Poker and Pints

Today Knoxie and I had to get up at the ass crack of dawn to drive into Carnwath for the beginning of his sister Pamela's wedding festivities. I was a tad worried, since this was the first time I was meeting his family and they would ALL be there, but I had already agreed to go and it was too late to back out now (plus I had a new dress that I was dying to wear, and what better occassion than a wedding?).

Once we were safely delivered to Carnwath by trusty old Chester, we dropped our stuff off at Pamela's house, where we were staying, and headed to the church for the rehearsal. And cue the introductions...I met all of the Knox siblings, the parents of Pamela and her soon-to-be-husband, and the rest of the wedding party. I was also jokingly informed that I couldn't call my boyfriend "Knoxie" while I was there, since this happened to be the nickname of more than one person in the family, and I needed to start calling him Callum to avoid confusion. I made the mental note and soon the rehearsal began.

Since I was the only person there who wasn't in the wedding or related to someone who was, I sat quietly in my chair and tried to run through everyone's names in my head again. The church was FUH-reezing because they were undergoing some renovations and the electricity (which included heating) wasn't working, so pretty soon into it I was dying to go outside into the warm-ish Scottish sun.

After the rehearsal was finished, we all headed over to Charlie's house (Cal's older brother) to hang out. Most of the girls in the wedding party had appointments to get spray-tanned in the garage and they asked me if I wanted in, but I decided to keep my pasty whiteness and politely declined. Instead I cracked a beer and started chatting with the guys. I never did venture out into the garage, but I imagine it looked something like this.

The plan for the rest of the night was: the girls get brown and head back to Pamela's house to work on the centerpiece for the church, and the guys stay at Charlie's for a night of beer and who knows what else. After a bit the guys headed into the dining room and started playing poker, and since there wasn't much else going on I soon followed behind.

Fast forward 4 beers and two hours later....Charlie's girlfriend Lisa comes into the dining room and says, "Melissa, weren't you supposed to be at Pamela's house? All the girls left half an hour ago." Turns out the girl that was supposed to be giving me a ride forgot about me and I was gonna be stuck at Charlie's house for the night. I think everyone thought that I was gonna be upset, but I was actually relieved to be staying with the guys because I was having a good time and I suck at doing all that girly stuff anyway. "No worries," I said to Lisa, "as long as I have a place to sleep I'm good!" and that was that.

We all knew that it was gonna be an early-ish night since we had to be up the next morning for the wedding, but we had started drinking so early that by about 10pm I was heavily buzzing. Add not eating to the 8 beers that I had consumed, and I was definitely feeling good by 11. I was also insistent on playing poker even though I know nothing about the rules, only that a flush is a good hand (and I suck at lying, so this game is definitely not my forte) and the guys obliged, but not without laughing at me and taunting me in their Scottish accents that I was too drunk or slow to understand. So mostly I just giggled and kept drinking since I had no idea what was going on, either in the game or in the conversations.

Eventually the guys ordered a munchy box of doner kebabs (Scotland's version of drunk food) but it looked like three week old Chinese food when it arrived, so I opted for a bag of Dorito's instead. I made it a point to let everyone know that I had 11 beers by the end of the night and that I was still standing (and talking). Even in my drunken haze I knew it was a personal achievement!

Luckily the guys liked me (I think anyway) and they put up with my drunk stupid ass, and I had a really great time! We called it a night around 1am and Cal and I headed to our air mattress, where I was told later that I was drunk-gibbering for another 30 minutes or so. I don't even want to know what I said, but it must not have been too bad since Cal hasn't dumped me yet.

Flat Party

Today started out brilliantly, mostly because my new bed arrived! The one that was in my room was a shitty single bed that had obviously been there since the building was erected in 1897, so Liz and I went in half-sies on a new one a few weeks ago. We weren't counting on it being delivered in pieces though, so we spent most of the morning putting it together and re-arranging the house afterwards. Since my bed now takes up half my room, I had to jack some furniture from the living room to squeeze into my room. In my genius, I took a bookcase and removed the glass doors from the front, and am now using it as some open-faced shelving for at least 30 lbs. worth of clothes. After all that unnecessary exercise, we showered and I took a little nap on my new bed to break it in a bit.

