First Weekend at Endcliffe... Super Bowl and Adventure Time!

So, I left off on the Saturday that I moved in (which is now two weeks ago, to give an idea of how far behind myself I am). We were all really tired from Big Night Out the night before, but when we moved in the girls next door sent a letter underneath the (locked) fire door that separates our flats, inviting us for drinks. Fiona and I headed down to The Edge (which is like the hub of our residential area... it's where you can get food, coffee, and they even have a fair decent bar!) to meet Joey, Patrick and Zac for dinner. When we eventually got back to our flat, it turned out that the girls next door had also headed out, and so our schedules weren't really coinciding. However, eventually both sides of the door got our acts together and we headed down to a party in the bottom flat of our building, where I met a few more people from around the world, and even ran into Charlie, the other guy from ANU.

After helping my team win Flip Cup - which, by the way, is an excellent game that everyone in Canberra is definitely playing when I get back - we met Patrick and a few others, and caught a taxi into town for an International Students' party at a very expensive club. I felt both over- and under-dressed at the same time, and I'm still not sure how I managed that. It ended up being a fairly early night, and I think we got home about half past twelve. The next morning, I'd planned to sleep in, but for some reason woke up before 10am, which was a bummer. I Skyped Mum and Dad, and talked to Fiona and Shannon (another girl in my flat), and we planned on going to the grocery store to stock up on essentials. Everything was going smoothly until I tried to have a shower... which turned out to be icy cold. I thought maybe I just didn't know how to use this particular shower, but then I found that the hot taps were also not emitting hot water. I called maintenance, and it turned out that a pipe had burst in the boiler room, so our entire building was without hot water. They assured me that they would try and get it fixed as soon as possible, and I got the feeling that they had had that call a few times already.

So, after the non-existant shower and the fun trip to the Eurospar (our local supermarket) - which ended up including a trip to the local 24/7 bottle shop-supermarket to pick up some plastic plates and cutlery until we could buy our own - we went back home and chilled out for a while before heading to the Edge Bar to meet up with Patrick, Joey, Zac, Stephi, Steffi, Karsten and Astrid to watch the Super Bowl. When we got there, we found out that the Edge was only playing the game until midnight - about 20 minutes in to the first quarter*. So we all grabbed our stuff and headed over to Bar One. On the way, Patrick and I went over a mental list of people we were with, because we couldn't help but think that we'd forgotten someone. However, we couldn't think of anyone, and so just carried on our merry way.

*I should add a disclaimer here. At this particular point in time, I knew less than nothing about American Football - not even that they played in quarters. I ended up asking Elizabeth to tell me when to cheer or boo... and then just kind of followed what everyone else was doing. I still don't know that much about the game, even though I watched it for over three hours!

^The crew at Super Bowl

When we got to Bar One, there ended up being a big crowd of people we knew/had met. Plus, the bar was packed with people watching the game, and they had a couple of excellent deals on. The food was all American-themed, including burgers and hot dogs, and I was drinking double Bourbon and Cokes for less than three pounds, while Patrick was drinking double pints of Coors light beer for around the same price - I'm only really mentioning this now because it becomes significant later. So, we'd not long been at the bar when Patrick gets a call from Elizabeth... who we'd left back at the Edge. Oops. We assured her that it was early enough for it to be safe to walk the fifteen minutes or so alone - after all, we're living in the safest city in the UK. When Elizabeth arrived, we bought a bunch of drinks to help celebrate, and the game began. My favourite part of the broadcast was not even the game itself - but before it started, they played this great video of clips from things like JFK's speeches, the moon landing, Martin Luther King Jr, the raising of the American flag in Iwo Jima, and the recovery after 9/11, as if to say "this game is on par with these momentous occasions". It was so dramatic, I loved it. Oh - and I was going for Pittsburgh, purely because Joey was going for Green Bay, and he actually cared about what was happening.

After Elizabeth filled me in on when to yell at the TV, as well as after a bunch more drinks, I ended up cheering for the wrong team because I was sitting with Joey and Sam (another Green Bay) supporter. I also ate a hot dog. After Green Bay won - and Patrick had fallen asleep at the bar (not even joking) it was about 2.30am. I walked outside to go home with Elizabeth and Patrick, and the suggestion of a taxi was raised, but quickly quashed by Elizabeth who more or less told us to man up and walk back. So we began the treck home... and I should probably mention here, that I was a bunch of bourbons down, Patrick was a lot of pints down, and Elizabeth was sober. When we got back to Stephenson - where Elizabeth and Patrick live, and not too far from where I live - we found that there was a huge gate that had been open earlier, but was now shut, and looked to be pretty impossible. But, because there were a bunch of other people around who were climbing over the gate, we thought that it would be a good idea to follow them. You know... herd mentality and all that. It was around this time that we coined the phrase "adventure time".

By the time we had clambered over the gate - me in a skirt, no less - the other people who had actually been not that far away from us had all somehow disappeared. There was another gate, but the gap at the top was way too small to be able to get through the other side (although Patrick was convinced he could make it). We considered jumping down over another wall, but deemed it to be a bit too high for that time of night. We spotted a ramp with a door that had a card swipe access point, so we traipsed up there. Patrick tried swiping his card, but it wouldn't let him in. So he swiped it a bunch (about eight or nine) more times, with the same result. So we had a look at creeping around the side of the building, but thought there were too many prickly-looking bushes. We looked at a couple of other options to get around the building, but to no avail. It was at this point that I took the only existing photo of Adventure Time:

I think it says a lot, really. Anyway, we decided to go back the way we'd come. This time, some more people had arrived and were scaling the gate to get inside as well, so we chose a different area of the wall to jump down. It looked really tall, but Patrick managed to lower himself over quite easily, then went to give Elizabeth a hand, but ended up kind of holding her in the air for a much longer time than was needed. After what seemed like ages, he let her down, and when I was in the process of maneuveuring myself off the wall, I heard a burst of laughter. Strangely enough, a bunch of the people who'd watched the game with us were walking home as well... so we walked with them. It was here I met Felix, who actually lives in my building, so we walked home together. I ended up getting home at maybe a quarter to four in the morning. It was an excellent adventure, that I think is still probably one of my favourite things to happen in Sheffield... although, I'm sure that we'll have plenty of opportunities for more Adventure Time before we all head home!

Oh... and I should probably mention. Astrid had told us earlier in the night that the gate would be shut, a fact that we'd conveniently forgotten. Apparently there's a button that you can press that opens it. And, if Patrick had flipped his card around the other way, the door might have opened. And the whole thing was caught on CCTV. About two nights after Adventure Time, I met another guy at a party. I introduced myself, and his answer was "I know. I met you when you were climbing over a wall." And that's the kind of fun that happens in Sheffield.