Flat Parties, St. Andrews and a Mean Girls Movie Night

     This past week has been one of the most fun since I arrived here! On Monday night the roomiez and I went to 90s night at Jackson's pub (which didn't turn out to be much of a 90s night; there were complaints about the volume of the music, so we didn't have our 90s music for most of the night). It turned out to be a great night despite the lack of Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys songs playing in the background. Afterwards we had cravings for (you guessed it) McDonalds, so we had a midnight snack there before heading back to our flat. On Thursday we got a new flatmate (Lori) so that was exciting! We all went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant that night. On both Wednesday and Friday I went to flat parties. The one on Friday night was super memorable and I made friends with the boys whose flat it was. It's cool to have a few guy friends here now, since I've pretty much only been hanging out with girls since the beginning of the exchange (not necessarily a bad thing, but hanging with boys is fun too!). At the party we were randomly chatting to the boys about chick flicks and they mentioned they love Mean Girls, so it was decided that we would have a Mean Girls movie night at our flat on Sunday night and invite all the boys. We didn't get back from the party until a little after 1am, which was crazy since Bethany and I had to wake up around 6:45 on Saturday morning for our St. Andrews Student Tours Scotland day trip.

     It was hard to get out of bed Saturday morning, and even after drinking a cup of coffee I still felt exhausted. The bus ride was around two hours, so we were able to nap a bit on the bus at least. The bus dropped us off at a beautiful beach right in front of the famous St. Andrews golf course, and we all hung out there for a bit to take nice photos. It was neat seeing a Scottish beach for the first time. Gary (our tour leader) then walked us over the the castle where we got to explore for a while. I loved the St. Andrews castle -- probably even more than Edinburgh castle. St. Andrew's castle is much smaller, and it is in ruins. Parts of it are really well preserved though, and there were so many cool dungeons/rooms to see. The counter mine underneath the castle was particularly interesting to explore. It was a cramped space and quite dark, and several people were actually getting claustrophobic and had to go back outside. We then made our way to the St. Andrews Cathedral (which isn't much of a cathedral any more, mostly just a big graveyard). It was beautiful though, and apparently there are some famous people buried there. Bethany, Vanessa and I went for lunch at a place called "gorgeous St. Andrews" afterwards, and I had a really nice panini with salad. After lunch we did a bit of shopping -- I bought a couple of postcards for family, and some golf balls with the St. Andrews crest on them for my grandma. I spent the last part of the afternoon wandering around St. Andrews University and the beaches/pier with Vanessa before going back to the bus. On the way back to Glasgow we stopped at Ravenscraig Park to see another castle. At this point everyone was so tired that they weren't too enthusiastic about spending an hour and a half at this park, but there were some nice ocean views and the sun was starting to go down so we got some nice photos. I was so sleepy by the time we got back to our flat, and I got to bed fairly early that night.

     Yesterday I got to meet up with Jessica and Marina, who are from UVic and on exchange in Aberdeen. They were visiting Glasgow for the weekend, so we went out for dinner at the Counting House with them, my roomiez, Alicea, Rebecca and Rebecca's friend visiting from Canada. I had scotch pie with chips, beans and gravy, and it was so good. It was a fun dinner and it was so nice to hang out with the UVic girls. On our way back to our flat we picked up some snacks at Sainsbury's for our Mean Girls movie night with the boys. I think we had thirteen people in total in our flat to watch the movie, which was insane because it's so small. We made it work though, and we had a great time. Afterwards, Bethany, Anna and I tried to stream the Oscars online but we weren't too successful. We caught a bit of the red carpet but by the time the show was going to start, it was around 1am and we were super sleepy. Before I went to bed I chatted with my parents and brother on Skype for a bit. I get to see them in London in under two weeks! I'm so excited.

     Now it's back to the grind. I have a paper due on Thursday so I probably won't be going out much this week because I have to be productive. I'm going to Dublin for the weekend though, so that's something to look forward to!