Unity through alcohol and fire alarms?

After Munich, and a night of riding night trains to finally arrive at school around 3:30 in the morning, I finally had a place to settle in for a while. It was a fabulous week of unwinding in London, a healthy mix of work and play thanks to a visit from a friend from home (WI, that is), Ms. Alison Holmes. She’d been touring Europe for about a month, and was making her way back up to Scotland, and decided to stop by and explore London for a few days.

The work involved all of my class registration and the initial administrative business that comes with going to a new school. It also involved setting up the most ludicrous class schedule in the history of academia: two days per week alternating with one day per week. A total of 8 hours spent in class on the “hard” weeks. That’s right, the combined hours I’ll spend in a classroom this semester are so grossly unproportionate to the time I’ll spend doing so many other things that aren’t even remotely school-related, that it’s just silly. Yes, I can feel your seething jealousy through the computer screen, but hey—some things just aren’t right.

The play involved lots of adventuring through London, since I’d only had a few hours here the day before I jetted over to Prague. By the end of four days, we’d seen probably only one-fifth of what there is to see in London, and we weren’t exactly taking our time. The city is just that big.

It was also my first real introduction to the culture in which I’d be immersed for the next 3 or so months. Since I’m staying in the flats (dorms) here at Roehampton, I’d be getting the college version of that culture as well: and what a version. Suffice it to say, the atmosphere here is more than very different from Biola, that ultimately unrealistic bubble of a social scene, where everyone around you is a Christian.

The central theme at Biola: community, through Christ. At Roehampton: community, through Carlsberg. (Carlsberg is cheap British beer). Everyone a little awkward starting out their first semester away from home? No problem, just get ‘em all trashed, and they’ll form life-long friendships. Not kidding, that honestly seemed to be the theme. The Residence Life events are completely focused through this mantra, which is quite a difference from my experience as a member of Biola’s Res. Life staff, where the sheer size and scope of our programming would’ve frightened the RA’s here.

Even the air around here seemed a little different. Then I sniffed it again, and sure enough, it bore that distinctive scent that would bring a smile to Bob Marley’s face. And amusingly enough, it doesn’t seem like a big deal to just spark a bowl of the wacky tabacky around here. Oh, the joys of uni! (that’s what they call university, or as we would say, college).

And then there were the fire alarms. At the beginning of the week, our RA’s (or “flat reps” per the local jargon) warned us that the alarm system was a bit “sensitive”. They weren’t joking. The things must be able to look so far into the future that they see the Day of Judgment where all will perish in fire and brimstone, and simply go off in anticipation of that, because there hasn’t been a hint of fire yet, but they keep blaring, regardless of the hour. There were no less than five one day, one of which was at the cheery hour of 3 in the morning. Perfect for a healthy night of sleep.

So by the end of the week, as Alison was getting ready to head home to Scotland (her dad lives in Glasgow), and I was realizing that nothing lay ahead in the next 5 days but more fire alarms and the drunken bacchanalias the Roehampton University administration tries to pass off as “orientation week”, I decided to accept the call to adventure and head up north. I tend to suffer from a condition that drives me to seek out the wilderness wherever I am and go “walking” (as the Brits call it), to trudge through it for days in search of beautiful vistas that defy conventional tourism. And since Scotland is where Braveheart is from, I figured there had to be some wilderness up there. So why not?