All About Glaschu

The Dear Green Place

I said in an earlier post that Edinburgh is what you think of when you think of Scottish cities, and if that’s the case, then Glasgow is what comes to mind when you think about Scottish people. The people are loud and boisterous and also some of the nicest people that you’ll ever meet.

That first week, my dad and I went to the ScotRail station at Anderson, near to our hotel, to ask about ScotRail passes. We walked away without a pass and knowing that it’s cheaper to purchase an individual ticket every time, but not before meeting one of the most stereotypical Scottish man that we had ever met (in his own words). With a thick accent, at times it was hard to understand him through his mask as he explained the passes, but he was one of the friendliest people I had ever met, and it was a great introduction to the city and country.

Just a few days later, a couple at a table next to us outside at a restaurant struck up a conversation with us, asking about why we (the Americans) were there. We talked to our bus tour driver and the other participants; we had conversations in line as I was getting my University of Glasgow student ID (officially a student!). Everywhere we went, there were more and more friendly people, and this place was starting to feel like home.

Now that we are a month in, I have gotten the chance to get to know my flatmates, look at societies on campus, meet a group of Taylor Swift fans, and start my classes with other exchange students. All of my flatmates are Masters students here for a semester, all a part of the ERASMUS program. One is from Seattle, one from Hong Kong, and one from mainland China. Katie, the girl from Seattle, and I went to an international students club night. The University of Glasgow alone as 1500 exchange students, and there are many other universities in the city with large international populations as well. As you can imagine, the club was packed, and we spent the night dancing to songs from around the world, including ABBA’s Dancing Queen.

A few days later, on the first day of school actually, I saw that there was a group called the Mountaineering Society on campus, and they were having a wine and cheese social in the student union. After having spent my summer living in the New Mexico mountains, I was intrigued and ventured off to The Hive, the club that lays in the union. I met a girl from Edinburgh, two from Glasgow, and one from England (but she had lived in Pennsylvania for two years of high school). The Hive was packed with other students interesting in joining the society, and while I ultimately decided not to join due to the cost for just a semester, I spent my night hanging out with my new-found friends. We, along with the officers of the club, went to the Beer Bar (a whole bar!) that was in the union before we ventured to a club. Eventually, after a night of hanging out and getting to know each other, we walked back to our flat with promises to keep in touch.

On Saturday, after completing my first week of junior year abroad, my flatmate Katie and I went to the city centre to shop. While there, we stumbled across an antimask and antivax protest. With a vaccination rate of over 90%, I was surprised that there are these kinds of protests even in Scotland, and it made me realize that maybe we aren’t so different. After watching the protest for a minute, we started shopping and I grabbed some stuff to organize my flat, and we went back to relax. I was just settling in when I got a Facebook Message from someone I had never met before: “Hey, I have a few tickets to the Taylor Swift night tonight. Want to come with?”

I had commented on a Facebook post about looking for tickets to a Taylor Swift club night, where fans gather and sing Taylor songs the whole night. The event was sold out, but I was hoping that by commenting that I was an international student in Scotland only for a semester, maybe someone would sell me their tickets. Even better — the girl who reached out had gotten the tickets from someone else on Twitter for free, and that was how I ended up taking an Uber to her flat at 10:30pm to meet up with a group of people I had never met (and would never see again). There was the girl who asked me as well as a couple who were all Masters students from England, and there was another 3rd year student from Greece. We made the walk to the club, and for the next four hours, we screamed our hearts out to some good ol’ Taylor Swift.

In addition to fun nights out and meeting people around Glasgow, I started school — and by school, I mean that I’m officially learning how to play the bagpipes. In addition to taking two upper-division psychology electives, I’m taking two upper-division humanities classes, including Intro to Bagpipes through the National Piping Centre located in Glasgow. This class is offered only to international students, and there are seven of us taking it. We have lecture for two hours on Wednesday afternoons in addition to thirty minute lessons sometime else during the week. My individual instructor’s name is Ailish, and she has started to teach me the basics on my canter, a smaller version of the bagpipes that looks like a recorder. Through the semester, we’ll learn about the history, different types of bagpipes and bagpipes music, and how to play, and I cannot wait to learn about the bagpipes in Scotland’s own UNESCO City of Music.

Here’s to music, friends, adventures, and just saying yes!