Later we got prettied up and walked over to Chris and Paul's for their flat-warming party. Their place is kinda small, but there was food, alcohol, music, and people to chat with so no one was complaining. Liz wasn't supposed to be drinking because she was taking some kind of medicine that the box claimed would make her "violently ill" if she mixed it with alcohol. I had to keep my eye on her though, because she thinks she is sneaky, and I could just spidey-sense that she was gonna try to get in a few while I wasn't looking. Luckily I caught her mid-sip and quickly overruled her by taking the drink and downing it myself, to which I got whines and bitchy looks. So I said, "If you think I'm gonna clean up after you projectile vomit all over the place, you're seriously confused!" and I didn't get any more lip after that. But I'm sure she sneaked a pint or two in the bathroom or something anyway!! Luckily she wasn't violently ill, so the night went on without any vomit in sight.

A few hours went by and Knoxie arrived from Aberdeen. He chit chatted with everyone for a bit and then we headed home, because the food was gone, we were hungry, and me and Knoxie had to get up early the next morning to head to Carnwath (his hometown). Once we got home, he whipped us up some "chef-tastic" roasted potatoes (as Liz calls them) and we stuffed our faces until it was gone, and then it was time for bed.

Semi-First Day of School

Today was our first-ish day of class. We had a meeting scheduled at 10 with our professors and classmates, and Liz and I were excited to meet all the people we would be suffering with over the next year. After about twenty minutes we were surrounded by 35 Asians, 2 Greeks, one girl from Scotland, and one girl from Norway. I started having flashbacks to Davis, California, where the Asians had also taken over, and it made me yearn for some sunshine, which unfortunately won't be available to those of us in the UK for another 6 months or so. Anyway soon after all the students had trickled in, our professors walked in, and I was glad to find that I wasn't intimidated at all (yet).

Jacquie introduced herself as the department head in a cool British/French accent, and her untamed, crazy curly hair and dress clothes that she had paired with tennis shoes indicated to me that she was the most intense form of academic. You know the type - only has 5 outfits and wears them on the same day of every week, doesn't really fix their hair or wear makeup, and they are always INSANELY brilliant. But Jacquie seemed pretty relatable so I couldn't complain.

Next up was Derek, a mid-50's Scottish man with a PhD in Biochemistry (or some other ridiculously hard science degree), and I'm sure the question on everyone's mind was the same - "What the hell are you doing teaching PR?". Unfortunately he never addressed that question and all of us were too scared to bring it up, since Derek seemed like the type that wouldn't find that amusing. I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, but for some reason Derek reminded me of Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace - old and grumpy, but with a big ol' heart hiding in there somewhere! We'll see how accurate that impression is soon enough...

Our last professor was Julia, a younger, soft-spoken and very chill hippie type with long brown hair. We were informed that Julia was in charge of a related program called Public Communications Management and that we wouldn't see much of her, so I didn't really bother trying to figure her out and moved my attention to our program syllabus, which was about 50 pages long. And the intimidation began.

First off, our University's grading system is unlike anything I've ever seen. There's stars and smiley faces and half-moons and like 24 possible grades (ok there's no smiley faces or half-moons, but there really are stars!). Derek asked the class, "What would you all think if you got a grade of 80%?" and after about 30 seconds it was apparent that no one else was gonna answer, so Liz said, "I'd be really happy!" and I said, "I'd be upset, I can do better than that." To which Derek replied, "Well, get used to it, because we don't hand out grades better than that. You will never get an A." Ok....what was I supposed to say to that? Intimidation continues.

After half-explaining the alien grading scale to us, they moved on to the section on plagairism. It all seemed pretty standard, stuff about referencing styles and how to not jack other people's ideas without saying that it isn't your own, blah blah blah. Then Derek said that they had plagairism-detecting software that they were going to run every one of our assignments through, and that if we failed to properly reference on two seperate occasions (I'm talkin little stuff, like not including page numbers!), we were going to fail the program. Considering that there were people in our class who had never even written a bibliography, it all seemed pretty harsh.

So after they finished going through the syllabus and scaring the shit out of everyone there (especially the Asians, I'm not even sure that they all understood what was going on), we all had little sandwiches and sparkling water (how posh, I know) and chit chatted with each other. We met another American, from North Carolina of all places. How small is the world? He said his name was Andrew Breedlove, and I informed him that I would now be calling him Breedlove so I hoped he was ok with that. He looked like he minded, but I didn't care (I bet he secretly likes it anyway). There was a supermodel-looking chick from Norway who had a funny accent and an even funnier name - Marte Semb Aasmundsen, yea you read that right. I wish I could attach a sound-clip of me doing my impression of her, it's pretty spot on. And about 30 other people that I couldn't specifically remember after one meeting.

