First week of school is sorted!

A full week has passed since our arrival in St. Andrews, and we are getting settled in. It took us some back-and-forth with the school to enroll Leah and set her up in a classroom, so we filled our first few days of the week with more walks through town. Leah is a fan of the beaches, but my favorite spot in town is the Lade Braes, which is a walking path along a small creek that heads out of St. Andrews for almost two miles. The phrase Lade Braes is one of those terms that you can’t make sense of regardless of the number of times you hear it unless you know what is being discussed, but once you see one of the signs for the path around town, often recessed into a stone wall, it all makes sense. And once you take the path and see the water moving towards the town and pass the ruins of two water wheels, you understand why it’s there. The “Lade” means “lead” in that the stream was created to lead water into town, from a pond above a water mill, and the “Braes” refers to a Scottish word for high ground near a river. So: a stream bringing water down into town. Local reference books say the path was built to bring water to St. Andrews priory, and that was founded in 1140, but it’s possible that the stream existed before that, and was used for washing clothes and cleaning fish. You don’t see any of that today, fortunately—it’s filled with dog walkers, joggers and school children taking a short cut home. And now that I’m here, I will be among the throngs daily, looking for blooming bulbs and other signs of spring on my daily walk.

Leah on a Lade Braes walk

 

We managed to have Leah enrolled in school on Wednesday and her first day was Thursday. She’s in Primary 6 (P6), which is the equivalent of fifth grade in the US. (The year that we call Kindergarten is P1 here, accounting for the numbering shift). The school is Greyfriars, a Catholic school that is state-funded (not uncommon here) and provides education to students in a specific “catchment.” Because it overlaps with the University, it’s a very diverse student population, and university kiddos’ comings-and-goings are relatively common. As a result, none of the teachers batted an eye when the head teacher took us around to introduce Leah and announce that she was beginning at the school the next day. She also reviewed the uniform requirements with Leah (tie and formal collared shirt are required under the school jumper, but no crest-emblazoned blazer for her, as was not the case for Emma and John when they attended secondary school here a few years ago) and explained that the school doesn’t allow any outdoor shoes so she would need some black plimsoles. Fortunately, we had secured some of those the weekend before in Dundee, along with a gym kit that is supposed to be left at the school for the term (another difference from the secondary school! Yuck!).

 

Leah was incredibly nervous on our walk to the school on the first day, though I had hoped that her position as one of the older students at the school would help somewhat. Her school in the US is pre-K to 12, so she regularly walks in the front doors of the school alongside kids with facial hair carrying to-go coffees. But, the little kids jostling around us on their way into the building, as if we were two rocks in the middle of a swiftly moving river, didn’t help her and she wanted me to come into the building with her. I left her with the head teacher, and waited for hours to hear the report. It was mostly positive, and her stories made it sound as if the other students were very welcoming. She is a combined class of students in P5 and P6, created because there are too many students in each grade alone, so is one of only 4 P6 students in the class. This is a bit concerning to us, as we hope this doesn’t cause her to fall behind the rest of her fifth-grade class in the US. We know from previous experience that she is going to have to work on her own at home on math, as the Scottish schools seem to move much more slowly in “maths” here. Her new P6 teacher said they would focus on money, graphs and shapes, whereas her fifth-grade class in the US is working on operations with mixed fractions. On the other hand, previous experience tells us that they will be much more advanced in history and geography and they cover literacy in a different way as well. Leah said they were discussing Shakespeare on her first day and on Friday she had a spelling test with quite advanced words (all ending in -ion, thankfully…the week in which they do the -our suffix is going to cause her some issues with her American-style spelling!), and over the weekend her homework was to memorize a Robert Burns poem. She said they haven’t discussed geography yet, though she said she wasn’t able to accurately convey where she was from to the teacher. The teacher asked where she was from in the US and Leah said New York, so of course she assumed Leah was from the city. When Leah corrected her and added that she lived pretty far outside the city, the teacher said, “Oh, like the Hamptons then? I would LOVE to visit the Hamptons!” I don’t think Leah really knows where the Hamptons are, except to know that we don’t live there either, but I think she just left it at that and didn’t correct her. I pointed out that she could tell the students that she lives as far from New York City as Edinburgh is from Ullapool on the far northwest coast of Scotland!

 

A third wee trip to St. Andrews has begun!

