. More than five minutes. We sat in relative unease for fifteen minutes before our Italian tutor finally walked through the door and said, with a strong Italian accent, "You are all in the wrong room."

We went to the 11th floor of the David Hume Tower, where five other students were waiting for us. Both our professor and our tutor swore up and down that the online resources said that we were supposed to show up in this room that overlooked the castle. So then why did thirty of the thirty-five of us show up in the other classroom? Because, basically, WebCT is a bad program.

Next, they kicked ten people out of the class, because it was only supposed to have 25 students, and the directors of studies who had let in the last 10 students were wrong to have let them in. Mine was the first name called for those who could stay, and I sank deeper into my chair with relief, thereafter looking out the window at the castle until the role call was finished fifteen minutes later (many students had argued that they did, in fact, belong there, and what would they do now that they couldn't stay?).

Class let out after only one hour. I walked back to Kincaid's, texting Joni to tell her we could meet there instead of in George Square. Another hour later, we set out, umbrellas (brellies) in hand.

We never found it.

Cold, slightly damp, and defeated, we sat in my kitchen to watch Bridget Jones's Diary with Anna and Rachel, followed later by Johnny Depp's Crybaby as more and more people joined us. Not a bad way to spend an evening.

Regarding flats and flatmates

Well, first, let me start off by saying that I live on Drunk Row. In either direction on our road, there are bars and clubs crowding the streets, including one located in a re-vamped church building (which, I've found, is a very common cure for the hundreds of old churches that aren't necessarily used as places of worship anymore). This simply means that sometimes it's hard to get to sleep at night, and in the morning we can see some interesting characters (like the one man sitting on the sidewalk one morning for a half hour and leaning to the side at about a 45-degree angle). It also means we've always got places to escape to when our flat just gets to be too oppressive at night.

Our walls are white, our doors and carpets blue, and our furniture is a decent sort of wood. It's a nice-enough looking place, with okay furniture. We have two toilets for five girls, one in a small room with just a toilet and a sink, and the other in a larger one with a shower. Our kitchen has a sitting area, a TV (thanks to Kate), and a decent amount of space for cooking - and the fridge is the biggest I've ever seen, it's taller even than Monique.

The floors in the hall creak, no matter how softly you step. The stove's grill compartment (there's a top drawer with a grill and a bottom for the oven) doesn't have a handle to pull out the grill tray, so we have to use a spoon. The shower is scorching in the morning, but ice-cold in the afternoon, no matter how short our showers are. The knob for the shower sticks, so even if you do manage a hot shower, when you try to turn it off you are stuck in a freezing waterfall while you struggle to push the knob down that extra inch that will shut the water off entirely. The girls, though, are great.

From my program, there are Christine and I. Christine is from Florida. She's a nice girl who tends to keep to herself and likes to hang out with a few of the Americans from downstairs, but will join the rest of us for tea and Hollyoaks most nights, as well as a drink or two if we have them.

Anna is from nearby, here in Scotland. She spent a gap year in India teaching children. She is dead set on going to the Freshers' Ball tomorrow: to go, you had to pay thirty pounds at the beginning of the week for a Freshers' Pass, which got you in free to the events that had entrance fees (we never went to any that we had to pay for anyway). None of the rest of us bought Freshers' Passes, so she might end up going with girls from the next flat over.

Eve is also Scottish, but she's from the Borders, so she's got a mixture of an English and Scottish accent. She's studying psychology, and is not happy that she has to take chemistry in order to finish her degree. She has a boyfriend living in Edinburgh who is my age. He doesn't go to the uni, but goes to a smaller college in the city. They've been dating two and a half years, and he seems like a really nice guy - he's taken a true interest in getting to know her new friends.

Kate is from Manchester. She is the reason we have a TV, and she is also most of the reason I have started saying "well" and "dead" in the place of "very" or "really" (Example: "Hollyoaks is well good!"). The boys next door have taken to calling her "Bob" for no other reason than that they thought she should have a nickname. This drives Kate crazy. And oh, she's an art history major.

This all makes for a very interesting flat, and great times all around. We all have our respective interests, but it seems as though we gel really well. They are part of what will make my semester here amazing.

British Television

Brits watch a lot of American television. True, they get it later than we do, but why do they watch so much American television when they have all their BBC shows?

Because British television, frankly, sucks.

Despite this, however, we watch these shows in my flat as though they were the newest and greatest episodes of Grey's Anatomy that anybody has ever seen. Even the daytime television, which is even worse than the soapy prime-time shows, are somehow entrapping: we watch a show about auctioning off antiques, and get really into it. Despite its campiness, we want to know how much a breast pump from the 1800s will fetch at auction.

And then there is Hollyoaks. This one is the sort of quality that is normally seen in daytime American TV, but it's made for the young adult crowd. Lately on Hollyoaks, John Paul has recently outed Craig because Craig was falling in love with John Paul but engaged to Sara, and Nancy is sleeping with her dead sister's widow. Corny, soapy crap. And yet the five of us gather around while cooking tea (dinner) every night and watch Hollyoaks at 6:30 (sorry, 18:30).

This is part of why I am now signed up to play rugby twice weekly, but more on that later - I have to go to a meeting with my Director of Studies.

Written back on the first day

Well.

I’m here, I’m alive, and I am currently without internet connection. Hence, I am writing this before I go to dinner, while I wait for my wakeup call – something I thought I’d need so that I wouldn’t miss the dinner hours.

Until I woke up twenty minutes ago, I had gone 24 hours without sleep. Why, you ask? Well, it’s more simple than you’d imagine. Plane #1 left Columbus at around 6, and I was too pumped to do anything on that ride but read. I was almost even too hyper to do that. It was okay, I had a long flight ahead of me where I could do nothing but sleep if I wanted to.

