Outside of Aberdeen

So I'm quite a bit late on this update....oops. But I wanted to share about my trip to St Andrews. The nice thing about being a student is that there are a large number of societies to be involved with (for folks back home, when I society, it's basically the same thing as a club). At the University of Aberdeen there are many many many many societies (but don't take my word for it: http://www.ausa.org.uk/societies). One of the societies I've joined is the international society (aka: intersoc). They primarily plan trips - primarily for international students, but anyone is welcome - to go see different parts of Scotland and the UK. Well, thanks to intersoc I got to go see the beautiful town of St Andrews.
Thanks to this trip I got to see the countryside in between these two coastal towns! Something you wouldn't think about missing, but it was kinda cool getting to be on the "open road", watching the countryside slip past. It reminded me a lot of my drive through Nor Cal to Ashland and Corvallis, OR and back to Sacramento a year ago. A quick anecdote: although I've been really fortunate to get lifts (translated: rides) from various friends at church to and/or from various church events and actually been in a car, Caitlin hadn't been. Until my birthday that is. It is kind of an interesting comment that we American flatmates got a little inordinately excited about getting to be in a car! Not a bus, a car. Being on a bus here hasn't felt that strange because I didn't often take buses anywhere back home, so it was all "new-ish", but when you're in a car it both feels very familiar and very foreign all at once...like walking up to what you've known to be the driver's side and then not actually driving or even having the steering wheel in front of you...but anyway, being on the charter bus to St Andrews was nice. I wasn't in control of the vehicle, but it was nice to just be on the road. Enough words about driving, though.
As I said above, St Andrews is a beautiful town! To be perfectly honest, I got a little academia-envy...I'd heard before, from friends who had traveled around Scotland that St Andrews was the prettier of the two schools and cities, but I still don't think I was prepared. Unfortunately, though, St Andrews didn't quite have the programme I was looking for....but the 9th picture down, yeah - that's the postgraduate accommodation...But I digress...I just need to let the pictures do the talking, so here it is (if you're my friend on facebook, you've seen them already)the lovely St Andrews: