Glen Clova walk

Here are a few pictures from my trip to Glen Clova last month. This trip was with ‘Breakaway,’ the St Andrews Hillwalking Club, which I joined because the Oxford Walking Club was a really good way to see lots of fields and country villages in southern England and I wanted to see some of the Scottish countryside. Glen Clova (‘glen’ means valley) is in Angus, a county adjacent to St Andrews’ Fife, and about an hour and a half away by bus.

I actually wasn’t supposed to go on the trip, because they only had about 50 spots on the bus and I was second on the waiting list, but some people dropped and I got to go. I was a little hesitant because this was right after my first two rowing workouts (the first circuit and technical session) and I was so sore I couldn’t walk, plus I had two rowing sessions the day after the trip, one of them at 7:15am and the other circuits. But how hard could walking around be? Breakaway trips are split into walks of different difficulties, easy, medium, high medium, high-high medium, and hard, so I figured I would just do the medium (thinking this would be 3-4 miles walking slowly).

The bus dropped the medium group off eight miles from the pub/hotel where all the groups would meet at the end of the day. Ack, a lot longer than I expected! And it was over steep hills at a very fast pace, with not a lot of breaks. Plus when we finally got to the end we realized that we still had several hours before the bus was going to take us back to St Andrews, so there was nothing to do but walk a few more miles down the valley and back! At least I got to see a lot. My feet thoroughly hurt after that and I had a full day of rowing the next day.

Even though Glen Clova is still very much in the south of Scotland, like St Andrews, it reminded me a lot of the Highlands. There were a couple things that could maybe be called 'mountains' (sort of, and by Eastern U.S. and not Montana standards), but even the hills looked pretty rugged. They were all covered with heather, which is a plant kind of like a really short sagebrush that's all over in the British Isles. I had seen it in England, but at a time of year when it was purple - in fall apparently it's brown, and I had to ask what it was. Most of the walk was along a high ridge (it was incredibly windy up there, but a sunny day) and you could see way back in the country away from the road. There were a few scattered farm buildings off in the distance in other valleys, but mostly it was very remote. We saw some free-range sheep that acted like they didn't see people very often. For a lot of the hike we went along an old dirt road that was near a rickety barbed wire fence; it actually reminded me a lot of Montana and Idaho, so the landscape wasn't altogether foreign. Still, the dominant image in my mind was of the Highlands when my dad and I drove through them a few years ago.

The view back towards the road from the steep hill we climbed to get to the ridge.


Ahhh, fresh air and mountains! The love of the countryside is one of the "things which I have won forever" through my experiences and education. I will never live in a city again!


Heather.


Landscape view, with heather all over. It's scenes like this that really reminded me of the Highlands.


The lighting in this turned out kind of cool, especially in the mud of the road that we were walking on.


As my dad will attest, two things I like to take pictures of while traveling are doorways and gates.


Climbing over a stile. After this we walked through a forest that has been carefully managed and harvested for many centuries. There were enclosures for raising pheasants, too. (Ooh, as we were driving back out on the bus I saw fields and fields full of big, fat wild rabbits. I had of course seen wild rabbits before but I had never seen actual rabbit warrens, like the ones in the book Watership Down. Whole cities of rabbits!)


Another stile. There are pine trees in Scotland!


The hikers' and backpackers' hotel/pub in the valley.


View down the valley on our second walk.


Caution: pheasant crossing.

Random add-ons

It's pretty common to hear supersonic jet noises around here, since there is a Royal Air Force base just a few miles away from the center of St Andrews, but today they must've been doing a lot of training exercises and there was practically a free air show. I was walking along the Scores (the northernmost of St Andrews' four streets, with a view of the water) when I looked up and saw two fighter jets flying together in an arc over the sea. They were so beautiful! And zipping over the water so fast. I stood and watched them make a couple loops over West Sands (the bigger beach at St Andrews) before they came in to land one after the other. As they landed I realized that one can actually see the air base from St Andrews, I just didn't know that's what those buildings the next hill over from West Sands were. After I saw the planes stop on the runway I continued walking but then looked up to see three more planes flying over the ocean in very tight formation. They flew together for awhile, made some very impressive turns that I had a good angle to appreciate, and then separated and flew there own ways. One flew right over the town! That was loud.

At the "Freshers' Fayre," where new students signed up for university societies, there were to my surprise several military groups. Officers were there recruiting for the RAF and for the army, but there was also a student society that was kind of like a national guard. There is an organization for Scottish young people and students at Scottish universities that is traditionally one of Scotland's lines of defense against attack, so some students at St Andrews go to lots of trainings for that a week (probably even more time-consuming than rowing!) and learn to fly airplanes. As I'm only here a year, I wasn't quite up for that!

