St Andrews

On Friday morning we started the day with a nice Scottish breakfast at the hotel. We then embarked to get AF a bank account, mobile phone and some dorm room necessities. BF had the bright idea to take a quick little stroll over to the Student Administration Building. It was prior to their opening and nothing is really going on at the University until Saturday. We had the good fortune of running into the head of the international students. She saw us in her office and gave us lots of good information. She directed us to Younger Hall to get a document which proved her address here for St Andrews for the bank. We got a big run around but finally someone was able to log onto the system to pull up AF's accommodation contract. We ran into a mother who was having the same difficulty for her international (Italian) student which was reassuring that it was not just us having the same problems.

We then went to the bank (RBS) just in time. As we got there the lines for student accounts really began to fill up. We ran into the same Mother and her son at the bank (they had tried to get a bank account yesterday but did not have the accommodation contract so could not open the account). We had all the necessary information but it turns out that the account is really only a savings account with an ATM card for withdrawals but no debit card. It is going to take a few days before AF will actually have an account to use and even longer for the ATM card.

Next was the mobile phone. We decided the best route was for AF to get a prepaid phone since she really does not know how much she will use the phone in the UK. The Italian family came in right after us again. Seems like every family is trying to get the same think done for their international students.

AF picked out a black phone that has a really nice plan for international calls. It is only 6p a minute to the US and 5p to China. We loaded up her SIM card and she now has a mobile number, yeahhhh. I loaded in some numbers for her and I tried EF's phone. It rang and I handed it over to AF. She talked for what seemed like a long time. I guess they had a lot to say to each other.

We went to "Wooly's" (Woolworths) to get dorm room necessities. We then went to a pub we had eaten at the last year while visiting St Andrews for a bite to eat and some cider and beer. The rest of the time we wandered around including visting St. James Catholic church to get service hours for AF. We took some pictures of AF outside her dorm building and English department building.