A Scotland Summer

I’m alive!

But Oh! what a month it’s been!  I don’t know how it can be nearly August already; not that I mind necessarily.  The closer I am to the doorstep of August is one step closer to the doorstep of home.  Two weeks, baby.  Two weeks.

Or as they say here, ‘A wee fortnight’!

I’ve never been away from home for this long before.  Not when I went to college, nor to Kyrgyzstan, nor to Massachusetts or Montana did I ever stay away for more months than I have over this last stretch of time.  Granted, I wasn’t always home for very long when I was; but never mind that.  When I get home in a fortnight I will have been away for nearly 1.5 years. 

Forget July.  How can an entire year and a half already have passed?   This time last year I was heading to Paris for a free month of French language learning.  And since then I’ve been to Oxford, London, Germany, here and there in Scotland, and now am forming another mental checklist for travel.  The last year and a half sure has gone fast.

Enough of that though; back to July—a month that has gone fast!

A number of mention-worthy events took place here in St Andrews this month.

Most note-worthy wasn’t an event, per se, but more of The Event!  Three glorious weeks of sun came to St Andrews this month.  Three straight weeks.  And not only sunshine, but the warmest temperatures in over seven years.  We’re talking a sweat-producing, bone-warming heat wave.  Sheer bliss.  Unless you’re a Brit who’s good at complaining about all weather.  Fact #1 about British people:  they are never happy with the weather.  Never.  And they were on the brink of death with this heat wave.  It was too hot for dogs to be walked, too hot to work in the gardens, too hot even to sit in the garden, too hot to sleep, to  hot to eat.  Just plain too hot. 

I think it got to about 84 for a high here in Scotland.

My thoughts exactly. 

It was The Event of July 2013 here in Scotland.

At the beginning of July was another event of Royal proportions:  The Queen’s Garden Party at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh… to which Judith, my land lady, was invited.  Highlight of Her Year.  She’s a Scottish Royalist if ever there was one; and she adores Garden Party Attire, i.e. fancy hats.  I’m not sure how many costume trials we had in the days leading up to the party, but it was enough to get it just right in the end.  Isn’t she sweet?

This July I celebrated my second Independence (from Britain!) Day here in Britain Scotland, again on the beach with a BBQ, bonfire, sparklers, football and soccer, and, of course, fabulous American friends.  My friend Garrick even brought his baseball and two gloves—a highlight for me (though not for my arm the next day!). 

Unlike last year though, this year Captain America showed up… and fire jumping and other acrobatics ensued.  One of those memories seared onto the mind, never ever ever to be forgotten. 

Another highlight of July was the Society of Biblical Literature International Conference held  in St Andrews for the first time ever.  Something like 850 attendees flooded the three streets of St Andrews, everyone sporting their nerdy name badges and toting their Greek and Hebrew bibles through the town historically at the centre of the Protestant Reformation in Britain.  They were a great five days of interacting with scholars from around the world, most far more learned than myself. 

Along with approximately 200 others, I presented a paper on some of my research from this past year on Paul’s use of ‘glory’ in Romans, which went really well.  (I absolutely love public speaking.  Have I ever mentioned that?  If I could teach a ‘Public Speaking’ (aka ‘Speech’) class alongside a New Testament exegesis class in the future, I’ll be a happy professor.)  Anyway, the presentation went really well.  I was a tad nervous before beginning because one of the scholars I was lightly critiquing in the paper was not only in the room but also presenting his own paper on a similar topic just after me.  But I had no need to be nervous.  The scholar came up to me afterwards, declaring, ‘That was brilliant!  Thank you so much!  I wish I could have some of your information for my own paper today’.  A gracious man, for sure.  Somewhat embarrassingly so, the  the paper seemed to resurface again and again in both small and large group conversations sometimes days after the presentation, with praises directed toward the paper’s content and the questions it raised.  It was a great experience and a great conference!

Judith wanted to take my photo on my presentation day.  It felt like my first day of school.  Again.

To her credit, she doesn’t see me dressed up all that often.

July was also a big month for my Summer Work Project, an online Academic Misconduct module that the University of St Andrews hired me to write the content for.  It’s called the Training in Good Academic Practice Module (I didn’t name it!) and, within two months from now, will be accessed and (hopefully) completed by some 6 or 7 thousand students.  Did you catch that?  Six or seven THOUSAND students will take my online course this coming semester.  If they don’t take it, or, more specifically, if they don’t pass it, which can take anywhere between one and five hours, depending on the student, they can’t register for their second semester classes.  As of right now, the course is basically complete, at least as far as the content is concerned.  Last Friday I piloted the course on 30 new undergraduate students from SE Asia all here for extra English language learning before their new University career begins.  All things considered, the pilot went really well and I discovered areas that needed tweaking.  A second pilot is scheduled for next week when I test it on 75 new students.  Hopefully after that all the kinks will be worked out.  Fingers crossed.  It’s been a fun project to work on for the summer. 

With the fabulous weather this July came fabulous and full roses; and who has roses in their garden but doesn’t create opportunities to show them off to their neighbours and friends?  Not Judith!  So, one Saturday night this month Judith and I hosted our own garden party.  Well, she did mostly, since she paid for everything and all of the guests were her friends; but somehow all the hours I spent helping her to prepare for it made it seem like I was also hosting.  We set up croquet, French Boules and Clock Golf in the garden, and had A Spread of Food inside.  Unfortunately, it was the first day of bad weather in three weeks.  But the guests were all Scots; dealing with bad weather is in their blood.  It was a fun night, nevertheless; a night of me and fourteen people all 65+ years old playing croquet.  Good memories.

What else?

Oh!  We have a new Prince!  Did you hear?  Little George.  He’s all the rave… unless you’re a Scottish Nationalist and therefore, not a Royalist.  Did you know that Scotland will be voting in 2014 to possibly break away from the United Kingdom and become (again) their own nation?  It’s a pretty big deal.  Most people stand on either one side of the fence or the other, and it’s never difficult to know where exactly they stand.  It makes for interesting conversations, to say the least.

Well, I think that just about sums up the last month here in Scotland!

I’ll be seeing many of you very, very soon!