Our third adventure in Scotland has begun! We arrived at the Edinburgh airport on Friday morning (UK time) of last week, took a cab to our rental house (more on that later!), dropped our bags in the back garden since we were not allowed to enter until noon, and headed to Market Street in St. Andrews for a morning coffee and hot chocolate. We were a bit bleary-eyed and it was drizzling/raining for most of the morning, but it was so lovely to be back in St. Andrews that we didn’t mind at all. We then stopped into a Vodafone to switch our SIM cards to UK phone numbers, which took the rest of our morning—mostly because I wasn’t thinking fast enough yet to provide my birth day into the usual British calendar format (day then month). By the time we were sorted with new numbers, it was noon and we made the short walk back to our house.

Of the three houses in which we have stayed in St. Andrews, this is the closest and most convenient to town: for those of you in the know, it’s on the Kinness Burn where the ducks hang out, just down a steep hill from Queen’s Terrace. It’s also the least charming of the three: aside from some lovely glass doors between the front hall and the living room, it’s a bit worn out and in need of an update throughout. But, it’s very comfortable and once we figured out how to turn on the heat, it was lovely and warm. There’s a large kitchen in the window that overlooks a private terrace with some plantings. And, since nothing is neither precious nor new, we don’t have to worry if, for example, David were to break a glass approximately ten minutes after we arrive, say. A real bonus!

Our first weekend was a predictable one: hire a car to take us to the nearby village of Cupar for a rental car for the term, then on to Dundee for school uniform shopping with Leah. This cab ride was short and we weren’t as tired, and the driver was a rugby player (a winger, too!) which worked out well for everyone in the car. We picked up a little Vauxhall Corsa in Cupar, and used our phone to get us to the uniform shop in Dundee. I should say here that both David and I both love driving in the UK—what was a source of real anxiety in our first few weeks back in 2011 when we first arrived in Scotland has now become one of our favorite parts of being here. I can confidently report that once one learns to drive on the left side of the road, seated on the right side of the car, one has mastered a skill that will last a lifetime. Each time we return, the maiden voyage is a bit easier, and now with updated maps through an iPhone, it’s very simple—even the multilane rotaries aren’t terribly difficult to navigate. In this case, we made it to Dundee without incident and left the Vauxhall in a carpark, then walked to the uniform shop. The process of purchasing a uniform for Leah was rather fun (for me, at least…she abhors shopping for clothes and especially trying on clothes…) though I could not stop using the word “pants” rather than “trousers” to the salesclerk. I’m sure she was rather amused, though she hid it well, because in every way possible we are giving off American vibes wherever we go: our credit cards don’t always work, I can’t yet manage to work out any of the coins smaller than a pound in my purse and have to ask for help, and we are just a little bit too loud when speaking to each other. Hopefully, we can improve upon all three in the coming weeks.

Leah is already ahead of me in her knowledge of British coins

The trip back to St. Andrews from our shopping excursion was lovely: it’s so nice to be back in Scotland where there is so little visual “noise.” No billboards, no dollar stores, no car-centric zoning codes—just lovely, narrow roads edged with stone walls and views of the ocean wherever you turn. The latter was especially of interest to Leah, as she has been asking to go to the beach since we arrived. Saturday afternoon was taken up by our first trip to the grocery store, which was especially lengthy since we both enjoy lingering in the aisles. And, because the sun is still setting at 3:45pm, the day felt like it really got away from us. So, our first beach trip had to wait until Sunday afternoon, and I think Leah felt that it was a real success. She found some driftwood on the East Sands beach that resembles a wand freshly procured from Garrick Ollivander himself, and since it was a Sunday, the beach was full of dogs running loose. We walked from East Sands to Castle Sands along the beach and spotted several sea lions playing in the surf (not at all uncommon in St. Andrews, so we were the only ones on the beach exclaiming over them!), and Leah busied herself with looking for shards of pottery among the rocks (also not at all uncommon in St. Andrews). We stayed until after sunset (again, not hard to do!), then walked into town for some toiletries at Boots and some steak and haggis pies from Fisher and Donaldson for dinner. Incidentally, the ordering of said pies was one of my first moments on this trip of feeling a little bit less obvious as a visitor. The usual queue had formed in the bakery so when the shopkeeper asked what I would like, I was not standing in front of any of the goods on offer, but was still  able to order as if I were in the know: “Two steak and haggis pies,” I said, without a whiff of an American-style question mark at the end of the phrase, “and I suppose one fudge donut as well.”  She nodded and smiled, and said something along the lines of how one can’t help but to throw that in (I didn’t understand every word but managed to make out a “ya kin” and a “wee” in there somewhere). But, at the end of the transaction, she thanked me with a “See ya next time!” Some might take that as confidence in one’s product, or perhaps even commentary on my weight, but I heard it as neither, and instead felt seen—not as an American in town just to play the Old Course but as someone who knew St. Andrews (just a little bit?)