Plane #2 left New Jersey at 10:15 (this is when I switched to Edinburgh time on my watch, so let’s call it 3:15), and lucky me, right behind me was a family with – you guessed it – young children. The younger had to be only a year old or so, and the older seemed about two. The first hour of the flight was nice, I sat and read and it was quiet and I was looking forward to a nice long sleep. The second hour, when I had turned off my light and put my book away, the little boy started crying. For an hour. When he stopped, his older sister started crying. See, these kids had it down. When one would stop crying, the other would start, hence keeping all passengers around them on their toes and away from the sandman. Fun fun.

Mommy and Daddy finally got these two terrors asleep around 6:00. Finally, a little bit of rest! The threat level had successfully been lowered from red to orange to yellow (now if only that would happen with the terrorism threat level). I guess yellow wasn’t good enough, though, because as soon as I finally felt waves of sleep start to succumb me to their will, BOOM, little girl woke up. And when she was done, little boy had something to say, too.

The sun started rising around seven, and I still hadn’t gotten to sleep. By 7:30, the passengers on the plane were waking up (I was still struggling to sleep), and by 8, we were served breakfast. I gave up all hope of sleeping a this point, and instead downed two cups of coffee.

We landed around 9:30, and I got off the plane, got through customs, got my suitcase no problem. I caught a shuttle for only ₤8, instead of the scary ₤25 that it would have cost me for a cab, and it still brought me right to the door of the Reception Centre. It’s a little past 10, and hey guess what, check in isn’t until two.

I checked my luggage, but now I really had to go. Two cups of coffee on a plane does that to a girl. So I walk up to the receptionist, and ask politely, “Where can I find a washroom?” She says, “Well, what building are you staying in?” I tell her that I don’t know, that I had just given my confirmation to the guy who took my luggage. She said that I needed to know where I was living, and then she could direct me to a washroom. Laundry facilities are in the basement of each building.

Oops.

“No,” I said, “I need a washroom, a restroom, a bathroom, a loo!” When she finally directed me to the toilet, I apologized, saying, “We call them washrooms where I’m from.” I won’t make that mistake again.

Toilet problems aside, I asked where to get a decent cup of coffee. Next building over, I got my second breakfast (after only a croissant and some fruit, you’d want second breakfast too), charged up on some more caffeine, and decided to explore a bit with the three hours I had remaining until I was allowed to check in. And I had so looked forward to a nap…

I looked around, and immediately saw the imposing remains of the extinct volcano that is Holyrood Park. This place is like right down the road from where I’m staying – in fact, the picture of the big hill from my room? Yeah, that’s Holyrood. Big. That was my destination. In fact, the very top of that was my destination.

I left the Reception Centre in my travelling clothes (sweatshirt, t-shirt, jeans, ballet flats) and carrying only my purse. If I’d been smart, I would have changed into my sneakers first. If I’d been really smart, I would have waited until I could change entirely into clothing more suited for hiking up a mountain. True, there are stairs all the way up this earthen behemoth, but they are each made up of three to five red stones, all of varying heights, so you are never really standing on solid, flat ground until you make it to the top. It was difficult, let me tell you, and by the time I got up there I was happy to have made it alive with my heart beating so fast and my legs tired beyond belief. That is a lot of stairs.

The view, though, when you get there, is absolutely worth all the walking. From my vantage point, I could see most of Edinburgh, including the castle jutting out on its craggy perch above the city. Beautiful brown buildings sprawled out beneath it in a maze of old (very old) buildings that house new shops. From my spot up at the top of Arthur’s Seat, I could see it all, this old/new city laid out before me, and it hit me: I get to live in a city with a castle. I get to live in a city where most of the buildings are older than the United States itself. I get to live here.

The climb back down was just as perilous, if not more so. Going up, I didn’t worry about slipping on the steps and up the stairs, but going down, I had to spend the first ten or fifteen yards on my butt so that I wouldn’t fall on the slippery slope. From then on, I walked like a little girl taking her first steps, arms outstretched to either side, wavering from time to time, totally unsure of my footing. Stopping was not an option. Every time I stopped, my legs would shake in a “Why would you do this to us?” sort of complaint, which I didn’t blame – it was climbing up to the 24 hour mark that I’d last been in a bed, and though I was exhilarated, I was also tired.

I got back to the Reception Centre an hour before check-in, and sat and read my book (which I had gotten out of the luggage room). I almost fell dead asleep at that table. Finally, though, I could check in. I got my key, walked to my building, and looked forward to a nice nap. I had room 201 in Baird House.

When I got to the second floor, the maid was cleaning rooms, and told me that there was already someone in room 201 in Baird House. Oh boy. I went downstairs with her (such a nice lady, she helped me until I finally got a room) and talked to the woman at the reception desk in the foyer. I explained the situation, told her I’d been travelling all night, and just wanted a place to sleep. “Poor hen,” she said to me. “Ye can leave yer bags here if ye want.” I probably looked like a “poor hen” too, my hair all riled up and my body sagging from fatigue. When I returned with another key for a different room, she told me, “Now, hen, make sure ye don’t sleep too late, ye’ll wake at three i’th’ mornin and be tired all day agin.” She told me to call the Reception Centre and ask for a wake up call around 6 or 7 so I could go to dinner. Such a nice lady.

I finally got to my room, got out of my travel clothes and into some PJs, and SLEPT.

Dinner was alright, but I look forward to cooking for myself and my flatmates, or perhaps for my host family. It was set up a lot like Lowry (in fact, almost exactly like Lowry with different decorations) except that people serve you instead of you serving yourself. I ate a small pile of forgettable food and returned to my room, where I will watch Grey’s Anatomy until midnight or so and fall asleep.

All in all, a good first day in Edinburgh.