Getting Oriented

Coming to you live from a one-hour gap in International Day, the University of Edinburgh's orientation for international students. The funny thing is that after spending the past two years in Korea, Justin and I feel a bit like ringers. I mean, everybody here speaks our language. We both have partial Scottish ancestry. I'm here as a Canadian, which means I'm even allowed to vote, for crying out loud. I don't really feel like a foreigner.

But of course we are, a fact which we noticed during all the shenanigans of visa application this summer and continue to experience in our exclusion from certain types of work in the UK, most notably the lucrative "self-employed" category which includes private tutoring. Man, we'd be so good at that! But we persevere.

This afternoon we have a lecture on being postgraduates, which unfortunately overlaps with the extremely appealing "British English for Americans." I am totally planning to do a post on this topic later on.