Speaking of the military, on Saturday when Steph and I were wandering around looking for a good cafe-type place for writing we found ourselves in the middle of a parade of 20-30 soldiers who were just going down the street for some reason. No idea why. It was kind of funny because they were all walking two-by-two, and then they started to pass us, so we were in the middle of the line and there were two of us also.

Speaking of the military again, today was Remembrance Day/Armistice Day. The U.K. observed a moment of silence today, but I guess the main events were on Sunday, which they call Remembrance Sunday and which is a major holiday for them. On the news they showed the Queen laying a wreath before a tomb and then bowing - the monarch bows for the war dead alone. They also showed Princes William and Harry in their military uniforms with their cool swords in the ceremony, since they were part of the Queen's guard.

And speaking of Prince William, I know someone who lives next door to the flat that he lived in when he was a student here. Haha. I always thought it was cool that Prince William represented St Andrews in water polo at the national level, in the Scottish Universities Championship. Well, now I'm going to represent St Andrews in rowing in the Scottish Universities Championship! I have to say I never thought I'd be on a sports team competing against other universities...

Can't think of anything else to "add-on," so I'll finish with a "Yay, rowing!"

Internet, finally!!!

Okay, now I am actually going to write in this blog often, because I finally have internet in my apartment! First I had to get the phone line reconnected, which took awhile because they wouldn't take a foreign credit card and had me send a postal money order, and then I had to wait awhile for them to process the internet order and send me the equipment. But it's finally here! Now I don't have to walk into town to the library every time I need to check my email.

I have no classes this week because it's "reading week," which is basically the St Andrews fall break - not many people actually stay here and "read," most are at home or someplace exotic and warm. A lot of the people I know just went home to various places in England (and in the U.S.!), but my training partner went to Salamanca, Spain and someone else from rowing went to Italy. It's really, really nice not to have to go to class - I only have one hour of Latin four days a week and then four hours of seminars on Fridays, but I much prefer to do all my work independently and not have a set time to be somewhere (unless it's for rowing). I have a disorganized mind that likes to fly every which way and do bits and pieces of different things at the same time; I am quite happy to do all my independent reading/learning/writing and then turn in the project at the deadline, but I don't like being checked up on midway through. So, reading week is very nice.

This week I'm still doing some stuff for rowing, going to the gym with the few people who are still around. I had the most awesome day on Saturday! First I was in the gym for two hours doing the rowing machine, learning some new techniques for it. Afterward my coach, Steph, and I went to a tearoom/cafe/bar (I don't even know the word for it, that's not a combination usually seen in America) and sat writing for five hours! Awhile ago Steph and I had discovered that we're both writing books with the same type of ideas (hers is for young adults, but we're both working toward similar things) and that, furthermore, we are similar people in a lot of ways and like to think/talk about the same type of things. We decided that on some weekends we'll camp out somewhere and work on our books for a few hours at a time. We weren't too successful at that on Saturday - we spent a lot more time talking than writing! But still, it was really neat to be able to talk about writing with someone else. I hadn't worked on my book in a couple months because I thought that it was too juvenile and saw too many ways that it was wrong, but now I see I can at least partially fix it and I'm excited about showing it to someone else for suggestions. I'm also starting a second book involving much different ideas, but that's another story...

I spent Sunday doing all the housework that I'd been putting off, and was all set to have a productive day on Monday, but I was so exhausted from the gym in the morning (and going into the afternoon - I spent three hours there!) that I really didn't do anything else the rest of the day. Today I got some reading and other things done, but I still have several books I need/want to read this week, some assignments to do, and then a lot of writing (that has nothing to do with schoolwork). Today I went in a lot of the shops in St Andrews because I had some errands to run and also because I hadn't been in most of the interesting stores. There are quite a few stores with Scottish things, not just souvenirs but also Scottish-made goods that people buy normally, like woolen clothes, tartan scarves and blankets, and kilts (oh, yes, kilts are normal, people wear them around town all the time). The stores are putting things out for Christmas so there are a lot of neat Scottish gift boxes and cookie tins. Oooh... I just remembered Christmas pastries! In England I experienced the Christmas pie, which is a little palm-sized pie with not fruit but meat in it, and also the various other tiny pies that have normal fillings. All of these are starting to appear in the bakery windows along with some that seem to be sold just in Scotland, since I haven't seen them before, so I will have to try some of those. The U.K. does Christmas so much better than the U.S.! Not only the traditional food, but also the decorations. This town is going to have such a neat atmosphere with the lights on the gray stone medieval buildings, the clouds and cold weather, the medieval church towers, and all the people walking around in plaid wool coats. (I went in a store that sells only Christmas stuff year-round, so the excitement rubbed off on me... I love Christmas!)

