April Showers Bring May Flowers

It's been a long while since I last posted here. Unfortunately, the end of a semester is always the most tense, wound up period of days, no matter which university I am at. Not only is the workload greater than at any other period of time, but everyone has a mad rush to have the last great party of the semester.

Here in St. Andrews May has brought an assortment of things: beautiful sunny days (I spent two hours today reading on the lawn), barbeques, and the realization that I am going home in about a month. The previous sentence can be interpreted like this: I am trying to do as much as possible right now.

On May 1st, I jumped into the North Sea at dawn. St. Andrews has a lot of 'traditions', ones that no one is quite sure where they originated, or they were actually started about five years ago. The May Dip is one of the traditions like Raisin Weekend, that no one is quite sure where it started. Yet no one really cares. The student body traditionally jumps into the North Sea at dawn on May 1st.

I knew there was no way I would actually wake up at 4am and walk down to the beach in the rain, so my two friends named Chris and I sat around drinking wine until the early hours. Then Scottish Chris and I walked down to the beach in the dark during a torrent of rain and hovered around the few bonfires. It was so dark that we could not recognize anyone, but we didn't much care. We were just waiting for enough daylight to be present for us to run into the sea. We also decided that we did not want anyone to steal our clothes, so we hovered around a nearby group and when we undressed put our clothes next to theirs. Meanwhile hoards of people ran around in the dark with swimsuits or clothes, a group of guys dragging a plastic raft into the sea. People shrieked everytime a downpour of rain fell unexpected from above.

Having been out in the rain for an hour already and having had enough wine to keep the blood circulating, I did not feel that cold walking around in just a swimsuit at dawn in Scotland. Perhaps this goes to my water polo days - although many have kindly pointed out that that was only winter evenings in Southern California, not mid-spring at the North Sea. Chris and I eventually ran in, although I was only able to go up to my waist before deciding this was good enough.

We marched out, got dressed, and took a taxi home in the wee hours of the morning. I had enough sand in my shoes to last for all the other years of May Dips I will miss.