Catching Up: A November Medley

We've been quite busy here in Scotland, and the biggest benefit of waiting a long while between posts is that it gives us a chance to have exciting events to discuss. Most days, my busyness takes the form of reading several books, perhaps writing a bit, or (if very lucky) attending an evening lecture. If Isaac is working, I try to walk into town with him in the morning. His busyness then consists of making soup, boiling potatoes, and baking scones, while I'll often do a great deal of my daily work in the hours of quiet and solitude. If I wander away from my "office," I'll often visit the grocery store on Market Street; the early morning hours are the best time for shopping. Here's the morning view on Market Street:



The tall spire is Hope Park Church, which I attended two years ago. You can also see Subway, which I boycott on principle, and the fountain in market square, near which, if the weather is well, a number of merchants will often have outdoor stalls.

Last weekend was a bit mad: new students to St. Andrews celebrate an event known as "Raisin Weekend." Said new students find an "academic mother" and "academic father," who are (purportedly) intended to help them navigate the dangers of this tiny Scottish fishing village. Traditionally, Raisin Sunday was spent taking raisins to one's mother in the afternoon and enjoying a tea party (and receiving a "raisin string," the significance of which I still fail to comprehend), then taking a bottle of wine to one's father's home in the evening and receiving a "receipt" for said wine. Nowadays, most students take wine to both parents' homes and receive, in return, far more alcohol than is healthy. By noon on Sunday, the main streets of St. Andrews are filled with drunken students, often tied or duct-taped together, who stagger or skip down the street, names and addresses painted on their limbs and embarrassing slogans adorning their faces, perhaps singing nursery rhymes or working on a scavenger hunt. For us boring folks, it's a day to avoid the town center if at all possible.

The most tremendous part of Raisin Weekend, however, occurs on Monday morning (while classes are still taking place), on which day the academic mothers dress their new offspring in costumes (which range from embarrassing and dangerous to clever and fun), parade them through the streets of the town, and send them off to a shaving-foam battle in the oldest part of the university, St. Salvator's quad. A student's admission ticket for said battle is the "receipt" given by the academic father (which is why it's important to have two parents). Students parade through the town, navigate a system of police barricades, and indulge in the foam fight (which doesn't last particularly long, all things considered). Here's part of the aftermath:



For more traditional fun, Isaac and I recently enjoyed a trip to Scotland's smallest legal whiskey distillery, which is located about two hours northwest of St. Andrews in a lovely little tourist trap called Pitlochry. My Bible Study leaders from last year, who had proposed the trip, kindly drove us to the distillery, where we four enjoyed some tea and coffee, and then given whiskey samples and a tour of the distillery. The term "legal," we learned, applies to the size of the still: if one man and one horse can't move the still, then it's "legal." The (legal) still in question is the large copper-coloured tank on the left of the photo; it's shaped a bit like a gourd.



Finally, we had a chance to visit a large shopping centre with the same friends. While our shopping wasn't quite as productive as we might have wished, we did have a chance to take a beautiful hike to see this waterfall:



For those of you curious about our Thankgiving, we celebrated ours on Wednesday evening with a number of American friends as well as some British folk and a young lady from Australia. Our British friends were surprised by the amount of food and complained in particular about the American penchant for eating sweet foods as part of the main meal (rather than as dessert, which is here called pudding). The meal was delicious, and the company good (but numerous). Since then, however, I've been battling a bit of a head cold, which I'm hoping to kick this weekend.

Thus ends my current summary.