Speaking of Christmas, there are less than six weeks before classes end - wow, it's gone so fast, it seems like classes have barely started! I'm going home for Christmas, which I'm really looking forward to, and then will come back sometime in the middle of January for my one exam, Latin (other things are assessed by just written work). Then, St Andrews being even weirder than Oxford in terms of breaks, there is a three-week break in January and the beginning of February: the next semester doesn't start until February 6! Hopefully there will be some rowing stuff in there to fill the time; otherwise I will be able to get a lot of writing done.

Rowing

As I think I mentioned before, I decided to join the rowing team here at St Andrews. That wasn't the original plan; before I came I decided to use extracurricular time this year to focus on sports instead of music like I've done before, but I had wanted to be in the swimming club and go to all of their workouts (4 a week). So, I went to the "Sports Fayre" the first weekend I was here to sign up for swimming. All of the sports clubs had booths there and I had to walk through all of them before I found swimming. But as I was looking for the swimming club, I went past the booth for the rowing team and one of their officers noticed that I had an Oxford sweatshirt on. He said, "Hey, you went to Oxford, you must've done rowing there! Join the team!" I said, no, I never rowed at Oxford. "Well, row at St Andrews then!", shoving the sign-up sheet in my face. Serendipity! I am already obsessed with the Boat Club, I love everything about it, nothing is more exciting than the Boat Club and other things are just times in between Boat Club sessions. (*Note- when I find something that seems more exciting to me than my writing, it is a rare thing.)

There are 8 rowing workouts a week (including circuits and weights - only 2 sessions actually have something to do with a boat). The first one was last Monday, although it wasn't really a workout, just an introduction to the Boat Club and explanation of what the circuits are. There was quite a large group of people for this session, divided into the senior squad (people who have rowed before) and novices. Even though this was just a demonstration, I was hooked. The guy who demonstrated the circuits (the men's captain) for some reason reminded me of an ancient Greek athlete, so I thought of the ancient athletic routines that I'd heard about in middle school, the outdoor gymnasium I saw in Pompeii, and my ideal of Greek athletics and therefore all sport. I have this image of athletes running around a track beneath the sky/stars - in Greece, in Franklin Field, wherever - for the simple reason that they can, that man can achieve these things in sport so the athletes run just for the sake of running, of transcending their mortality to create one moment that is eternally meaningful because it existed. Anyway, I didn't always get excited about participating in sports but for several years I have idealized it, and now I finally get to be on a (really intense!) team. I further like the choice of rowing because it's a "classic" British sport, right up there with running with a storied history.

When I saw the demonstration of the types of things we would do in circuits, it didn't look that hard. Actually doing them was a different story! The first actual circuit workout was last Thursday, and immediately they had us running, sprinting, for quite awhile around the gym. I wasn't expecting that! Then we did some leg stretches and, still gasping, went right into the circuits. I DID NOT KNOW THE MEANING OF SUFFERING BEFORE. A brief synopsis of circuits: several minutes of running in place, faster, faster running, running with high knees, then lots of squat jumps, jumping really high. More running, running, running, squats, then these terrible things where you jump down into a pushup position, extend your legs, jump up again, do it over and over. Then more running, high knees, heels to butt, more running, squats, SIXTY reps of the Highland Fling (arms over shoulders, sweep down to the floor as you bend your legs, arms up to the other side like a weird golf swing), more running, high knees, faster, faster, more running, squats, arm exercises, more running, more squats, then pushups, more running, squats, situps, running, running, more running, squats, strength exercises - the bridge, the plank (for a minute! with someone walking around checking that you're doing it the whole time), the side plank (for some reason I cannot do this one, at all). That's the end of the circuit - then you do it all over again! The workout is led by the Boat Club president and the men's captain. First the president will do it for quite awhile, always saying faster, faster, to the point where you think you're going to die; then, he turns it to the men's captain, who does everything five times faster! And then back to the president. Half of the room was gasping, looking about to collapse, and the other half was going along cheerfully, keeping up with those two. At one point of particular pain the president yelled, "Faster! It's supposed to hurt! That's why you're here!" He is really inspiring, actually, and I will learn to like the pain. At any rate, I made it to the end of that first circuits workout and also of the second one, which was yesterday. Oh, but at the end of the first circuits, after we had done the whole thing twice, they said it was all over, all we had to do was go outside, but THEN there was more running, jogging, running, jogging - and then finally stretching and the real end.

