St. Andrews 101 - Fresher's Week

Every year freshmen flood St. Andrews a week before class to get to know the campus, meet each other, and participate in a series of orientation events.
This is nothing like TU's orientation.. It's not nearly as organized and we're expected to pay for anything we want to go to. I found many of the events to be irrelevant anyways since I already know what degree I'm going into etc.
All that aside, I'm having a great time!

My flat mates and I all finally got together two nights ago. (Madison-3rd year from New York, Sandrine-3rd year from Paris, Sophie-1st year from Scotland, and Jaz-1st year from England.) They're all wonderfully funny. Madison and some of her friends made pasta and we all enjoyed sitting around and eating it. Confession: I haven't cooked anything other than sandwiches for myself so far. It's difficult to convince myself to do it. Also I have a 30 minute walk home from the grocery store (and anything in town...)
I've mostly got my room settled in. We're headed to Dundee on Saturday because everything here is sold out! I still need sheets for my bed! Whoops.. and another adapter. It's part of the adventure?

I went to a ceilidh. It's a lot like the Scottish version of a square dance. It was put on by the celtic society on campus (who also teach dance classes once a week that I am of course going to attend.) They would call out the name of the dance, teach it to us briefly, and then we would dance! Most of the people there were foreign. (I forget Scotland's population is only 5 million..) I did dance with a man who was teaching. He was in a full KILT.

I also went to an event called "Taste of Scotland" We dined on haggis, neeps (turnips), and tatties (mashed potatoes). It was all pretty good actually. They also gave us smoked salmon, caramel shortbread (favorite), and a drink called irn bru (iron brew) which tastes like liquid bubble gum with extra sugar. I thought it was all really good.

I have an academic dad! (We are supposed to find 3rd or 4th students to pair up with who are supposed to show us the ropes at the university and then take us to raisin weekend in November. I don't have a mum yet... but I'm sure I'll find one.) I made some friends earlier in the day. When I saw them later they call a guy named Alex over and start yelling at him to adopt me. So now I have 4 brothers (Donald-Scotland, Rohan-Barbados, Matt-New Zealand, and Hugh-England) and a sister who is also Scottish. I convinced them all to go swimming in the North Sea with me. What other academic family can say they did that?