Raisin Weekend

This past weekend, I participated in an age old tradition at St. Andrews-- Rasin Weekend. It's tied to another tradition here, academic families. First year students are adopted by third year 'parents' at the start of the school year. It's similar to Bigs and Littles in Greek life. However, first years get both a mom and a dad, and parents can adopt as many children as they want. Parents are meant to help their children make the transition to university life, mostly by upping their alcohol intake. It turns out that JSA's (Junior Semester Abroad) can get parents, since we're new here, too. I got my parents a bit late, close to Halloween. They are Molly and Jon. I also have a number of siblings with the same parents (as opposed to many first years, who have mostly half siblings). The biggest parental/family occasion is Raisin Weekend. I'm not sure when the traditions started, but they've been around for a along time, and their completely unique to St Andrews. The festivities begin on Sunday afternoon, with your mom's tea party. I'm assuming that back in the day, these were actually tea parties. Today, the beverages are a bit more varied (and a bit stronger). My siblings and I hung out in Molly's room playing games. Jon joined us, then took over his main responsibility-- the Sunday night party. We made our way over to Jon's house, where he had quite the beverage selection. More games, more fun. After some time, a couple hours, I don't know, Jon took us over to another dad's party. On the walk there, we kids avoided all the police who are all over town. Jon, however, started to talking to them, and we lost him. Seeing as we didn't know were the party we were going to was, it seemes natural to stop for food. (It was probably around dinner time at this point.) So to Empire we went for a huge plate of fries (chips). Still no sign of Jon, so we went over to Tesco and bought pasta in the prepared food section. I guess we were hungry. Outside, we managed to get a hold of Jon and he collected us back up. At the second party there were tons of people. It was really fun, and I ran into lots of friends. It seemed like most of Uni Hall was there, and so were some of Rachel's friends from John Burnet. My (academic) sister Zoe and I stayed til about 12, then went back to get some sleep. Gotta rest up for Monday.

Raisin Monday is, in my opinion, the best day at St Andrews. All the classes are cancelled (unless your teacher is just mean, some are) and the Raisin fesitivites continue. In the morning, children go back to their mom's house. In appreciation for being wonderful parents, and having parties on Raisin Sunday, kids give their parents each a bottle of wine. Wine has replaced the traditional gift, a pound of raisins. In return, fathers give their children a reciept. But first, the moms are charge of dressing their children up in crazy costumes. (This will all make more sense shortly.) Moms get pretty creative. My siblings and I were dressed as Raisins. Basically, we were in trash bags all stuffed full of newspaper, with little boxes of raisins taped to us. It was pretty funny. I saw everything from superheroes, the whole Simpsons family, and babies, to caterpillars (all the kids connected), and all sorts of animals. Once dressed, children are ready for their receipts. Originally, receipts were written in Latin on parchment. Today, they are usually big, heavy, and/or gross objects, seeing at the kids have to carry them to Sally's Quad. All week I had been hearing that Jon's receipt was amazing, but I had no idea what it was. Molly led us outside to see. Jon had built himself one of those chair things that kings used to be carried on. It had a seat and back, all covered in fabric. He was dressed like Ceasar, complete with a glass of wine and grapes. He had also made a banner with the Latin message for the receipt painted on it. We had to carry him in his seat thing all the way to the Quad. Even with all 5 kids (3 boys!) we couldn't do it. He let us take frequent breaks, and he walked part of the way. We live really far from the Quad. The whole walk there, you see all the other kids decked out in their costumes carrying their receipts and their parents accompanying them. The townspeople all gather on the streets to watch. We were quite the spectacle.

Here we are carrying dear old dad, King of Men.

Even though the walk there was a struggle, it was lots of fun. People were pretty impressed with our reciept, and I must say, it was genious. We did manage to carry him all the way down North Street and into the Quad entrance. At that point, everyone dumps their reciepts into huge trash bins and the kids get in line. Wat are we all doing at the Quad you ask? Well, only the coolest thing ever-- having a foam fight!

That's right, a foam fight. All the kids in their costumes wait to be set loose into the Quad with cans of shaving foam. At 11, they opened the gates and we poured in. Within minutes, foam was EVERYWHERE! There were literally hundreds of us. We started out spraying everyone we knew, then moved onto everyone we didn't know. Every exposed surface was white-- our faces, hair, and clothes, the ground, everything. Our doting parents stood around the perimeter, behind the tape, and look lots of pictures. There was a huge crowd of people watching; they spread all down North Street. After about a half hour of foam fighting, we were completely covered, all out of foam, and very cold. Time to head back home.

Sea of Foam

(from left to right) Anna, me Tina, and Zoe, in all our foam covered glory

I can see why this is one experience that everyone talks about at St Andrews. I'm really glad I got to be a part of this tradition, partly because it was so much fun, but also because its such a unique experience and one I will never forget.