You would think I'd hate rowing after all that. But I love it, love it, love it! This intensity is exactly what I wanted. This year is going to be so exciting. The first circuits were on Thursday, then on Saturday the novice men's and women's squads had a joint session to learn the movements and timing of rowing. We didn't have a single rowing machine for most of the time because the people at the gym front desk were being scatterbrained, but we sat in rows of four on mats and pretended to be in boats, "rowing" in synch. We were then supposed to sign up for times this week when the novice coach would give us an intro session on rowing machines and the president would show us how to use the weights. My "training buddy," Sarah (incidentally from pretty near where part of my dad's family is from in Germany), and I decided to do the very first session, 7:15am on Monday morning! It was actually pretty awesome being awake before the rest of the town and doing the 25 minute walk to the gym with only the seagulls and the sunrise. Strangely, the rowing movements came naturally to me and I was doing it right from the beginning (could it be I finally have athletic coordination??) - at one point the coach and the president were talking and pointing at me, and then the coach said I was looking really, really good! After the rowing machines, we went to the weight room with the president and he showed us the routine (seeing "weights" on the schedule two days a week made it seem like those were some relatively easy sessions to look forward to. Easy? Considering who set them up, umm, no). The routine is "power weights," the point being to lift enough weight that you can't finish your final set (so not many reps, but still really hard). I'm going to have to learn to do pullups, eek! Oh, I forgot to mention it was very painful for me to move around during this because I had walked 12 miles over steep hills the day before (more on that later, including pictures!). And then there was another circuit session Monday night, so I lived through two rowing sessions in one day. I felt like I improved a little already with circuits - the running/sprinting at the beginning wasn't a big deal, and although I still felt like I was going to keel over during the actual circuits I could always go faster and pick my knees up when told to and I could do the plank for 30 seconds.

Summary of a very long entry: rowing is awesome. I love rowing. Rowing, rowing, rowing. St Andrews Boat Club = fantastic, exciting, love it, love it, love it!

Still getting settled in

I have now been here for a little over a week and am still trying to get things in order so I can function properly! I can finally access wireless networks on my laptop, so no more going to the library once a day to check my email on their computers. However, I'm still trying to get internet set up at home. It's a pretty complicated process: the internet will be a cheap broadband package, but in order for it to work there has to be a landline, which was disconnected in the house and has to be reconnected first. They say someone has to come out to check that the house already has a BT (British Telecom) landline installed, which it does, so it will take a few days for them to take care of that. I can't order internet until I have a phone number, and then the internet installation package takes 5 business days to arrive by mail.

Despite all the problems, I really like where I'm living. It's a first floor apartment (“flat”) in a building with 4 apartments, and the apartment has its own front yard and half of a backyard. The inside is nice – wood floors, nice decorating. There are 2 bedrooms (I have one housemate), a bathroom with shower and tub, a living room with couches and a TV(so I can finally watch a lot of British TV, which I didn’t get to do in Oxford because I didn’t have a TV in my room), and a kitchen (with dishes, pots and pans, etc., so I didn’t have to buy any). There is a washer/dryer in the kitchen so I don’t have to go to a laundromat.

Although this is a really small town (15,000 - okay, not small compared to Plains but a nice change from Philadelphia), I still don't know which streets go where and exactly how to get home if I'm anywhere out of the town center. The old part of the town has a few straight streets, but lots more winding medieval streets whose directions/endings are unpredictable. My house is in the newer residential part of town, built in the last century as St Andrews was expanding, and the streets in that area are NEVER straight so it can be hard to find my way back! For example: the first day I was here. I slept in until 1 in the afternoon that day and by that point hadn’t eaten in almost a day and hadn’t showered for over two days, so I wanted to find a store to get some food and shampoo. I had heard there were several grocery stores within a few blocks of the apartment. However, I apparently went in exactly the wrong direction because I spent about 2-3 hours wandering around various residential streets before I found a grocery store – hard to do in a small town! And at first I thought the store I finally found was a car dealership because I thought the sign said “Audi” and there were lots of cars in the parking lot. Actually the sign said “Aldi,” a supermarket chain! And then it took me forever to find my way back because I didn't know where any of the streets led; since they're not straight, they often curve around in a direction you really didn't want to go when you started down it.

