Scottish word of the week: Nae'bother: v. don't worry about it
Picture of the week:
What I've been up to - in bullet points
Tuesday 12/8/09- Wednesday 12/16/09
- Studying
- Taking exams
- Studying some more
- Taking more exams
- Sleeping
- Packing!
- Saying goodbye to Aberdeen
- Having a wonderful goodbye dinner with friends
- Having one last final hurrah of traveling to St. Andrews
- Taking the train down from Aberdeen to London
- Staying up all night in Heathrow
- Flying home!
When you really think about it, Scotland is known for a few things: Whisky, Haggis, Kilts, and Golf. I've already visited a distiller, tried haggis, saw many people parading about in kilts, so I thought that it would be a great time to see a proper golf course. And in Scotland, the most famous course is the Old Course in St. Andrews.
I got into the town and saw the cathedral and castle and then set off to find the Old Course. Being a male, I failed to ask for directions and set off in a direction. On the bus ride into town I saw something that looked like a golf course on the coast, so I set off in that direction. Soon enough I was walking across fairways and on the greens. I had my Scottish tunes playing and was having a superb time.
Then the snow started. Snow in Scotland, especially on the coast, is a rarity in December. But it came down quite fast; soon enough my jeans were wet and my back was covered in snow. Happily I strode up to the clubhouse and went into the shop.
While there I found an interesting fact out: this was not the old course. I had walked 1.5 hours through a snowstorm in the middle of December to the wrong golf course. With a laugh I turned around and made my way back.
(It turns out the course is right smack dab in the middle of the city.)
Random Section of the Week - Reflections on a semester abroad in Scotland
What is the nature of change? Such a simple word, yet an incredibly complicated concept to fathom. Sometimes imperceptible, slowly altering ; sometimes instantaneous, transforming rapidly. Both easy and hard to quantify, and some of the time one can't quite place how it came to be. It is the sort of thing that just seems to happen.
The fact is this: I am not the same person that I was before coming to Scotland.
Yet if pressed, I couldn't say how I am different. Of course, there were situations over the course of the semester that accelerated the pace of change, yet if I try to sort of add all of them up they don't equal the difference. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The best way that I can describe it is that I am surer of who I am, why I choose to be that way, and how the lessons that I learned while very young have formed me. I've made these realizations by getting away from the familiar and diving in headfirst into the unknown. Everyday I've been faced with new situations and have been forced to define who I was going to be in that situation. Lessons of responsibility, work-ethic, patience and love taught to me by family and friends were not forgotten - I can look back on my choices this semester and not feel ashamed of my conduct.
When I am old I will remember these few months as some of the happiest of my first two decades of life.
Scotland '09
