One thing they don’t tell you about living in a walkable city is that it makes you extremely hungry all the time. All day I walk around, delighted, and then go home and eat ungodly amounts of gnocchi for dinner.

Public transit is an absolute delight—I take the bus to school about everyday and YES they are double decker and I have my little student bus card and I scan it and I think “It’s me! A gal about town!” and I feel like one of those tiny Japanese babies in those shows about kids doing small errands and becoming independent. On days it isn’t raining, I walk.

One extremely disorienting thing is that British people really talk like that. My brain sometimes is suspicious, and I think “Is this a bit, why are you talking like that” but it’s REAL. For every silly, fake British accent an American has done as a joke, there is a British person who legitimately talks like that. (You can’t actually ask them if its real, they don’t like that). Scottish people on the other hand are almost entirely incomprehensible. I can tell they are making English sounding noises but it does not compute! No thoughts!

I am in classes! Back in the humanities! Where I belong! I am taking:

–          Lives of the Buddha in Art and Literature: This class focuses on the Jatakas, a genre of Buddhist literature that is made up of the stories of the buddha’s past lives. Turns out western ideas about what Buddhism is and what it values is not really a good representation of the actual religion which is crazy that has never happened before.

–          Metaphysics and Morality: This makes me feel like the dumbest person in the world 95% of the time but I am having a really good time, lots of big brain stuff happening. We are studying Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Arendt.

–          Literature and Religion: This class is the loml and my favorite people are in it with me and we have to read a lot which makes me extremely happy. It takes my two favorite things and makes them talk to each other which, not to be dramatic, is a dream come true.

I have become oriented in my neighborhood! There is a cinema house that plays lots of indie films and play screenings that feels like it was birthed out of my daydreams,[1] there are many delicious Indian food restaurants, there is a co-op that is completely cleared out on Monday nights when I try to do my grocery shopping, there are various cluttered secondhand bookshops within a ten minute walk, and there are coffee shops that have either the most delicious hot chocolate in the world or, and I cannot stress this enough, the worst.

Not to brag but I have gotten *better* at military time/ Celsius/ kilometers so get ready for me to never shut up about that ever again. That’s actually a lie, I have military time pretty much down but still have absolutely no concept for Celsius or kilometers. People keep trying to tell me that 3 miles is 5 kilometers but its like my brain shuts off, I simply cannot compute that. Sorry! I am just not supposed to know that, not in God’s plan for me. Celsius you have to subtract 32 and then multiply by 5/9 which is a long way of saying you google it.

I have lovely flat mates—there are 6 of us and we all share a kitchen but have individual rooms and bathrooms. There is one girl from the states, one from Azerbaijan, and three from China—everyone is doing a postgraduate.[2] Emily (from the states) is doing some kind of food education program that she has explained multiple times and I still don’t fully understand but is an excellent cook, is (very much) from the East Coast, and does the NYT crossword puzzle every week with her family. Javahir (from Azerbaijan) is 21 years old and is in a political science program. She is delightful and a little clueless and I love her with my whole heart. Ke (from China) is doing her PhD in psychology on mindfulness and we have long discussions about it and its crossovers with yoga. Yan (from China) is studying law through and LLM program and we mostly talk about how difficult and terrible studying the law can be. Ke and Yan cook together elaborate meals together most nights and always offer me some and I never refuse because it is delicious. They both laugh because I say I am doing “So good!” every day. Yao (from China) just moved in this week, taking the place of another student who dropped out of her program (to which I said GOOD FOR YOU). I can’t remember what she is studying but she wants to stay in Edinburgh after her program is over.

I expected it to Rain Everyday here, so imagine my delight when I found that their autumns are actually quite lovely and often sunny! I get way more bang for my buck on sunny days because every time I wake up and its bright I am like CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS I MUST GO OUTSIDE. However, in the past two weeks the weather has gotten colder and I have gone panic shopping for sweaters and coats many (too many?) times.

The ward is a lovely kind of chaos. There are students + a few families + the oldest Scottish people in the world + whatever crop of tourists are visiting from Utah. The funniest are the old people who will often shout “YOU AREN’T SPEAKING LOUD ENOUGH” during lessons or have extremely off topic comments (which I am sure, to them, are precisely on topic). A personal favorite of mine was when an older lady read to us the online YouTube comment fight she had about the church to all of us during Relief Society. It was an absolute joy, and honestly, she won. The second funniest group are the tourists from Utah, all massively suffering from main character syndrome on their trip around the UK, and are absolutely sure that they have something that Scotland needs to hear. Last Sunday a woman raised her hand and spent 3 minutes talking about the Tim Ballard controversy to which the teacher replied, “Ya we don’t really know what you are talking about.” Absolute comedic gold.

Also, happy birthday to me, obviously, on this, the most important day of the year. Today I am submitting a paper for my metaphysics class on whether Hegel justifies the Fall, I have to finish a book for my Literature and Religion class (The Corpse Washer, it’s very good), I am going to a yoga class, and then I am going to the karaoke party I am throwing myself with my friends. Maybe the perfect day!

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[1] Yes, I dream about movie theaters, I think it is one of those long term COVID side effects

[2] As is everyone who lives in my building