Columns, Opinion

SMITH: From city life to the countryside

As my fellow Terriers posted their Facebook goodbyes and embarked, together, for points beyond Commonwealth Avenue, I similarly departed. However, I did so alone, and for a country where I knew not a soul.

Though this may seem daunting to some, I viewed it as a necessary change. My solitary existence was not what terrified me the most about my hop across the pond. No, I was infinitely more terrified of living in a small town.

During my two and a half years at Boston University, I had morphed into a “city slicker” of sorts. I absolutely adore metropolitan areas of all kind, bustling with public transportation, a myriad of neighborhoods and any variety of cuisine that one could imagine. After my second year at BU, I made a vow with myself that I would never again live beyond a city’s limits.

I believe this stems from my love of practicality in all incarnations. Cities are just so logical. It doesn’t make sense to get in a massive car, much larger than anyone really needs, to drive ridiculous distances so one can have a yard that is rarely used. Compact houses, connected by public transportation, are just better. I am the first to announce that I hate the suburbs.

That’s not to say that I don’t love the outdoors. I’m an enthusiastic skier and love to hike in my free time. It’s just that living more than an hour from a major downtown area gives me heart palpitations.

This is where my fear for studying abroad enters. Unlike my cosmopolitan friends who opted to study in London, Paris or Madrid, I opted to diverge quite decidedly and enroll directly at the University of St Andrews. Plopped on a peninsula which juts into the North Sea, the town is small, remote and quite keen on the sport of golf. In fact, golf was invented just down the lane from my temporary residence. Funny, because I do not play.

This all seemed quaint and wonderful when Jan. 17 was far in the future. On Jan. 16, however, the anxiety began to take control. I was ready to leave, but was I ready to be away?

Countless hours in the air and two screaming demon babies later, I began the slog from Edinburgh to St Andrews. Yes, we abandoned the populated for the rural, but we replaced city blocks with village blocks. These are set against impossibly green hills, which seemed to urge us onward to the sea, and adorned with window boxes overflowing with blooming flowers. The greenery defied any laws of nature that I would associate with the month of January, and I found myself smiling the entire bus ride.

Once in the town, I found not one high street but three, stretching several blocks each and jammed with any imaginable ware, from kilts to cheese to Domino’s. Randomly connecting these streets are mazes of little lanes, off of which more lanes shoot into random dead-ends of secret gardens. Between the cobbled streets, kind locals and beautiful scenery, it’s actually impossible to be homesick.

Though my first few days were spent acclimating to a new time zone and entirely new surroundings, I forced myself out for a jog on the third day in my new hamlet. Up and over hills, through literally ancient graveyards, past crumbling cathedrals and secret sea tunnels, out and back the length of a pier which refuses the pull of the ocean. It seems that each nook and cranny into which I peek is more enchanting than the last. I’m not one for overly sentimental reflection, hence my love of predictably practical cities, but if I’ve gotten anything out of my short time here so far, it is to slow down, if just for a few months. I can only imagine what is to come.

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