After all the sandwiches were gone Liz and I decided to head home, where we made dinner and went over our schedule to figure out what times we had classes, and to see exactly how much trouble we had gotten ourselves into with this whole Master's thing. We started tooling around on the university's website to have a look at our professors and their backgrounds, when I realized just how deep in the shit we had actually waded. To see just how wrong I was about Jacquie not being intimidating, please follow this link http://www.fmj.stir.ac.uk/staff/jacquie-letang/jacquie-letang.php. You will see how long she has been a leader in the field of PR and the CRAZY amount of stuff she has published on the subject (and also a picture of her). And the intimidation had reached its peak....this lady is no joke. Relatable or not, she IS obviously freakin brilliant, and that's always a little bit scary.

Stay tuned.

It Must Have Been the Sambuca...

Today began by Liz and I heading to campus to pick up our student ID cards. We found our building and headed in for what we thought would be a quick, "Hi, I'm me, thanks for the card." Two hours later, after standing in a line with all the other hundreds of students that also left this small task for the last minute, we finally got the much coveted ID card and went to meet Chris and Paul for lunch at the student Union. Needless to say we needed a drink after standing in that horrendous line, and we were pretty stoked to find out that they served beer on campus! I guess it's not surprising since here the drinking age is 18, but we were still surprised to see it on campus. So we all got a pint and chatted over lunch, before we headed back to the flat. We were supposed to be getting a campus tour from Chris and Paul, but it had started raining during lunch so we decided to see it some other, drier time.

Once we were back in King's Park, we showered and got dressed for our first night out. It just so happened that it was Fresher's Week, which is basically an excuse for every human being over 18 to get absolutely hammered for 7 days right before school starts. Did I mention that it's damn close to free to drink during this week - I'm talkin less than £1 per drink here people. We got into town and met up with Paul, Chris, their roommate Lyn and most of the girl's football team at The Corn Exchange and had a few pints there before heading over to this club called Fubar.

This club is just like any other club in the States, so there wasn't anything necessarily exciting or new to be seen in Fubar. I'm not much of a clubber anyway, I usually think it's way too hot, the music is too loud, and you have to scream at the person beside you for them to hear you. Not to mention that the place is usually filled with teenage boys ogling teenage girls. What makes a Scottish club special then, you ask? Well, first of all, they had buckets of gummy bears that the employees were passing around, and any club that serves me candy as I wait in line to get in can't be all that bad. Also, the shocking level of nakedness that the females in this country seem to be ok with is what makes it truly special. I'm all for the rule "If you got it, flaunt it", but the problem is - these girls AIN'T got it. I'm not a hater and I can admit when another girl is looking good, but these girls are by and large just far too ugly/fat/old/young to be wearing what they do. I wish I had a picture to explain exactly what I mean, but unfortunately I lost my camera...that comes later in the story. Anyway I was shocked at the number of girls that were making normal sized t-shirts into dresses and calling it an outfit, but I was buzzing by this time so I didn't care as much to call any of them out on being slutty as I normally would.

We made our way into teenage wasteland and headed straight for the bar. By this time we were with a bigger crowd of people that Paul had recognized in line, so lucky for Liz and I the guys decided to buy everyone rounds, which meant that we didn't have to pay for anyting else for the rest of the night (not that this was that impressive, since everything was so cheap, but again, I was buzzing...). So I ordered a few WKD's (like Smirnoff Ice but they taste way better) and was already double fisting when I was handed a jelly shot. I took it quickly to avoid having to carry so much alcohol, but then Paul handed me another shot...I wasn't sure what this one was but I trust Paul so I took it. Immediately regretted that decision - it was Sambuca! I hate that stuff. Liz saw my face after I drank my shot and she didn't want anything to do with it, and I'm not one to let a perfectly good shot go to waste, so I took one for the team (I seem to do that a lot) and drank her shot too. I think the Sambuca is what did me in, but we will never know for sure.

Anyway, by this time I was ready to hit the dance floor with the naked teenage girls and the ogling teenage boys. We walked/stumbled upstairs where the music was thumping and I was ready to shake my booty. Unfortunately the music in clubs here sucks for the most part - for some reason the British are big into shitty dance music, and I like to shake it to good ol' black music like Beyonce and Usher. I wasn't getting any of that here, so I decided to make the best of it and we all had a good time for about an hour.

