Ramblings about the First Days

Dear web crawler,

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to my blog.

Or in a more informal way, I’m glad that you found your way here and even stopped by to read this. It’s always nice to have readers, even though I don’t really know whether the stuff I’ll be writing down here is going to interest you at all, as this is more or less a diary.

Anyway.

As many of you know, I’m going to spend this spring in Glasgow as an exchange student. I came here through an exchange link between the Department of English at the University of Helsinki and the Department of English Language at the University of Glasgow, so basically I’m here to study English linguistics. The courses I’m planning to take are about onomastics (that’s the study of place names and people’s names), the history of Scottish language, the history of Celtic people and culture and maybe sociolinguistics if that fits nicely in my schedule. I’m also planning to take a course on Scottish literature, which is kind of untypical of me as I don’t really consider myself a literature freak. However, the course might provide me a deeper insight into the contemporary Scottish psyche, so that’s why I’m taking it.

So that’s the study part. But like we all know, student exchange isn’t really about studying but finding new perspectives on life, widening your cultural horizons, meeting new people from all corners of the world and discovering yourself. Wow, that sounds rather lofty. To keep it more down to earth, let’s point out that maybe 80% of these goals can be reached by partying, drinking, travelling and socializing, and these are naturally going to be my main activities here besides studying.

So, Glasgow is going to be my home for the next six months, and this blog was set up to share the experience with you, my beloved readers. So thanks again for coming by. I’ll be updating this as often as I possibly can.


As this is my first post I’ve got so much to talk about that I don’t really know where to start. I’ll opt for the easiest way out and start from the very beginning.

I arrived in Glasgow on Wednesday 3rd of January. My 27kg of stuff didn’t though. My bags found it so nice and cosy in London that they decided to stay there for another day or two. This taught me a lesson. Never fly BA. Losing your luggage when travelling on BA is more of a rule than an exception, especially if you’re changing the plane in Heathrow.

However, at first it wasn’t the lost bags I was upset about, but all the food inside them. As many of you know, I’m on this special gluten-free, yeast-free and low lactose diet, and the thought of hunting this kind of free-from-everything food in a strange city on my first day didn’t really fascinate me. To give you an example, I had 3kg of frozen gluten-free and yeast-free bread in the other bag. All Wednesday my mind was haunted by the sad image of all that delicious bread defrosting in my bag somewhere in London, while I had to live on freaking rice cakes. My master plan was to throw the frozen bread in the freezer as soon as I get to Glasgow, so that it would have stayed frozen and in good condition all the time. BA ruined my master plan.

Once I got to my new home (that is, Kelvinhaugh Street university residences), I realised that actually I didn’t even have any clothes or basic hygiene stuff in my hand baggage. So I was compelled to leave the house for the dark and stormy evening and fight my way against the wind and rain to the city centre. Without a map, of course. My Collins Street Finder was still in London, inside my backpack safe and sound. Besides, for the first time I understood why they say you don’t need any umbrella in Scotland. Not that there’s no rain, but the rain attacks you from all directions, turning your umbrella into wreck. On top of that the wind bends your umbrella arm into steep curves.

With such a miserable start and the rainstorm and all, the first impression I got of this city wasn’t all that glorious. Actually I was on the verge of tears the whole Wednesday. I didn’t have anything familiar around me. I couldn’t even understand what people said to me. At McDonald’s I accidentally ordered a salad with breaded chicken, because I just didn’t understand a word the cashier asked me at the desk. The 2-hour sleep I got the previous night, together with flu and the feeling of getting even more ill might have had something to do with the overall feeling though.

There were positive sides to that first day though. The post-Christmas sales were still in full swing in all shops, so for example I got basic tank tops for merely 2 pounds each, a pullover for 4 pounds and 12 pairs of socks for 2 pounds. And I actually managed to find my special food at Sainsbury’s. I almost started shedding tears of joy when I found out they even had gluten-free cereal. On top of that all, my flatmates made me feel very welcome right from the start.

So I could cope through the day without getting a total breakdown, thanks to all these positive things.

Now I’ve been here for four days. It’s getting better day-by-day. The other bag (the one with bread in it) arrived already on Thursday afternoon, so I got my bread and all, yippee! Even though it had defrosted it was still cold, and I threw it back in the freezer again supposing it wouldn’t suffer that much. The backpack found its way back to me on Friday, and now that I’ve unpacked and spread my things in the room I have obviously started to feel much more cosy and homely here. I actually like my room. It’s nice to live in a little room again. Feels safe. Actually this whole flat is really comfortable, and even centrally located. I share it with two Indian girls, one Scottish lass and a French girl. But it’s just me and the Indians here at the moment, the others are arriving tomorrow, I guess. It’s even warm here – on the first day I had to ask the Indian girls whether we could turn the heating down a bit, as the temperature was around 26C in my room :D The Indians hadn’t noticed anything, perhaps because they’re used to living in the tropic…

I would continue a bit about yesterday’s drinking and socializing, but the international society is going to throw a ceilidh event, starting in about an hour, so I have to get ready. If you want to know what ceilidh means, check back here tomorrow and you’ll find out ;) By the way, congratulations if you really made it this far, I got a bit carried away and ended up blathering a bit more than I intended. Sorry ‘bout that.