On top of all the directional difficulties, it's been a little hard getting settled into life as a student here because this seems to be a place where no one tells you (or has any information when you ask) where to go, what to do, or how to do it. St Andrews is even worse than Oxford when it comes to being organized - didn't think that was possible! It was difficult to find out how to matriculate (formally enter as a student and get my i.d. card) because my advisor forgot to give me the form when he was supposed to, and when I finally had the form they wouldn't let me have my i.d. card because the university's automatic system had never issued me a computer account username a month ago when everybody else got theirs. It took another day to get that straightened out, with my parents checking my email for me back in the U.S., calling me to tell me what was in it, and then impersonating me if a reply was needed.

Fortunately the School of Classics did have some orientation-type events. One afternoon there was a lunch for all the new postgraduates (the term for grad students here), so I got to meet people in my program and also some of the professors. The next night there was a social event for all the Classics postgrads, including returning PhD students, and I went out to eat with some of them the next two nights. Everyone seems nice; about half are English and the other half are American, with a couple Scots and a couple Canadians thrown in the mix. I also got a tour of the Classics building from the school secretary and a tour of the Library from the librarian, so once classes start I will actually know where to go to get work done. Ahhh, classes. There's another problem with organization here. I'm supposed to be in a Latin language class for the whole year, but I had never gotten any emails about when it was supposed to start. I just happened to ask another new student in my program if he knew when it was going to start, and he said, well yeah, it starts on Monday at 3! Then Monday at 2:50pm I checked my email and there was a message from him, saying just in case I didn't get the next email (no, of course not!) the classroom had been changed. Of course I didn't know where the new building was, so I walked around the block a couple times and was 5 minutes late (not a big deal because lots of other people apparently couldn't find it and were late, too).

I have Latin four days a week (off on Wednesdays) and my core course for Classical Studies will meet weekly, on Fridays. I also am taking a class on Scientific and Encyclopedic Writing in the ancient world, which will be taught in tutorials (one-on-one with the professor like at Oxford) every two weeks. I decided to join the St Andrews rowing team so will have as many as 8 exercise sessions a week for that, plus 4 nights of swimming a week with the swim team. More on that later!

This is a really long entry, so I'll leave it at that, but later I'll post more on ST ANDREWS! I love this town and the surroundings are so beautiful.

No internet access yet

I have been in St Andrews for several days, but haven't had internet access (don't even have it in my house yet), hence the reason for not posting. I'm on a computer in the Classics library now, don't have time to post a full entry about what the heck I've been doing here, but hopefully I will be able to get onto the St Andrews wireless network in the next few days from my own computer. So will hopefully post soon!

Getting ready to leave

Hi everyone! I'm starting this blog so I can keep in touch and tell everyone about my year in Scotland. I will be studying Classical Studies (mainly ancient Greek and Roman literature) at the University of St Andrews. My degree will be a PGDip (postgraduate diploma), which is basically a one-year Masters without a thesis project.

I'm really looking forward to being at St Andrews. I visited it the summer after my freshman year of college when my dad and I were in Europe, and I thought then that it was the perfect place for me. It's an awesome medieval university, yet it's in a tiny little town - only 12,000 people, and there is no urban sprawl at all. The town is very compact and once you're out of it, you're out and in the fields and hills. It's also only a few feet from the North Sea and there are even a few mountains off in the very far distance. There are of course lots of golf courses right there because St Andrews is famous as the birthplace of golf (I'm hoping to play some golf there, as well as join the swimming team). My apartment is right in the middle of town, so not right on the open space but within easy walking distance of everything.

My flight from Missoula leaves at about 2pm on Sunday, then I go to Minneapolis before heading to Amsterdam (no direct flights to St Andrews!). I could've gone to London for the same duration and wait, but I chose Amsterdam because I've only been there once. I have a little less than 3 hours to wait in the Amsterdam airport, which will mainly be spent in the customs line. My last leg of flying is Amsterdam to Edinburgh, an easy jaunt at 1 1/2 hours. Then I'll wait in customs again and take a bus or a train and then a bus to St Andrews which should be about an hour or two. I'm guessing I'll get "home" around 6pm Scotland time, so over 24 hours total travel if you count the time in the car driving to Missoula.

Throughout the year I'll post a few times a week to tell about what I'm doing and hopefully to post some pictures. The next time I post I'll be in Scotland! :)