St. Andrews Culture

So I've been here a few weeks now, and I'm finally starting to get friends among the full time students in my hall. It was difficult, as they tend to be somewhat grouped into cliques, especially the people who live in my block. Andrew Melville Hall, my dorm, is separated into 5 blocks of rooms, A-E. I live in A block, where the top floor is eight girls and the rest of the floors are boys. And everyone here is always together. A block is actually known throughout Melville by the other blocks as being very insular.

Now I'm not sure if the reason it's taken me this long to get to know them is because it took them awhile for them to open up to us new kids, or if it's just that I was intimidated by how close they all are, but I'm finally starting to be more comfortable around them and hang out with them more. Partially, I think I have Mark to thank for this. About two weeks ago, I went out with Mark, my friend from Model UN, Stephanie and Kelsey. While we were out, one of Mark's friends, Harry, from Northern Ireland came over. It turns out that he lives in A block, and he ended up spending the rest of the night out with us. Since then, it's almost like we've gotten the seal of approval from the rest of A block. The ones that are in my class are more likely to sit with me or ask me to sit with them. They've invited us to go out with them. Steph and I sat with them at dinner. And they're all really nice. I'm glad we've finally "broken in" to A block, as Steph, Kelsey and I joked. I guess it was a combination of the two factors I mentioned above- them being so close to each other already and us being intimidated. It took both sides a little while to open up. But it's nice to be making more friends among the full-time St. Andrews students, rather than just the JSAs.

Although I love my JSA friends as well. Kelsey, Steph and I have pretty much become joined at the hip in a lot of ways. Hannah too, but to a lesser degree only because she doesn't live in Andrew Melville. We joke that we're the three musketeers and Hannah is our D'Artagnan. We're definitely closer to each other than to the other JSAs, which is good since the four of us are spending our Easter Break traveling together. It's coming up quickly and we're all really excited. We managed to narrow down the places we wanted to go to a manageable number, so we'll be spending about two weeks in three separate countries. I'm sure I'll be writing all about it then.

We're also slowly starting to adjust to the culture of St. Andrews. Surprisingly for us, there aren't that many actual Scottish students here. There are a good number, of course, but less than we expected. We found out that University of St. Andrews is actually known colloquially as "The English University of Scotland", because so many students come from England. Quite a few are also from Northern Ireland, like Mark and Harry. We're starting to pick up on the differences is accents, which is good. Then we can avoid making mistakes like that of another JSA, Brian, who told one of the A block girls, Tatum, that he thought she was "the epitome of an English woman", only to find out that Tatum is from Northern Ireland. Needless to say, Brian was slightly embarrassed. We're also starting to get more phrases that we don't use in the US. One of my favorites is saying "half seven" or "half three" instead of seven-thirty or three-thirty. That's one that we all picked up on relatively quickly and use ourselves now. It's shorter and easier to type when texting. I also like the word "knackered", meaning exhausted. Although you also have to be careful when using British terms-- if you say them in an accent, like one JSA always does "by accident", you tend to get made fun of.