Halloween party

Halloween Pictures!! (Sorry they are so late! I had an essay to do and then I went to London. Speaking of which, I have 3 more essays to do this week, so London pictures will be posted next week.)


Flatmate dancing time! Laurie and Amanda
Phil as Princess Leia, complete with cinnamon buns on ear muffs. And some of that delicious, but waste-laying punch. At least, it laid waste to me, as you will notice in subsequent pictures. Like this one. With Rob Thatcher, my new Glaswegian friend.
Here is Pirate Erica, Laurie as the milk carton from a Blur music video ("Coffee & TV" You can see the original carton here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_&_TV_(music_video)) and me as a demon - which basically just meant little horns, black dress and a ton of make-up.
I love this costume! When we were walking over to Graeme's house, people were honking their horns and yelling and this one group of people turned the corner and burst out laughing as soon as they saw him. And someone even ran up and took a picture!
Before the party, Pirate Erica
Me, with devil horns, in the hallway (which stinks really bad) outside my door

So much fun, so much delicious punch! Oh so much punch. Quite a lot of punch, actually. Very very fun!

Raisin Weekend

So, St Andrews has a tradition of Academic Families and each year they have an event called Raisin Weekend. It's far too complicated for me to explain, so I found this from an online website called The Sinner's Guide to St Andrews (the student newspaper is called The Saint):

"Raisin Weekend Raisin Weekend is centred around the unique St Andrews tradition of the "academic family". Each first year (or at least those who choose to take part - it is not compulsory) is adopted by an academic mother and academic father - who are usually, but not always, in their third or fourth year. In one form or another, Raisin Weekend has been around since the very earliest days of the university. It was, and still is, a "rite of passage" for new students.

On Raisin Sunday, first years spend the day with their academic parents. First of all, they attend a tea party with their mother at which, traditionally, not much tea but a great deal of alcohol is consumed. Later, the children are collected by their fathers and the evening is spent in the drinking of yet more alcohol.

In return for their parents' kindnesses, the first year is expected to give them each a bottle of wine. This is deemed the modern equivalent of a pound of raisins (actually, the modern equivalent of a pound of raisins IS a pound of raisins) which was the usual gift way back in the mists of time when students had a bland diet (has this changed much?)

On the following day (handily called Raisin Monday) and after being woken up, sobered up, cleaned up, and dressed up in outlandish clothes, freshers are presented with their Raisin Receipts. These are written in Latin and is a way of acknowledging the gift of raisins. They always used to be on parchment. Nowadays, almost certainly, the receipt will be something large, embarrassing and cumbersome which has to be carried around.

The gift-giving does not end here. Academic mothers give each of their children "Raisin Strings" with a small gift attached. The gift or "favour" is supposed to reflect the personality of the child. The number of Raisin Strings depends on the status of the mother. It is one string per year of matriculation - blue for first year, crimson for second, gold for third and black for fourth. These strings, with gift still attached, will eventually be tied to the child's gown hooks.

After all this largesse, children are paraded through the town until they arrive at Sallies Quad. En route, third years, fourth years and graduates of the university (if they are wearing their gowns) can stop any fresher and examine their Raisin Receipt. If they find a mistake in it then they can demand that the Gaudeamus be sung as punishment. Once at Sallies Quad, between 11 and 12 o'clock, a foam fight nearly always breaks out - it's almost traditional. The striking of 12 o'clock means the end of the fun for another year, and sees students slowly drifting off. Parents perhaps to have photos developed. Freshers, almost certainly, to sleep."

So, when I was at the Halloween party last night, I apparently thought it was a good idea to get involved in all of this, so Varan and Graeme (both are in pictures from my last post) are now my academic parents. Oh goodness. Raisin weekend is Nov 19/20, so wish me well! I had a lot of fun at the Halloween party yesterday, once I figure out who has the pictures, I'll post them here.

Calgary Stampede, y'all!

