Sept 11, 2025 – Welcome to the first blog post! Bear with me as I learn the ins and outs of website formatting… we’ve gotta start somewhere!
Writing live from St Andrews, Scotland, on an unusually sunny day. Alongside three other Bobby Jones Scholars, I flew Boston → Edinburgh on Sept 5th, landing in the AM of Sept 6th. Shout out to Lydia for getting us into an airport lounge where we enjoyed an excellent meal (our hype for the free food might’ve clouded our objective gastronomic judgment…)
Generous alums from the Bobby Jones program picked us up and ushered us to our taxi – they even brought us local treats, IRN BRU and Dairy Milk!
ABOUT IRN BRU: This classic Scottish orange-colored soda is coloquially known as the best hangover cure and tastes like a combination of bubblegum and cream soda. Legend says that IRN BRU is “Made in Scotland From Girders.” The cross-cultural translation: the company, leaning into Scottish humour and its famous domestic industry – ferrous metallurgy – quips that the soda’s orangey colour comes from rusting girders. It’s not literally brewed from steel, of course, but the slogan playfully nods to the trace amounts of iron (in the form of ammonium ferric citrate) in the recipe. Some folks also elaborate on the lore claiming that the rust from the girders that went into the soda makes you strong, like iron!12
Our taxi ride to St Andrews took about 80 minutes. We thoroughly enjoyed the landscapes – the size of the windmill blades amazed us. I particularly enjoyed the stone walls lining farmland. We noticed both round and rectangular hay bales in the fields.
All four of us having practically pulled all-nighters (it’s safe to say a 5 hour 50 minute flight departing 7:30pm EST wasn’t conducive to sleeping), we sought out a coffee shop along Market Street, one of St Andrews’ three main commercial streets.
I spent the rest of the day unpacking, chatting with friends and family, making my first essentials run to TESCO (what I imagine is the equivalent as Walmart in the states) and fighting off the urge to crawl into my bed. Deans Court residents enjoyed a pizza social – Papa Johns tastes much better in the UK… (once again, I reserve the right to retract this statement upon a second try – the sleep deprivation may have compromised my judgment).
I enjoyed a pleasant first sleep in Scotland, but the mornings feel a bit chillier than Atlanta or Boston summers. It almost reminds me of the bite of the cold I felt waking up in Montana summer mornings. I keep a sweatshirt and pair of socks within arms reach to assuage the difficult emergence from my bed.
Sunday marked one of St Andrews beloved traditions, The Pier Walk. Undergraduates don their bright red robes and post-grad & PhD students sport a black and maroon robe. Starting at St Salvator’s Quad, walking down past the Castle Sands, and ending up on the Pier overlooking St Andrews cove and the North Sea], we braved the formidable winds, that is, of course, until our grumbling stomachs overrode our desire to continue waiting in a long queue to walk to the end of the pier (something we can do outside our doorstep any day of the week).
About St Andrews’ Red Robes: The tradition of undergrads wearing red robes began post-Reformation as a “compulsory ‘school uniform’ to students as young as 13 as a way of preventing them from illicit drinking in public houses.”3
Later in the week, I traveled to Edinburgh for an 18-hour escapade! Lily met me at the train station, Edinburgh Waverly. I ogled at the beauty of Edinburgh’s buildings, and enjoyed an amazing meal with high-quality people. Despite being a weeknight, the city had plenty of live music venues – one venue we enjoyed, Bannermans, boasts having hosted music legends like AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, and the Ramones.
Highlights
1. Living in a walkable town with stunning architecture and a priceless view of the North Sea
2. First fish & chips! Crispy, buttery batter coated a healthy portion of haddock
3. Scotland has the BEST tap water. Speaking of water, the water pressure in the showers is unmatched.
4. Edinburgh
Trials and Tribulations
1. The bees outside my window like to come inside when I attempt to open a window to clear the stuffiness that comes with living on the top floor, having no AC, and being in the direct sunlight
Coda: it seems like a bad omen to be displeased with sunlight ramifications. I will adjust my attitude because the winter will not be forgiving
2. Esims.
3. It took me two full days to realize that it wasn’t just a scottish thing to not have locks on the bathroom door – I assumed the custom was if it’s closed, don’t go in. However, upon discovering a sign on a different bathroom, the doors DO in fact lock but you have to turn them upward in the clockwise direction… the more you know. Just grateful no one walked in on me mid-shower.
New thing(s)
1. Ate haggis (it was quite tasty paired with tomatoes and poached eggs!)
2. Football at the pub – Scotland won 2-0
3. Visited Edinburgh
What I’m picking up
1. Smashed peas are quite common as a side dish.
2. How to drive on the left side of the road
3. How to tie a tie
- https://www.historic-uk.com/Culture-UK/Irn-Bru/#:~:text=The%20Secret%20Recipe,drink%2C%20after%20whisky%20of%20course. ↩︎
- https://scotlandswonder.co.uk/articles/food-and-drink/irn-bru/#:~:text=History:,a%20distinctive%20and%20iconic%20rebranding. ↩︎
- https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/orientation/during-orientation/academic-dress/ ↩︎
postcards from EM 