Back to Work Blues

First post of 2011..happy new year! As predicted, the remaining week and a half at home after my last post were more or less me scrambling around seeing old friends, partaking in holiday madness, and getting things together to come back to Scotland again. Luckily, despite the blizzard that hit the east coast, I still managed to get out of Boston on time last week, with only a slight delay in London. I then spent less than 24 hours in St Andrews before heading back to England. Funny how different the town feels when there aren't students around. Since half the population here is from the university, one would expect it to be completely empty; on the contrary, all the locals seem to come out of the woodwork and there were people everywhere, though none that I recognized (a nice change perhpaps?).

I hopped on a train down to Newcastle for the New Year. After Anna picked me up from the train station, I was greeted by some of her best friends from school, and we had a cozy girls night in. Jamie and Steven joined us the next day, and a group of us went out for dinner in town, and on to a party. Very enjoyable :) The boys then left back to Scotland the following afternoon, while I stayed another few days in Newcastle. Anna and I had a walk around the castle estate where she lives, enchanting! Sadly, the castle no longer stands, but its structure was used to build Anna's house, along with a few of her neighbors'. Really interesting history there. The family that owned the castle estate for generations used to host all sorts of important people, and were friends with the author of 'Alice in Wonderland,' which is said to be based on the family's daughter Alice. The family left the estate during World War I, and later the castle was converted into a girls' school. Not long after that, the head of the family decided he wanted to dismantle the castle to construct a model town, but only managed to build three houses (including Anna's) before the project was abandoned. Some of the old buildings still remain though. Anyways, such a cool place! Spent most of my time there catching up on sleep and sitting by the fire, really relaxing. Also got a chance to walk around the Metro Center, the huge shopping mall in Newcastle, though could not be tempted to buy anything. And had a fantastic bank holiday dinner with Anna's family on Monday...love Anna's grandma (who apparently is quite the heartbreaker!).

And now I am back in St Andrews, and admittedly not quite ready to get back to work....