Last night, I went to a theme party at Laurie's. Since his flatmate, Amanda, spent the summer in Canada on an internship, the theme was Calgary Stampede and everyone was supposed to dress like a cowboy or girl and we were supposed to listen to country music and stuff. Here are the pictures!

This is Laurie in the cowboy hat Amanda brought back from Calgary

Here I am with John Buchanan (he did an exchange to UT Dallas last year, which is what Laurie did two years and how they know Erica) Here I am again, wearing my last minute shirt from the thrift store. In America, thrift stores are drowning in flannel, but here the best I could do was an unnattractive men's dress shirt.
Here's Erica with her braids still in!
John again (apparently, he never smiles) and me and Erica and someone's hat.
This is Phil and Erica. Phil is Amanda's boyfriend Graeme's flatmate. Next Saturday we are going to their Halloween party.
Here is Amanda making Scottish-stroke-American pancakes (instead of saying "slash" people say "stroke")
Graeme, Varan and Rob the lonely indian
Stuart and his girlfriend had my favorite costumes!
Here I am, laughing at Laurie while he's taking my picture
Erica, Robert and Greg hanging out in Amanda's room
This is Lauren in Laurie's flat
Here is me and Erica in a bar called Golf Place near, uh, the golf course
This is a sign in front of the lake outside my window
As Lauren would say "It's fall, y'all!"

and i missed it ... :(

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/15/nmurray15.xml

I went walking on West Sands last wednesday...

St. Andrews is technically a beach town. Um, excpet that beach is on the North Sea. Still, it was a glorious day and I enjoyed walking the length of it. (I must've walked quite about 5 miles though, the whole trip took me 3 hours!) The beach is on the west of the town, thus is named West Sands (there is also an East Sands, but with the crappy weather this week, I haven't been out there yet). The beach itself points directly to the east. I liked to joke about seeing Norway just there on the horizon, but after consulting a map, I saw that it is Denmark, not Norway.
There it is, the North Sea.
Here is the town from the beach. That clock tower sticking up so high is near where my classes are. However, my dorm is way, way out to the right of this picture. Aah! I decided I had to stick a toe in the North Sea. Crazy. And I thought I wasn't going to need my flip flops. So silly.
Those are my footprints. There were lots of friendly doggies on the beach.
After walking a couple of miles, the beach curves around into the Eden Estuary, where the sand is much coarser. Instead of walking back the way I had come in, I hoped that I'd be able to walk up through the weeds and then across the countryside to my dorm.

However, when I popped my head up through the weeds, I discovered I was at the edge of a golf course! And here is a poor lost golf ball I found perched perfectly in a bush, in the weeds behind the course. Sorry the picture is so blurry!
More golf course
Here is the town on my way back.

And that concludes my dirty, sandy, wet, debris-filled tour of West Sands!

previously promised, now delivered

Here are the pictures I took on my Highland day trip thing. It was pretty fun, but you can't get very far when you have to be back by 5:30, so we mostly just went around Perth and the river Tay.

This is Erica next to a little river thing at the park we stopped at near Dunkeld. Here I am standing on top of a large rock at the same park.

This is out the window of the bus, the fog had finally lifted and the view was completely amazing.

We stopped at Taymouth, which is a little place ... at the mouth of Loch Tay! Surprise! The fog was so thick and fantastic. Some of the kids seemed to be impressed by it, but we Bay kids get this kind of thing on a regular basis, you know.This is further along down the Tay, at the falls of Dun... something I can't remember anymore. Two weeks sure seems like a long time ago. Our guide called the fog "the Haarrrr". I'm sure that's not how it's spelled, but that's how he made it sound. This crazy dog was digging at the bottom of this pond for like half an hour, while we ate lunch. I have no idea what she was after, but for some reason it was completely mesmerizing. Later, she grabbed this huge rock in her mouth and was trying to convince the tourists to play fetch with her.Finally, we went to the Famous Grouse whisky distillery. The tour was SUPER LAME (our guide looked, acted, and point blank said he wished he could be anywhere else but there), however, the trip was saved by nice treat at the end, namely a warm dram. Not bad stuff, that.