The last couple of days

The last couple of days have been pretty hectic, so I apologize for not posting sooner. My first day went pretty smoothly. Our hall, Andrew Melville, had a BBQ dinner to kick off the start of Fresher's week and I met a couple people (mostly Americans) who live near me in my dorm. . Fresher's week, for those who don't know,  is the week before school starts that kind of eases the Freshman (Fresher's) into college life. Easing is not quite the right word, as there are a ton of school-sanctioned drinking activities. Our first night, in fact, there was an Andrew Melville Hall pub crawl where the Resident Advisors showed us around the different bars and pubs and bought a few pints for us. This was definitely different from my first night at Whitman. I think we played board games and heard horror stories about the dangers of alcohol. Different culture.

Jan, my best friend from Whitman, arrived about a day ago and it has been cool to have someone I know really well with me. The people are generally pretty friendly, at least the kids are, and it is easy to strike up a conversation with most everyone. Jan lives about a 30-minute walk from my dorm, which is terrible for him because he doesn't really enjoy his roommates' company. They are all 17-18 years old and he says that all they do is play video games. Sounds like my kind of people. So he has been spending most of his time in my hall, eating in our dining room--he even slept in my room last night because he didn't want to walk all the way back to his dorm.

Living with a lot of Freshman has been weird for both Jan and I. We both say that we feel like absolute "Bosses", and its true. Freshman already seem to have some sort of weird reverence for us. I definitely feel a lot less shy talking to people who are only my brother's age and look like they are only 16 years old.

At St. Andrews, Wednesday's are designated as Sports Days. Students do not have classes at all on Wednesday and are expected to participate in some sort of physical activity. Since it is Fresher's Week, all of the sports clubs are trying hard to recruit new members and, feeling the spirit, I decided to give squash, table tennis, and badminton a try. I haven't played any of the three all that much, but figured that I would be able to cope. I went to squash first and played with some beginner-ish players who could barely hit the ball. The guy who was organizing the whole thing pretty quickly took me off and told me to come back for the more advanced session later that day, which I did. At the advanced practice, I played one match against a very good English player who is going to try out for the First or Second team. I did well against him, actually. The match went down to the final point, which he won, but it was great fun to play against someone that was really good. He was surprised to find out that I hadn't really played at all since I was about 13 years old. We have a couple people in my hall that are avid squash players as well, so I don't think it should be too much trouble to find a regular game.

Badminton was also very fun, but table tennis was a joke. Some of the more experienced guys took it way too seriously, smashing back every return and serving with ungodly amounts of spin. I tried to rally with this one guy from Finland for at least 5 minutes and I don't think we got past a 3-hit set. I think I'm destined to just play recreationally.

Tonight I think I'm going to have a slow night, maybe chill at home and hopefully play a game of some sort.