(Pictures only cover up to my arrival in St. Andrews, so sorry about that. More on the town soon.)
When my Dad and I booked our plane tickets, there was this little volcano thingy exploding in Iceland, and a cloud of ash was obstructing air travel in the UK, so we booked to the south, flying into Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, then Chunneling to London, taking a train to Edinburgh, and bussing to St. Andrews. Right. On the plane, we basically skipped the night of Sept. 14--I could reasonable believe my watch until about 1 am (no luck sleeping), but by 2, the sun was rising, it was 9 Paris time, and they were serving breakfast. Watching the sun rise in fast motion ahead of us was pretty cool, but unfortunately all my attempts at taking a picture of it failed. We were (or at least I was) in a stupor for most of the following day, but I remember enjoying the garretted windows on the buildings on the grimy downtown streets we drove through to get to the Seine and our hotel. It may have been a grimy downtown street, but it was still Paris. This is a partial view from our hotel:
Overall, I liked Paris; even though I was overwhelmed not knowing the language (and Dad had a hard time lip-reading a language entirely composed of vowels), I caught a sense of excitement that I think I would have really liked had I had more time to explore and slightly better language skills. We spent our one morning there visiting the Catacombs and the Eiffel Tower (which we did not climb), then walked back from there along the Seine through the Louvre Gardens and back to the N.D. area. Favorite picture from that walk: Ile de France. Our hotel was a few blocks down on the far right bank.
Epic fail, I know.
Rest assured, this situation will be amended--even if I don't get back to London before Christmas, I've been plotting with Mom and Sam to go see a musical in the West End while they're here, so it will at least happen then.
Another fail, sadly: I have no more good pictures right now. My attempts to take pictures from the train were unsuccessful, and I want to reserve my pictures of St. Andrews until I can give you a proper walking tour (and in another post, as this one is already pretty long). I will give you one picture of my room, though:
So...what have I been doing here. I've been in classes since Monday, and for those who don't know, my programme is called "Photonics and Optoelectronic Devices" (POED), which means that I study any technology in which light and electricity interact. In other words, lasers, X-ray machines, light and motion sensors, and the computer screen you're staring at right now. I think my classes are going to be interesting. Lasers is promising, though I'm expecting to do a lot of background reading to keep myself up to speed in it. I don't think I'm going to have to worry about my Displays class; admittedly, I've only gone to one lecture so far, but the tutorial (= practice problems) sheet for the class included a review of divergence and cross-products, so I think I'm OK as far as the math is concerned. However, I think that that class is some kind of academic cancer, because even though it is a Tues.-Thurs. class, it has managed to metastasize to an assortment of Monday mornings and Friday afternoons as well. My entire schedule is a hodge-podge of weirdness like that. I actually have 12 separate tables plotted in Excel, one for each week, which I will post here for your viewing entertainment, if you care and I can figure it out. It'll also give you an idea of when I'm most likely to be available online. The time change, by the way, is that I'm 5 hours ahead of Eastern Time Zone and 6 ahead of Central. The UK does Daylight Savings Time, too, so the difference won't change when you set your clocks back.
Finally, while my brain is on the subject of "contact," I want to make sure you all have my mailing address. Please note: this will only be valid until about Jan. 10; after that, I'll be in Edinburgh. So don't try to mail me anything from, say, Christmas onward. But anyways. My address is:
DRA/FS 0905 David Russell Apartments
Buchanan Gardens
St. Andrews, Fife KY16 9LY
Scotland
In other news, I've joined the Aikido class here, and oddly, it is the single most foreign-feeling place I've encountered on campus. I can't figure out what's so strange about it--maybe changing art, mindset, teaching style, and teaching culture all at once is just a shock to my system. I like it because their HEAVY emphasis is on relaxation and flow, which are my weak spots--everyone who does Hapkido with me knows that I tense and panic as soon as the technique gets a little dynamic. So I like having the chance to work intensely on that, though perhaps "playing to my weakness," so to speak, is another part of what feels so weird.
From the most foreign-feeling place to the one place where I've felt at home...I found the Christian Union here (there's only one), and it's WONDERFUL. These people...really get community, and they really get the idea of living in and engaging with your society with enthusiasm and purpose. The group is several hundred strong, so I got a little lost in the sea at the large group meetings; however, they sing many of the same songs I was familiar with at RUF, and as trivial as that sounds as a similarity, when they started playing "In Christ Alone," I felt really at home for the first time since arriving. But earlier tonight I met with the group that lives in my area and we had a great time getting to know each other and having very productive conversations during our Bible study (Mark 1:1-15). It amazes me how solid this group is for the way it's organized: there are no campus ministers, interns, etc.--it's entirely student-led and organized. There is a parent organization, the UCCF, and they bring guest speakers to teach at large group and things like that, but it's the upperclassmen students who do all that. I've been impressed by their passion, and by their solidity in the gospel and in their understanding of the CU's role on the campus of St. Andrews, to serve and reach out to all students. The whole group works closely with a lot of the area churches, and the small group I mentioned does programs and service projects for our residence area--very focused on equipping the members to reach out to the campus and the city around them. It's a great group to be getting involved in, and I'm really looking forward to it.
The only thing that really puts a damper on any of it is my transience during this program: I'm going to be leaving for Edinburgh in about 3 1/2 months, just when (I suspect) I'll be starting to get my footing--starting to carve out a niche for myself in my various organizations, establish a routine, have a handful of close friendships developing. It's frustrating that I know my time is limited, and I'm trying to balance realism in what I can do (i.e., don't run for Secretary of the Aikido Club if you're leaving after 1 semester) with intentionality in pursuing involvement and relationships.
Well, this was quite a long post, with only three little pictures of Paris to make up for it. I have more little anecdotes to tell, and I do want to give you a good photographic tour of St. Andrews, but those will have to wait until another time. Until then, then!
