Alas and alack, I have not been very good at keeping up with this blog. I was hoping to post at least every few days, but it's been over a week since I last posted. This is the first of the challenges that my title alludes to - finding time! The silver lining of this particular challenge is, however, that I know have a lot of stories to tell! Which I will separate into a couple of posts so as not to write one overwhelmingly large (and most likely confusing) post. This one will focus on the little challenges I have found so far in living and studying here in Aberdeen.
Finding Time:
Now, I'm not saying that I'm rushing around every single second of the day or that I'm in class 8 hours a day, I definitely am not. In fact the class schedule this week was very light, as the tutorial portion of classes (that is the discussion-based part as opposed to the lectures) don't start until next week. But between exploring and going to class and meeting new people and going new places, it seems that the days slip by very quickly. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly presents a challenge when trying to keep in touch with people.
The Disconnect:
This is something that I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, is one of the normal challenges of study abroad. There's a large disconnect between your life here and your life at home. It is a similar disconnect that occurs when you leave home for college for the first time, times ten. It is made more extreme by the impermanence of this particular situation.
When you go to college (or university here) for the first time it's the relative norm to leave your family behind and begin to build a life of your own. Usually this is the first time you are living on your own, controlling your own schedule, and making relationships that are for the most part independent of your family. This is a normal and important part of growing up, I think. It's not that you love your family any less, rather it is that you are no longer completely dependent on them for everything. It is therefore necessary to build connections that will sustain you and help you grow. It is an old stereotype that you meet the friends you will have forever in college, a stereotype which is definitely built on seeds of truth. For this is really the time you need to find people to care for you and to for you to care about in return since you have been somewhat separated from the web of relationships you have known for your whole life up to this point.
Now what makes this situation different from that is the fact that I'll only be here for a little over five months. It is enough time to feel it necessary to build connections, yet at the same time how far can they go? There is always the fact of leaving on the not-too-distant horizon, that makes building truly long-lasting relationships difficult. I think this is why I'm more drawn to my fellow Kalamazoo participants. This is not to say that I'm not making friends with those outside this group, that would be sad and a very large, wasted opportunity. It just makes it more difficult to make really good friends, not impossible by any means, just difficult.
Yet at the same time, it is now more than ever that I feel I need close friends and connections, because I'm so separate from everything I have known up to this point. The distance, the time difference, the fact that I don't have the ability to simply call home when I'm feeling homesick or see the amazing friends I've made at K when I'm missing them.
A challenge. But I'm very glad for the friends I have made, K people and others, especially my flatmates.
Spiders, bees, and bugs oh my!
On a lighter, creepy-crawlier note, there have been a certain number of incidents involving some insects that I'm not overly fond of.
The past week or so I have both seen and heard about spiders chilling in people's flats. Not teeny tiny spiders, oh no, spiders that have bodies maybe a little bit smaller than my pinky nail. Biiiiig spiders, not the type I was expecting at all. These have induced various amounts of freaking out, and solutions that ranged from a vacuum cleaner to staring at the spider (to make sure it didn't get up to any shifty activities or make a run for it) until someone else came and captured it in a container.
Bees are another problem. The windows in our flats have no screens (Culture Shock!) and so if you want to have your window open, or if we need to have the windows open (in the kitchen when we're cooking for instance to prevent condensation and to keep the fire alarm from going off), sometimes bees wander in. My brother would absolutely hate it. One morning there were about five bees in our kitchen. And just last night a bee flew into my room and wouldn't leave so I finally had to squash it (and Allie had to pick up its poor bee body because I was too afraid to touch it - thanks Allie!) I felt bad about it, but I didn't want to buzzing around my room and then landing on me in the middle of the night and stinging me, that would not have been fun.
Also due to the lack of screens, a variety of other little flying thingies have been in and our of our flat. From teensy tiny ones, to really weird lookin' creepy flying things that look a little like deranged dragon flies. I don't approve.
Food:
I now completely understand why my mom plans out our meals for the week in advance. It's challenging to figure out what to cook and to make sure you have all the ingredients especially when you have no car and (at least for us) the closest grocery store has a rather....eclectic mix of things. So hats off to my mom for being on top of that (most of the time ;D). It's also just a challenge to think of what to make. My favorite dinner so far has been an interesting, rice, marinated turkey breast (which I bought frozen), cucumber, and lettuce salad-ish thing. With a little oil and balsamic vinegar on top. It was actually pretty good.
Laundry:
The laundry room and I are not friends. We don't like each other apparently. I found this out yesterday when I did laundry for the first time. First off, the laundry machine didn't like to provide clear instructions as to how to use liquid detergent, oh no, it only wanted to tell me how to use powder. Well fine, I thought, I'll just wing it. Me: 1 Laundry room: 0
In return, however, the washer decided that the 8 minutes it said it had left would turn into half and hour of me standing there staring at it waiting for it to turn from 8 to 7. Yes! Then 7 to 6............................................................................. ten minutes later, oh look it's down to 6 minutes now. Until it finally made its way all the way down to 0. I think the washer wins this round.
Me: 1 Laundry: 1
Oh and by the way, the washer says, I'm not going to make your clothes smell super clean, maybe some of them you can have a little bit of soap smell, but some of them will just smell wet.
Me: 1 Laundry: 2
Ha! Well now I don't have to deal with the washers, I'm sure the dryers will be better behaved. Although I have not heard super positive feedback on the dryers, they seemed to be working fine today. So I put my clothes in the dryer. Went away for 50 minutes, came back. Whaaaat?! My clothes are slightly warm, but still completely wet! How is that even possible?!
Me: 1 Laundry: 3
So I changed dryers and tried again. This time it worked, for the most part. Although a couple of things were still slightly damp. But I count that as my win.
Me: 2 Laundry: 3
Add all this to the fact that laundry is quite expensive (normally around $5 - or 3.20 pounds. But yesterday it cost me about $7 because of the extra dry grr.)
Me: 2 Laundry: 4
I did not win this fight, obviously. But I shall win the war - just wait!
Registration and the Portal System:
I honestly never thought that I would miss Kalamazoo's portal system. But my eyes have been opened, it is so easy to use! You can register yourself for classes, drop/add, see your schedule, etc. all in one convenient place. Here they have three different sites to do all different things, and you can't register yourself, or drop/add your classes, rather you have to go through an adviser who does it for you. I think this is partially a big school thing (red tape and bureaucracy and all that jazz) and partially just this particular system. It is evil. They also have trouble getting information out it seems. I was trying to sign up for my tutorials earlier this week, and one person kept telling me I should be able to do it, while another source was telling me I couldn't and the website was just like - 'uhhhhh you aren't registered for any courses.'
Definitely something I miss about my little Kalamazoo. But I think I've finally gotten it all settled (hopefully).
And that completes my list thus far, I'm sure I will encounter more, and I will update as that happens.
Up next: Highlights of the Week
Followed by: The Whiskey and Castle Tour, Stonehaven, and Dunnotter Castle.
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