First Post: Arrival

So my day started at 6:30 in the morning. I woke up to my Dad taking a shower and lazily put on my clothes and got up. Dad accompanied me on my way to the airport and then we said goodbye to each other and I went through customs.

My flight from Seattle to Philadelphia wasn't too eventful. On arrival I walked to A24, which was the gate listed on my boarding pass, only to find out that my gate had changed to A11, the gate two away from my arrival gate. Uh! I had about a 2 hour layover and then was off to Glasgow. I sat next to this Scottish couple who lived in Glasgow. I struck up a conversation with the wife, who ended up being really chatty. She said that I absolutely had to visit Edinburgh Castle and that I should never ask a Scot to play cricket because that was "an English sport". From the airplane, I got a good view of what I think were the Scottish moors. Thankfully it was a clear day and, as we left the darkness over the Atlantic and began flying over Scotland, the horizon seemed to bleed the early morning red sun while  pockets of purple clouds shaded the rolling green hills underneath. 

As I departed the airplane with my new friends, I was whipped by a cold wind and said "I don't know if I'm ready for this". The husband, who hadn't really talked that much on the flight, turns to me, laughs and says: "This is war-um!" With that unsettling thought in my head, I made my way to customs, pulled out my address information and...hit a brick wall! Not really, the customs official just stopped me because I didn't have any proof that I was actually a student at the University of St. Andrews and, since I was applying for temporary residence on a student visa, I kind of needed some sort of proof that I wasn't just going to bum around Scotland. I had to move away from the booth and sit in a row of chairs while everyone else on my plane passed through customs. After 15 or so minutes, the customs official walked over to me, asked me a couple questions about St. Andrews to make sure I was actually a student and then gave me the benefit of the doubt. Whew! 

After such a rigmarole, I hoped the rest of my trip would be relatively smooth sailing. Man, was I wrong! I hopped a bus at the Glasgow airport direct to St. Andrews. The trip took approximately 2 hours and wound its way through downtown Glasgow, which is ancient and beautiful, before heading out into the Scottish countryside. The scenery reminded me of Walla Walla in some ways, with endless bails of hay corded up and ready for delivery in farm after farm. We travelled north, passing through an endless stream of villages, each with two-lane roads the size of American one-ways. My bus would have to frequently have pull over to the side of the road in order to let oncoming traffic pass before we could continue on. The towns are so old that the foundations were built with only single lanes, or only two-way buggy lanes, in mind. The towns wear their age well. From what I could see from the bus, most are relatively well-kept. Some are so worn down that they seem to wear their decay as a badge of honor, almost like the town fool who wears his shabby coat with absolute pride. The churches are the centerpieces of every town, it seems, with big stain-glass windows and bell towers that look over the town.

When I finally arrived at the St. Andrews bus terminal it was around 10 o'clock and I decided to walk down to Old Course before trying to find my room at Andrew Melville Hall. The course was full of people, it seemed like groups of six or more were playing at once and every hole had a group  on it. Instead of heavy Scottish brogues, the gentlemen playing the course had some of the liltiest British accents I'd ever heard: "Jolly good ro-o-und, Bernahd". The British call these accents "posh". Anyway, once I'd had all the posh I could handle I stumbled my way over to my dorm. My hall is probably the ugliest building on campus. It was designed to look like two ships crashing into each other but it kind of looks like a three-dimensional space invader, with portholes. Ugly. I walked up to the lobby and asked the front desk lady if I could check in and she looked at me like I was crazy. She asked if I was with the early group and I said yes. She tried to find my name and couldn't and so I told her my story and she said that I was actually a day early and that I could check in the next day at 2:00. Luckily she allowed me to stow my big rolly bag in my room or else I would have had to tow that thing around the town. She told me that I should find a Bed and Breakfast in town and she directed me to the Murray Street, where most every B&B in St. Andrews is located. 

I went to Murray Street and found every inn, B&B, hotel and lodge with a "No Vacancy" sign hanging on the door or in the window. Great. I decided that I had to go to the visitor's information center and hope that they could help me. I had a hell of a time finding the place. Along with poorly laid out cities, it seems the Scots don't know how to label things very well or provide adequate direction. There was sign in the center of town indicating that the information booth was up North of the city so that was the direction I headed. After I while I saw another one, except it pointed right at an Presbyterian Church and tried to tell me that that was the visitor's center. After those two, there was no other sign for about half a mile so I figured I must have missed the center and turned back. After walking all the way back, I still hadn't found the information booth and so decided to ask someone at the Student's store. The lady told me that I should just continue along the same road I'd been on and that it was about a mile more up the road. Eventually I found it and asked the lady there if she could find me a room in the town. Unfortunately, she said, the hotels were all full with the parents of first-year students who had arrived early like me. She told me my best option would be to get a hotel in one of the surrounding towns. She contacted a B&B in the nearby town of Crail and got me a room. So I had to walk back to the bus station, where I had arrived around three hours earlier, in order to get on a bus to get out of town.

Finally, I made it. After being on my feet for what seemed like forever, it was incredible to lie in bed and do absolutely nothing. That's what I am going to do for the rest of the day. And tomorrow I check in to school.