...and beyond!

Moved into the lovely Darroch Court on Saturday, and it's great. Living with one other from IFSA and the other two flatmates moved in yesterday--one is English and the other is Scottish--both are super sweet. I'm happy, really very happy. And I'm happy to be happy, which is almost even better. I was seriously nervous and am so relieved to find that my worries were unnecessary. Though I still understood why I had them...

So! What I've been doing... The city is quite walkable, so much so, in fact, that I think I'm opting out of getting a used bike. A needless expense in an already expensive city. I live about a 7-10 minute walk from campus, grocery store, Pound Stretcher (A+ discount store), and the widest variety of pubs you could imagine. I am slowly figuring out the best ways to get to each. Right now it's still Fresher's Week--aka Orientation--which is about 10 times bigger than any orientation I've seen in the US. Each club has their own events throughout and a have a 100 page book with the schedule for the week. I'm inclined to go up and befriend the volunteers wearing green shirts--they remind me of some wonderful friends I have...

Today I went to the Meet & Greet for one of the theater organizations (I didn't even realize there were many until I arrived at the event itself)--apparently their umbrella organization is called the EUTC (Edinburgh University Theater Company)--and the E seems to blend in to "the," so it's oddly familiar to hear them saying "thee UTC." It was nice to have a conversation with someone on the board (called "committee" here) for Bedlam Theater (amazingly beautiful theater--will take pictures soon, it's literally a stage inside of an old Gothic church and it's breathtaking) and we were both definitely enjoying comparing the way theater is organized at our respective universities.

It's fun to catch on to the different phrases and language that people use. I'm constantly noticing how people dress and trying to find a way that I can blend in and not stand out as distinctly American when just walking down the street. I'm slowly getting acquainted with the differences in education systems--which are different in Scotland and England. I find that if I refer to Brandeis as my school, it seems to infer that it's the equivalent of an elementary school, which I find to be amusing. In a conversation with one English girl, she said that the US fashion is how they dressed in the 90's, while others seem to not be phased by it.

Out to do more fun things! Coffee Crawl with my flatmate....