Since I'm not single anymore, I didn't dance with any men, and all the girls were occupied with loving the ogling they were getting, and everyone in my group was too tired to dance anymore. Not me, I was ready for at least another 30 minutes of booty shakin. I couldn't find another suitable human to dance with so I decided in my haze that the speaker that was taller than me and blasting out techno was the next best thing, so I rubbed against that for a while until I needed some water and fresh air.

I grabbed the rest of the group and we headed outside. It seemed like a great opportunity for a family photo, so I went for my clutch to get my camera out...and EVERYTHING was gone. At some point during the night amidst my speaker-grinding, my clutch had opened up and everything that was inside, including my camera, my favorite chapstick AND lip gloss, and £20 had fallen out somewhere in the club. Luckily I had my ID and my cell phone in my pocket. I shouted out in despair to Liz that I had lost my camera and was pretty close to tears, but she was drunk too so I don't think she cared all that much. I decided that Knoxie would definitely still be awake at 3am on a Monday and called him instead. Luckily he's a great boyfriend and talked to me in between my sobs enough to calm me down and tell me he would buy me a new one if I couldn't find the old one.

I stomped back to the group and demanded that we all go back inside and hunt for my missing camera, and everyone obliged, so we went back into the club to the places we had been, but alas - there was no sign of my poor Casio. Heartbroken and exhausted, Liz and I got a cab home after someone responsible decided it was waaay pasy my bedtime. So, until I get a new camera, my posts will be full of other people's pictures and appropriate images I find on Google :(

Does McDonald's Count as an Errand?

Today was one of my favorite kind of days...a lazy day. We slept in and mosied through to the kitchen for breakfast before laying back down on the couch to watch Friends re-runs. After dozing back into unconciousness for a few hours, we were pretty hungry and nothing in the flat was looking good, so we decided to go to McDonald's. I never feel bad about eating fast food anymore because we have to walk a mile to get to town, and another mile back home, so I probably burn off most of the calories I eat while I'm there (at least that's what I tell myself). Plus McDonald's has free Wi-fi and we won't have the Internet at the flat for another week, and how many more reasons do you really need to go for a Double Cheeseburger anyway? We pigged out while we registered for our classes and got online banking up and running, then dropped by the pound store (UK's version of the dollar store) to get more hangers before running back home in the light rain to avoid the heavy rain that was sure to follow (ok you're right, we didn't run - it was more like a brisk walk). We could have used the new hangers to continue unpacking, but instead we did another one of the things we do best - vegged out on the couch while watching classic movies like Men in Black.

Japanese Food Party

Liz and I started out the day by unpacking most of our stuff, which is my favorite part of moving - finding new homes for everything and organizing my closet and my shoes by color and size...I'm a little OCD about it all. After lunch we got showered and prettied up for our friend Yasu's birthday party, where most of the people we met while we were here in April were gonna be, so we were excited to catch up with everyone again.

We caught the train to Edinburgh and met up with Ashley after about fifteen phone calls back and forth and much confusion about where we were meeting; "mall entrance" apparently wasn't specific enough since there were about four different mall entrances. Anyway we hadn't eaten much at lunch because Yasu ordered us to show up with empty bellies, so the homemade cupcakes that Ashley brought looked yummy and were definitely calling my name. Lucky for her I resisted the urge to steal one while she wasn't looking, and we headed to the nearest pub where I temporarily satiated my hunger with a beer while we waited for everyone else to get to town. After a while Beth and Keith showed up, followed by Ashley's fiance Euan. We had another round and then caught a taxi to Yasu's boyfriend's parent's house (did you get all of that?), where the party was.

As soon as we walked in, I knew that my hunger had not gone unrewarded. There was food everywhere!! Ginormous pots of rice on the stove, huge plates of noodles, bowls full of sauces...oh yeah, this was gonna be good. I grabbed a beer and immediately started taking little bits of food when I thought no one was looking; normally I don't care about things like that, but no one else was eating yet and I didn't want to be the first one to dig in uninvited. This plan didn't work as well as it did in my head, since I was so hungry that I basically ended up standing beside the table with my mouth stuffed too full to even talk to anyone. Eventually when I noticed that this wasn't going down anything like I had planned, I stopped caring that people had seen me eating, so I loaded up a plate and walked around the room socializing in between bites.

