After spending a year at 10 Hope Street in the center of St Andrews, I was supposed to move out so that the landlord could clean up for the next group of graduate students who would live in this well-located yet prone-to-filth flat. I decided that after leaving Mom in Edinburgh so that she could fly to Ireland, I would come back to St Andrews for the weekend before I flew out of Edinburgh for Texas the next Monday. However, I wasn't supposed to be in the flat this week. No one technically reminded me that I was supposed to leave or where I could drop off my key, so I kept the key to the flat for an extra week. I emailed to school to see if I could pay for an extra week there, but no one wrote me back. Some friends allowed me to keep my stuff in their apartment just in case the landlord came back and threw away everything in the room. I only left the trash, which would actually be a good thing if someone threw it away. Well, when I got back from Edinburgh, I had no idea what to expect. I opened the front door with no problem, and it was obvious that someone had been going through everything that my old flatmates had left in their rooms. There were several piles of junk in the dark foyer, including a pile of stuff that had been in my room. I said 'hello' to see if there was anyone else in the building, but there was only my echo. I walked into my room, and someone had picked through my stuff. It appeared that someone was picking through the leftovers to see if he wanted to keep anything. I went back through the stuff and pulled out a couple things I wanted to keep, like a couple photos friends had given me. I promised a friend I'd give her a football, so I took that back out of the trash with the intention give it to her later. The sheets had been taken off of my bed and put into a trash bag with other clothes, so I took it all back and made my bed. It was creepy laying there on my bed wondering if anyone would walk into the room unexpectedly to start cleaning up the stuff again. Nevertheless, I was completely alone. Whereas there had been 18 or so people in the flat during the school year, no one else was around so that I could go to the kitchen and socialize if I got bored or lonely. Before I would see my friends and their stuff in their rooms through the windows from the street, but now I could only see beds without sheets, desks without computers, and walls without posters. I didn't like it. I looked forward to going out that night for drinks at the pub with some friends who were left in St Andrews.
Before going out for those drinks, I took a walk around the neighborhood one last time to take some photographs as the sunset reflected off of the clouds.
10 Hope Street,
my home for a year.
[Image Deleted: see http://peregrinatorphoto.blogspot.com/]
St Andrews Castle
View of North Street near the cathedral.
Northpoint café is on the left.
Every morning I would come to this café for
their incredibly cheap and delicious lattes.
It was only £1 per latte from 8:30 am to 9 am.
This 'happy hour' forced me to get out of bed every morning
so that I could start working on my dissertation this summer.
It got to a point when the owners and workers recognized me
and wouldn't even ask what I wanted to drink.
It'd be on my table a couple minutes after I walked in.
View of Market Street near the cathedral.
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