The Sleepiest Girl in the Room

It is currently 5:30 in the afternoon (evening?) and I have been awake for about an hour and half. Which is possibly (or completely) because I went to bed at 9:30 this morning. See, the International Student Centre runs fun daytrips every weekend. This weekend it was over to Glasgow, which is like a larger, more industrial, more city-ish version of Edinburgh. With, according to all the Scottish people we talked to, a much better clubbing scene than Edinburgh. So Carrie and I figured that instead of going during the day, we would head over in the afternoon, catch a couple of sites, have some dinner, and then spend the night absorbing the Glasgow nightlife. Originally we were going to get a hostel, but all the cheap ones were booked... so instead we got return bus tickets for 7:30am (the earliest Sunday-morning bus) and opted for an all-nighter. Which was hilarious on all sorts of levels.
It was actually an awesome day. We got into Glasgow around 2:30 and spent the daylight hours wandering around, taking in the various Glaswegian sites (I've posted the pictures on flickr if'n you're interested). By asking various young-and-hip-looking people around the city, we found out that this street called Sauchiehall is apparently the place to be on a Saturday night, so we went there. We had dinner at a cheap bar/diner kind of place, where we ended up getting sort of absorbed into this party this guy was having to celebrate the recent birth of his first sons. Note: apparently having a North American accent automatically makes you cool around these parts, because all sorts of strangers are always interested in talking to me. Anyway, this guy was already beyond drunk, and showed us a whole bunch of pictures of his son, and then bought us some drinks. We tried to have conversations with his (very cute) friends but, as it turns out, the Glaswegian accent is completely incomprehensible. We kept having to get them to repeat themselves three or four times. Somehow I only seemed to understand them when they were saying something really inappropriate... the rest of the time, nothing.
After that we found a bar that had all drinks for £1.50, and drank a lot of malibu and pineapple juice and got manhandled in the line for the bar while waiting for a club to open. We ended up going to this great place called The Crib, which is Glasgow's top urban club. Edinburgh has demonstrated a sad lack of hiphop and r&b. There are lots of other great places around here (which I will get to shortly, as this is clearly a non-chronological post) but nothing particularly "street." So we were pretty excited about the prospect of some more traditional clubbing music. Cover was a little pricey (£4) and we were a little underdressed (jeans and t-shirts and sneakers - okay, really under-dressed, not that that stopped the super-drunk Scottish guys from manhandling us some more) but the music and the crowd were really fantastic. We danced there from midnight until 3am, which is when clubs close here. Seriously, toward the end of the night things got really grabby (I've never been molested in clubs so much as I have in the last three weeks of my life) but it was still awesome. Carrie is a total blast to club with - very Cosette-like (though I still love you more, Cosy!) in her approach, if you know what I mean.
Okay, so at 3 every shut down, and we ran across the street (along with, apparently the entire student population of Glasgow) to this noodle bar open until 4:30. It was terrifying, like a drunk, hungry, incomprehensible mob. After about 20 minutes of restaurant-moshing (there was literally no system in this place, you just grabbed a chair as soon as someone left it, shoved their discarded food to the side, and started eating out of your fun styrofoam container) we did manage to get seats and food at the same time, and then refused to relinquish them until 4:30, when we were literally kicked out by the management. Okay, so three hours to go until our bus arrives. Next we went to this 24-hour convenience store (the only 24-hour things in Scotland are convenience stores - they don't do the all-night cafe or diner thing at ALL) where we met these two old men who were cab drivers and thus also up all night, and chain-smoked with them in the doorway of this convenience store until 5:30. They were both really nice, and much closer to comprehensible than anyone else we'd met all night (or morning), and one of them offered to drive us back to Edinburgh himself, but we figured that was probably not the best way to live through the night, and told him we already had bus tickets. At 5:30 we bought ourselves some bottles of water and a magazine and hoofed it back to the bus station (which provided shelter from the ever-present rain, if not the cold) where we became hysterical with exhaustion and read various tourist pamphlets aloud to one another for another two hours. Our bus left promptly at 7:30, meaning we got back to Edinburgh at 8:30, and it was a halfhour walk back to our flat (in the sad, cold drizzle that is Scottish autumnal weather) and finally, finally, bed. I have never been so excited to go to bed in my life.
So that is the saga of my Glasgow all-nighter, which was hilariously fun and which I will not be repeating any time soon. I'm going to have to spend this week being very very responsible, because I have lots of readings to get done and I'm going to London next weekend, and Dublin the weekend after... stupid school, getting in the way of all my debauchery.

