Scotland

Scotland is a point of reference in Margot’s account of studying in a different country, and, in a later domestic scene, a comparison that frames her offer of a drink to Lara Jean. The place itself is not depicted; its significance comes through these brief connections to independence, cultural identity, and growing up.

References to Scotland

Margot invokes her experience of education abroad when advising Lara Jean to make her own friends at college and join the Asian association. She says that attending school in another country meant missing out on an Asian-American group, and describes discovering racial identity in college as an experience she associates with Tim Monahan. Scotland is thus linked indirectly to the perspective Margot brings to her advice: her time away has made her attentive to the importance of finding community.

The country appears again during a gathering where people are choosing songs from songbooks and the evening’s rule is to play only music from the 1990s. As drinks circulate, Margot tells Lara Jean that the drinking age in Scotland is eighteen. Lara Jean, already anxious because Peter has texted twice from a steakhouse to ask how her night is going, takes a quick sip of Margot’s drink; it tastes tart and icy. The reference supplies Margot’s rationale for the offer, rather than evidence that Lara Jean has traveled to Scotland.

Connections to Travel and Growing Up

Scotland belongs to a wider pattern of characters imagining different routes into adulthood. Chris plans to take a year away from college, working on farms in Costa Rica and considering other possibilities abroad. Lara Jean, meanwhile, adjusts to not attending the University of Virginia as planned: Peter suggests she might transfer after a year elsewhere, while she later describes a plan to attend William and Mary for a year and then apply to UVA. These contrasting paths make Margot’s education abroad part of a story in which leaving home does not follow one shared schedule.

The surrounding family changes sharpen that theme. Trina argues that Lara Jean is nearly an adult and that an unsupervised gathering after graduation can serve as practice for living independently. In another conversation, Margot admits that returning home has felt like finding a new family formed without her, and says that she misses their mother. Against that emotional background, Scotland is a compact marker of the distance Margot has already crossed: travel and education broaden her perspective, but do not spare her the feeling of being separated from home.

Cultural Belonging and Family Memory

The references to Scotland sit alongside a sustained concern with how the Song sisters maintain a connection to Korean culture. The family debates whether Trina’s wedding should include an Asian tradition, with Margot objecting that Trina should not appropriate a culture simply because the sisters are Asian; Lara Jean counters that Trina wants them to feel included and has considered acknowledging their mother. Margot later calls Korean food the family’s strongest link to Korean culture and insists that marrying their father means joining the whole family, including its connection to Korea.

That connection becomes concrete when Dan announces that he is sending the three girls to Korea with their grandmother for all of July. They will stay with a great-aunt in Seoul, take Korean-language classes, tour places including Jeju and Busan, and attend a Korean pastry-making class arranged especially for Lara Jean. The contrast helps define Scotland’s narrower role: it is mentioned through Margot’s experience and a drinking-age comparison, whereas Korea is tied to family memory, shared inheritance, food, and a planned journey. Scotland’s significance remains personal and contextual, not a setting for an on-page episode.