[Pedestrian Pains]

This week is Fresher's and Orientation Week.  The outside of my right foot started hurting Sunday evening, and it didn't help that David Russell Apartments (the hall I'm staying in; I'll reference it as DRA from here on) is a good 20 minute walk to the main campus of St Andrews.  By the time I had walked to the Gateway Building to register for my classes yesterday afternoon, I could barely walk.  So after registration, I spent an excruciating hour limping around town looking for the right bus stop and bus route to go to St Andrews Community Hospital (there is no health center on campus and it would have been a 40 minute walk).  I have lower pain tolerance than I thought, but I suppose rarely having broken or sprained anything made me optimistic about walking (literally) the thought.  On the plus side, I got to experience the wonders of universal healthcare (no waiting in lines or insurance needed as a student) and my physical discomfort allowed me to overcome my discomfort about exploring the city a bit beyond the walk between my dorms and the Student Union.

On the way back, I silently waited at the bus stop by the hospital, listening to two other exchange students speak in German as they peered at the bus schedule.  Fifteen minutes passed and the 99A bus still hadn't arrived, so I broke the silence and observed that the bus timetables in Germany probably wouldn't be this late.  They emphatically agreed.  On the bus ride back, I learned that they were computer science postgrads from the University of Hamburg, and were delighted when I mentioned knowing the University of Lüneburg: apparently they had some friends there too.  As soon as I got back to DRA, I collapsed in my bed, hugged my pillow, and teared up because of homesickness.  After days of curiosity and wonder, it's finally hit me that I'm home anymore.  Everything I really knew about German culture I learned from my boyfriend (he studied abroad in Germany for a year).  It's funny how having a pleasant conversation with foreign students, who probably find St Andrews as unfamiliar as I do, would trigger my homesickness.  The juxtaposition of the familiar with the foreign stirred up emotions that I was able to bury when admiring Scotland in isolation from the thoughts of home.

My first impressions of St Andrews: it is a small town that seeps of age with its stone architecture, the pub density is high, and the landscape is green and luxuriant.  One thing that surprised me the most is the high number of international and exchange students I've run into.  I vaguely remember reading the statistic to be about 30% of the small population of 9,000 students a few months ago, but forgot about it until experiencing it firsthand.  I've probably run into more Americans, Canadians, mainland Europeans, and South Americans more than native Scots.  When I finally emerged from the cave to go pub crawling with the other USAC students and their flatmates, I had a great conversation in broken Spanish with an exchange student from Colombia.  In the end, she told me to stop shaking my legs en español, saying it made me look nervous even if I didn't feel like it.  I smiled for two reasons.  One of them was that I didn't think I'd get to practice my language skills in Scotland, but here I was.

My flat at DRA

View from the window