All here is well and plenty is being accomplished! Life continues to be wonderfully challenging and exciting.
Here's an image of myself and my friend Allison this past Friday outside of Edinburgh Castle. It was certainly chilly that day, but very fun.
Amanda visited this weekend which was wonderful. We kept busy but also fit in quite a bit of relaxing and sleep as a way to celebrate the end of our semesters. Allison and I spent all of Friday in Edinburgh exploring the German Christmas market, Edinburgh castle, and a delicious vegetarian cafe popular among students at the University of Edinburgh.
As Allison departed back for St Andrews around 3:30 pm, I spent the next several hours in a coffee shop before catching a bus to the Edinburgh airport. As the airport is on the very outskirts of the city, the ride was 30 minutes, and only myself and a sleeping man were on the bus. It was beautiful passing through so much of Edinburgh at night with Christmas lights all around. I think my favorite part of the bus ride was the stop at the Edinburgh Zoo. While I haven't been yet, the fact that the zoo contains the only pandas in the U.K. - given as a gift to Scotland from China last year - definitely interests me! Much of Edinburgh and Scotland has capitalized upon this as well...in addition to the traditional bagpipes, shortbread, tartan/plaid, Nessie, and whiskey, the young panda pair are arguably the current marketing image of Scotland.
Amanda's flight from Spain was a couple hours late and it was certainly a frenzy getting back to St Andrews that night, but we returned around 1:30 a.m. and slept quite late the next morning. Saturday was spent exploring the entirity of the town and I was thankful Amanda was able to meet I think all of my friends here. We journeyed over to my friend Marissa's flat Saturday afternoon when she and her flatmates were taking a study break, went out to dinner with Allison, provided ice cream for a party of sorts with my four kitchen-mates, and went out to a pub with my sweet Scottish friend Miriam that evening.
Sunday we were both hoping to journey to a nearby castle but found the buses didn't travel that route on Sundays. We spent part of the day instead in Dundee, Scotland's fourth-largest city located just 30 minuted north of St Andrews. I think I would best describe Dundee as feeling quite a bit like Manchester, New Hampshire. Quite interesting, semi-industrial, ethnic, working class, yet traditionally Scottish as well! Upon returning to St Andrews, Amanda was an amazing guest as I spent (several) hours on final preparations for my final Virginia Woolf exam which took place this afternoon. Later, we skyped some friends from Saint Michael's.
Amanda left this morning and I entered full-on exam mode. I met a couple classmates to head over to the exam venue with, and it was QUITE the experience. I've been fortunate with journalism over the past couple of years to routinely have final exams consisting of papers and articles; not since my SAT and ACT days have I truly sat an exam like the one I sat today. While my class is only 19 students, our exam venue was with another 350ish students in the sports hall. We entered the room in silence, dropped off everything we brought in an enormous pile of bags, jackets and coats in the back corner of the room with the exception of our identification cards, handfuls of pens, optional water bottle, and optional tissues. We were seated in long rows according to class in wooden and iron desks that felt like they had seen thousands of final exams before. There were windows leading to offices lining the high walls of the large room, and when I saw faces peering through them, I felt pretty sure that as students completing a final exam, we would be watched from all angles during the two hour exam. Given instructions to not leave the desk for the next two hours, I grew somewhat worried as I struggled to understand the accent of the Scottish man speaking the full instructions through the microphone which echoed throughout the sports hall. With intense focus though, I listened and focused on the words he spoke as if my life/passing grade depended upon it! Soon enough, we were given the command to immediately open the exam booklets marked with the photocopied St Andrews seal. Hundreds of us began the exam and tutors and proctors walked the rows continually for two hours peering at each student until the command was given for all pens to be put down immediately. Overall, it's incredibly hard to know how I performed, but I wrote everything I had memorized and prepared. I knew four novels really well and used most everything I knew from them in the two essays that made up the entirety of the exam. I'm not sure if my essay structure and layout were exactly what was wanted, but I think I provided plenty of material. For now, Virginia Woolf is finished, and I can say that it was an incredibly challenging, yet fulfilling module!
For now, I'll be working on a couple of creative writing assignments for the next few days. I find the creative essay process to be so different from the research essay process. While somewhat simpler and less stressful to complete a creative essay, I find that once the story takes shape - usually within a day of it being crafted - it comes alive and is all I can think of. Thoughts, ideas and new twists come to me as I try to sleep and as I move through daily life. The creative essay overtakes so many areas of life and becomes an incredible distraction as the continual edits and changes dominate my thoughts. Time to begin!
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