This is the true story of 15 nut cases picked to live in a country that's sort of foreign, sort of domestic, sort of ancient and sort of modern. And for the past few days, we've been finding out what happens when we stop being polite and start getting real.
To clarify, we're 15 English students, and we've been dropped in the middle of Glasgow, Scotland, for a foreign study program at the "Uni," knowing nothing and no one. And the geniuses behind the cameras (which we're all convinced are following us around) have quite beautifully set up various obstacles to thicken the plot.
We don't have to start a business or put on a radio show; we just have to make it through a never-ending orientation week, plagued with high-tech communication, faulty elevators, cement fields and lots of rain.
The good news is that everyone is still a "survivor" (I've never seen the apparently fabulous show, though I figure it's something like this), but the bad news is that several of us are dealing with quite debilitating post traumatic stress.
Just like on The Real World, we each arrived in Scotland alone and at different times. But unlike the show's personalities, we weren't met by MTV guides and cameramen. We were left to fend for ourselves, taking cabs to dorms and wandering around the city aimlessly until running into other Dartmouth students, some of whom we recognized and some not at all.
Though we each have a trauma story of getting here -- one cast member freaked out so intensely on the airplane across the Atlantic that she got to ride in the cockpit, and another is convinced that her dorm is in a different city, a city made of cement -- we've made it, only to begin a very strange orientation week, a bizarre repeat of freshman orientation, with added surprises along the way.
The first disaster, of course, was discovering what Blitz-less life is like, especially after spending a couple of years connected to computers. And the European solution to not being able to type pointless messages into iMacs at all hours of the day? Mobile phones, of course. So we have all become "those people," who walk around with annoying beeping (or for the more sophisticated cellular users, vibrating) machines in our bags.
Naturally, in classic Real World fashion, the cell phone debacle created tension among the group. I must take credit for meeting a random girl on the street who told me, out of the blue, about "orange phones." Being the American idiot I most certainly am, I thought she was talking about cell phones that were orange. Turns out Orange is a brand.
Anyway, in an effort to be intelligent and confident, I went to the Orange store myself and got the best deal before most people had even arrived in the country. Of course, as I made the purchase in jet-lagged delirium, I didn't realize that for only a few pounds more I could have gotten the "fancy" phone, the phone everyone else bought the next day.
I'm still getting comments about my "budget" phone, and I fear some people aren't calling me just because my voice might not come through clearly enough. Three more latecomers recently bought budget phones as well, strategically dividing the cast into two teams, preparing for the inevitable climax of disaster (to occur midseason, of course).
But by far the most intense episode so far this season has been the day of the library tour. Our advisor led our bumbling group of idiots (or as some Scottish blokes have described us, our group of "fungi" and "daft Americans") into the library, where we were met by a librarian with lots of stories, a big laugh, a stupid tie and a tendency to spit.
Needing to reach the 12th floor, our group split into two elevators. I was in the one with five other cast members, our advisor, the library guy and two Scottish people. And, let me tell you, it was a long ride. In fact, I believe one of us said, "This is the longest elevator ride ever." That was right before we started falling.
Luckily, we didn't plummet all the way to the bottom. Instead, we stopped somewhere between the fifth and sixth floors, trapped in the most ridiculously hot, cramped and dreary elevator ever made. According to the very talkative librarian, the elevators were built in 1968 and probably need some repairs.
To describe that half-hour we spent trapped in a tiny box would surely only trivialize the trauma. Some of us tried to call the police. One girl was slowly fed crackers to keep her from either fainting or totally losing control (I'm not sure which). Some told annoying jokes. Some crouched. The Scottish lady pressed me against the back wall, saving herself from the flying spit of our chatterbox librarian.
Upon returning to the rest of the group, we learned that while in the elevator, we did indeed miss the one moment of sunshine ever to appear in Glasgow. Ever. And, needless to say, we're still dealing with the aftereffects of this tremendous event.
So be sure to tune in to the next installment of "The Real World Glasgow," when the cast will face three a.m. fire drills, complete with bulky firemen charging into dorm rooms. Cheerio.