So, as I was saying, the Edinburgh scene is sadly lacking in urban clubs, but there are lots of other great places. Every Tuesday night this bar called Bannerman's has an international student night, where drinks are 3-for-2, and you can pretty confidently walk up to anyone and strike up a conversation based on the common ground of not-from-here. This past Tuesday I met a girl from Ottawa (though she's on exchange from U of T) who also went to Canterbury (drama, two years behind us). Strangely, I also ran into her in the club in Glasgow... Speaking of small worlds, that same night at Bannerman's, Carrie ran into these two guys she met when she was travelling around New Zealand this summer. One, Sam, is a local guy (with bright red dreadlocks, and a big scruffy beard); the other, JD, is also from Canada, and has been travelling around the world for five years; he met Sam in New Zealand, and just decided to follow him back to Scotland. We ended up going out with them on Thursday night to this bar called The World Famous Frankensteins, which is this amazing three-story place that looks like something out of a George Orwell novel, with Frankenstein movies playing on giant TV screens and all sorts of weird blue static-electricity things built into the walls - very eery. Along with Sam and JD, we met a whole bunch of their local friends, including this awesome half-spanish guy named Roberto (spanish man with scottish accent = totally hot) and this tiny and totally adorable girl named Emily. The following night (being Friday) we convinced Sam, JD, and Emily to join us at Misfits, which is sort of like the Lee's Palace of Scotland. The club is actually called Subway, but every Friday they have a indie=alternative-rock night called Misfits, where the drinks and cover are super-cheap and the crowd is massive. We've gone two fridays running now, and had a fantastic time each night. It's the hottest club I've ever been in, and you sweat to death - everyone comes out of there dripping, which is kind of the best, and grossest, part. We've had a good group both times - last Friday it was me, Carrie, Geeta, Anna-from-Carleton and her awesome Swedish flatmate Maya, and our Danish friend Matt... and some incredibly drunk girl he'd brought along... and Helen, our beautiful Estonian friend. This Friday it was me, Carrie, Geeta and her gay Japanese friend Ben, Helen, JD, Sam and Emily, plus a smattering of miscellaneous guys hitting on various members of the group. I danced briefly with this barrel-chested scottish boy named Murray, who got an erection, got embarrassed, and ran away (teenagers are so cute) and then after 3, when the club had closed and everyone was standing around outside cooling off, came up to apologize me on the insistence of his adorable Irish friend Stephen, who thought he had been abominably rude. I may or may not have briefly made out with a sweaty 18-year-old. Is that so wrong?
Other than Misfits, we've also been to this place called El Barrio's, which is a lot like Calientas. An older crowd, lots of salsa music, 2-for-1 mojitos. Geeta is absolutely nuts about salsa music, so last Saturday we went there with her, and it was pretty good. No Misfits, but a nice change of pace.
So, yeah, in brief that's been my social life of late; read: much more active than it ever was in Ottawa, mostly due to the predominance of places to go. Which is why you guys have to visit me here, because there is ALWAYS something to do. You could literally go clubbing every single night of the week.

Okay, onto the academic front. School is going well. I have three classes right now: Feminist Theology, Tragedy & Modernity, and Music in Social Contexts.
Feminist Theology is taught by this fanastic, eloquent, hyper-intelligent Argentinian woman named Marcella. The readings are intensive but really interested, and there's a lot of diversity in the class - about five other exchange students, a couple of actual local undergrads, and then a bunch of older students working on dissertations or just taking the class out of personal interest, in the case of the ordained minister from Myanmar. Guess who I've decided is going to be my new best friend? Unfortunately, for the second-ever class the prof was sick, so about eight hours of readings were for naught - but that's okay, because instead I spent that morning hunting down the largest health food store in Edinburgh, where I found, among other things, vegan pesto, tofutti, nutritional yeast flakes, Canadian maple syrup, vegan hot chocolate mix, and quinoa-pasta. So much health food! Also that day, I found a store that sells bras in my incredibly-unlikely size, and instead of being $100 like they are in stupid, stupid Canada, they're about £20 a piece. Guess who's stocking up?
Tragedy and Modernity is a lot better than I expected, though we haven't gotten to Brecht yet, so I'll keep you updated. Like Feminist Theology, it's a very small class - about 12 people, I think - and it's run very much like a seminar. By which I mean it IS a seminar. The prof, who is a very easy-going and unintimidating german woman named Olga, lectures a little bit on our readings, but the class is mostly discussions, and so far very lacking in idiots. There's also a mandatory weekly studying group, called an Autonomous Learning Group, but thankfully the other three girls in my group are both lovely and intelligent, so that's actually more-fun-than-painful. Altogether it adds up to absolutely having to do my readings, because she makes sure that everyone in the class talks at some point, and she will question you on your opinions, and it will be painfully obvious if you haven't actually read the plays. I'm thinking the super-smart prof will make up for all the german-ness and the presence of Brecht. Like I said, I'll let you know.
Music in Social Contexts is a little lame. It is a first year class, so a little self-evident, but there's minimal work so at least I don't have to think about it very often. I have made friends with these two adorably Italian exchange students (who I'm going to convince to speak to me in Italian so that I don't completely forget the language) who are having trouble keeping up with the lectures, so I've been lending them my notes and just helping them out a bit. It also turns out that they've made friends with Bruno, the hot Italian guy with whom I shared a cab to Fraser Court when I first arrived. I actually hadn't seen him again since that first day, despite the fact that he lives in the flat directly below me. However, when I was walking home from the bar on Thursday night I ran into the Italian girls, Claudia and Maria, and Bruno was with them, along with apparently every other Italian exchange student at the university. They've formed, like, a cool Italians-only club, that I am absolutely determined to infiltrate.

So that's a basic update. I'm going to try to be better about updating so that I don't have to write these great big novel-like posts, and you don't have to read them. Future activities include a daytrip to the Highlands on Wednesday with this youth-oriented tour group called Haggis Tours (they have a branch in Ireland called the Shamrocker), a weekend in London from the 6th to the 9th, and then another in Dublin from the 12th to the 16th.
Here's hoping I've made at least some of you suitably jealous to convince you to come visit me. I miss you all!