Jack (Yasu's boyfriend) was making sushi at the counter, which intrigued me since I had never seen it done before. He assured me that it wasn't difficult, but I assured him that I have a special talent for making things complicated that would be pretty easy for a normal person. I kind of wanted to try it because it looked fun, but more than that I wanted to keep eating, and sushi-making would have involved me washing my hands and NOT eating until I was done. Plus I fully believe that food is always better when you don't have to make it yourself, so I just let him continue making it and settled with watching. Luckily I had already polished off whatever else had been on my plate by the time he finished cutting it up, so I happily agreed to help him eat it (ok, so he didn't ask me to eat it, and he didn't exactly offer it to me, and he wasn't eating any of it himself at that exact moment. But I could tell he was thinking about offering it to me.) I'm not the biggest sushi fan, but this stuff was GOOD. I was definitely impressed with this Japanese Food Party, and it made me wonder, why don't people have food parties more often? We all know the best part of a party is the food, so let's stop the charade of only having parties when it's someone's birthday or whatever, and just call it like it is - an excuse to eat sweet party food! After all, meatballs ARE my favorite food group.

After we were all done stuffing our faces Asian style, Liz and I caught the train back to Stirling and fell into our beds, half drunk and 100% stuffed. That's what I like to call a good night.

Hello Flat #55!

Today we moved into our new flat. I'm sure Beth and Keith were just as excited to finally have their house back to themselves as Liz and I were to see our new home! We had signed the lease without ever seeing the flat, because as luck would have it Beth and Keith used to live in the exact same flat, and it just opened up right before we arrived in Scotland! Talk about coincidence. Anyway we took Beth's word for it that the flat was awesome, and the current tenant took his sweet time moving out so today was the first time we had seen our new home for the next 18 months or so. We woke up early, packed our suitcases up and did a major cleaning on Beth's flat.

Knoxie agreed to help us move, and he showed up at 3 with Chester (that's what I call his car, because it has a van-like area in the back but it doesn't have any windows, similar to something that a Chester the Molester would drive). It looks kinda like this picture, except it's much smaller, and white, and doesn't say "Free Candy" on the side. It does, however, have a faded Scooby Doo sticker on the back, which Knoxie claims was already there when he acquired the vehicle. It's not as good as offering free candy, but still a nice touch for the kids. Anyway, after packing load number one into the back (YES, we had more than one load...we're gonna be here for almost two years, we had a lot of luggage!) we stopped off at Chris and Paul's flat to pick up the stuff we bought a few days ago, crammed all that into the back, and finally made it to Snowdon Place.

We love it!! It's SO big considering that the general size of houses here are much smaller than they are in the States. And it's fully furnished, and has the most comfy sectional couch in the living room. Definitely big enough to host parties, which obviously is the most important feature in a student flat. After I leaped around the place with excitement for a few minutes like a dumbass, Knoxie and I went back to Dunblane to get the last of our stuff while Liz stayed behind to clean before we started unpacking. The place looked pretty clean already, but I definitely wasn't gonna complain if she wanted to do it again, plus she's a better cleaner than me and she likes doing it, so who was I to stop her?

After we returned from Dunblane and hauled the last of our stuff upstairs, Knoxie and I headed to the Tesco to pick up some essentials for the flat, like ketchup, milk, eggs, and Doritos. Knoxie made sausage frittatta (isn't that a fun word to say? fri-tta-tta...) for supper, which was amazing considering all we had in the flat was ketchup, milk, eggs, Doritos, and apparently some sausage and an onion that had appeared from outer space. I'm now convinced that the man can make a meal out of the most random things in the kitchen, which is a great talent to have while we're both poor students. And I forgot to mention we had beer, lots of beer; in fact besides ketchup, milk, and eggs, the only other thing in the fridge was beer. But we had invited our friends to come over for a mini-flat warming party that night, so naturally that would involve beer. What can I say, we're pretty good hosts!

Anyway Beth, Keith, Chris, Paul and Ryan came over and we all ate and drank and revelled in the magic of Flat 55, which involved Ryan re-claiming his favorite spot on the couch and Beth taking us around the flat and explaining the mostly grotesque stories behind each stain on the carpet. We called it a night around 3 and everyone went home, and Liz and I finally got to sleep in our own beds. I couldn't be happier with our new flat! Pictures coming soon...