My name is Madalyn Watkins. I’m a senior Dale Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food, and Life Sciences honors student studying environmental, soil, and water science (and a little French thrown in there as well!). Though I’ve studied abroad with the University before (French in Besancon and Community Development in Belize) this semester will be my first extended stay in a foreign country. The modestly sized town of Stirling, Scotland is my base camp for fall 2011. Here I am taking several environmental science courses: aquatic principles, ecology, and environmental policy and management.
Orientation to Scottish life was facilitated by our wonderful partners at Arcadia University. We had several guest lectures on Scottish cinema, sports, academic life, cuisine, etc. They even organised (getting into the UK mode of spelling) for our group to take a lesson at the Edinburgh Cookery School. We made a Scottish feast complete with shortbread, cheese scones, onion-dill tarts, mixed bean pate, and apple crumble. The best part about this: they let us keep the recipes. Shortbread, anyone?
Compared to places like Dangriga, Belize or Besancon, France where I often had trouble communicating, Stirling seemed, at first, quite accessible. Almost like a Fayetteville, Arkansas but add adorable accents and infinite opportunities to eat fish and chips late into the night. But the more I delve into the youthful social scene of the University here the more I realize… Wait, I don’t know what these kids are saying. It’s not the accents, it’s their fantastic colloquialisms! Fantastic, but confusing to someone who has no idea what you mean when you say “Let’s have a wee shoofti” (which means to have a quick look at something) or when they throw in one of their MANY slang terms for “drunk”. It all makes for a lot of head tilting on my part when I’m trying to get to know someone in a crowded pub. But it’s all in good fun; the more I interact with the locals, the warmer I feel (which is good since the forecast predicts cold drizzle for the next week… at least). A smile and a good attitude can get you through a lot of confusing situations.
Definitely more to tell later. Right now I have plenty of reading to do from my 100+ book reading list. Yes…. It’s a very different text book system here; I’ll report on it soon. :) Thanks for reading!
Madalyn
