Weekend recap

'Ello 'ello (see, I'm talking like a local already), I just wanna give a quick highlight for anyone interested enough to click a link, but not interested enough to read through this whole, moderately long post. So, some of the British kids I live with taught us a drinking game, that I thought was very clever, both for its simplicity and for its just straight up drinking-ness. Its called "Arrogance" and the rules are as such: the first person fills up a cup with as much of his drink as he pleases and then flips a coin and chooses heads or tails. If he is correct, he passes the cup onto the next person, and if he is incorrect he drinks the contents of the glass. Thus, if the player is feeling lucky (or arrogant, hence the name) he will pour a lot of booze into the cup figuring either he will screw over the next person or that he is awesome enough to just chug the whole glass. If people in the group are consuming different types of booze, that adds a whole other dimension to the game as someone might end up having to drink a delicious mix of various beers, wines, ciders, and spirits (luckily we were just playing with beer, but its still kinda nasty if you're drinking different brands). Anywho, I'd never heard of the game before and thought it was pretty sweet, moving on.

I had a fairly eventful and enjoyable past fews days, I'm happy to report. Friday night I went out to a local Chinese food restaurant with some folks, which wasn't too shabby I must say. It was kinda neat to hear a British accent coming out of an Asian person, just not something I'm used to hearing. Later on we were drinking in the flat, and then planned to head out on the town. The plan originally was to go to a club that one of the British kids we've met suggested, but at some point over the course of the evening, a few of the people I was with decided going to a club wasn't really for us so we ended up just going to a bar. Also, when I say bar, its technically a pub, but I feel like a poser calling a bar a pub, just fyi. Ended up just getting drunk and having a great time, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

Saturday was the first day where I was completely free and we were on our own, which for most of my group meant grocery shopping. Now I don't really grocery shop, ever, so this was going to be a challenge. However, I am determined to obtain a healthy variety of foods when shopping over here, at as low a cost as possible in order to maximize the quantity of adventures I could afford over the course of my time in London. I'm willing to sacrifice eating good food of any sort in order to be able to travel around more. I believe I was fairly successful in my first attempt at this goal, as I managed to obtain a good amount of various, fairly healthy foods, at the cost of only about 20 pounds. So huzzah to that.

That day, the rest of the British kids moved in, and we drank with them that night, thats when we played arrogance. Let me just tell you, these Brits can drink, even the girls were just pounding 'em. Insanity. We didn't even go out that night, which is probably ideal for my bank account, and it was just a lot of fun. As the people who read this probably know (better, August?), I would much rather sit around, shoot the shit, and drink with a good group of people then go out to a bar, let alone a club. Though as some of you also know, I have 3-4 of the best dance moves ever utilized by man, which allow me to frequently win dance offs against the most challenging of competitors.

Sunday was a touristy day. Gotta see all the sights over here, ya know? A couple other kids and myself went out to the Tower Bridge, where there's a pretty neat exhibit in the bridge and you can walk up to the top area. Tower Bridge is the famous cool looking bridge bt dubs, London Bridge, of falling down fame, is actually pretty lame. Fun fact: The old London Bridge was sold in the 1970's to some rich dude in Arizona. Rumor has it that he thought he was buying the cooler-looking and iconic Tower Bridge. He musta felt like a real dope when he opened the box andthe crappy London Bridge was inside. Regardless, you can go to Lake Havasu in Arizona and check out the original London Bridge if you so fancy. So there ya go, you learn something new everyday. I already knew all that though because I'm just awesome/a huge loser. After that, I was planning on just hitting the sack early, six days of drinking, sight-seeing, and meetings will get to ya. However, some folks were planning on checking out an American bar to watch the NFL playoffs, which I had sort of forgot about while I was over here, damn Brits. I joined in and saw the Patriots get beat down by the Ravens before heading back home.

Finally, Monday the real fun began as that was the first day of classes. I'll go into the details of my classes and the retarded English university system in a later post as this one is starting to drag on I think, but I've had 3 out of 4 thus far and overall, none of 'em seem too bad. That night was the official Queen Mary's International Student boat cruise on the Thames, which reminded me of our post-prom thing on the Odyssey. We cruised up and down the the river, and saw all the sites, it would have been cool if it wasn't 4 HOURS LONG. Holy Crow. Some advice, if you get chance to cruise up the Thames, definitely do it, but make sure it lasts only like an hour or two.

I figure now that I'm going to class and have a bit of a routine, my going out will decrease significantly for the sake of my finances, otherwise I'm going to have learn how to play the guitar or didgereedoo (sp?) like some of the dudes I've seen on the street. That's it for now though folks, but stay tuned for a thrilling post on my classes and my first continental travel plans. Gracias.