House Parties, Card Games and Select & Save

Everyone was feeling a little bit seedy after Wednesday night, and so the boys at the bottom of my building decided to open their doors to have a chilled out night with everyone. We weren't entirely sure of the protocol when it came to chilling, so Astrid, Patrick, Fiona and I decided to go and buy a couple of drinks to take with us, and if we didn't get to drink them, then we could keep them for next time. So we headed off to the Select & Save (our local 24 hour bottle and grocery store), where we found cider. Big bottles of cider. In plastic bottles. I'm not even joking, you can get 3 litre bottles of cider in what look like enormous soft drink bottles. And they're less than four pounds a bottle. It's amazing... and if they're in the fridge, they just look like Sprite or 7-Up. Here's Fiona holding a bottle:

But I digress. So between the four of us, we bought two bottles of crappy two-for-a-fiver wine, and one of these ciders to mix with the wine so that we couldn't taste it. We rocked up to the boys' flat downstairs, and Akash looked at us and was like, 'So you guys are planning a big one then?', which hadn't really occurred to us, but we weren't entirely adverse to the idea. Joey had some drinks as well, and Amanda produced a pack of cards, and so we decided to play Kings (although, there was no cup. Aparently in the States they don't really play with a cup... which seems strange to me). I'm just going to add here, that Kings is a lot more fun when you're playing with people who don't have English as their native language. It can get hilarious. Add to the mix a couple of Finnish and German guys who drink pretty much as soon as they wake up, and you've got one hell of a game. At one point, Amanda drew the waterfall card. She began to drink, then Teemu (who's a tank, I'll add here), then Felix, Patrick, Astrid, me and so on. Amanda eventually stopped, but Teemu kept going. And going. And going. He was drinking from one of the big cider bottles - which was about half full - and it looked like he would be able to finish the entire thing! The rest of us started laughing (which is not easy when you're still trying to drink!) and eventually Joey pushed the bottle out of Teemu's mouth. He looked at us, confused, before saying, "but this is a drinking game. Why am I not allowed to drink?". None of us really had an answer for him.

That night, Elizabeth ended up taking a lot of photos of drunk Akash, which led to her creating a photo album on Facebook called "The Album of Akash". Astrid also managed to backhand the bottle of cider into the wall, where it started fizzing and wouldn't stop until we figured out that she'd somehow managed to put the wine bottle lid on to the cider bottle. I'm still not sure how she managed that. Oh, and Karsten went to the bathroom, and reappeared nearly half an hour later (just when we were sure that he'd passed out somewhere) wearing basketball shorts, socks and thongs. I managed to get a photo that is now the background image on my phone, so I start giggling every time I see it.

We eventually got home a lot more tipsy than we'd had the intention of getting. Luckily for me, my trip home was only up four flights of stairs, rather than across the Village.

Friday night, we had a couple of people over for dinner. Fiona and I did the cooking, and we made pasta with sauce, salad, garlic bread, and Shannon made new potatoes in the microwave. It was awesome! We had a couple of drinks and congratulated ourselves at being so domesticated. A few people were going to one of the Union parties called Space, but before that we went to one of the bars on campus where there were some other people we knew. That night, we'd bought a bottle of wine but didn't want to leave it at home after dinner, so we smuggled it into the bar and then a few of us (mostly Patrick) poured it from under the table. If I'm honest, I don't think that the bar people would have minded, they're pretty cool. I then played pool with Patrick against Lauri and Astrid - we won one game, which was awesome, and then lost the next. At about 12.30 the bar shut, but none of us were in the mood to go home, so we decided to go back to Teemu's place and continue drinking. I went and grabbed my stuff, and then asked Joey if he wanted to come with us. Somehow, in the hour and a half or so since I'd last talked to him, he'd managed to get shwasted. It was hilarious.

We went back to the Select & Save - we're pretty sure they know us now - and grabbed some more cider and a packet of crisps to share. Clemente and Lauri also got sandwiches. Joey liked the look of the sandwiches, said he was going to get one, did a lap of the store, and then wandered back over to us without a sandwich. We then traipsed off to Teemu's house, where we were later joined by Patrick and Shannon (who hadn't made it to Space), Elizabeth from E4 and a couple of others. Somehow I ended up with a Smirnoff Ice that I managed to nurse for about an hour (although Joey had some, because he lost four rounds of 'Up' in quick succession), and we had a great night. A few of us were talking in really bad accents, Joey reverted to the Deep South for about an hour, and then asked Felix why he spoke like Borat. Astrid ended up bailing quite early, because she was going to Oxford the next day, leaving at 8am... which didn't stop us from calling her weak. We're such nice friends. When it was time to go, we all ended up speaking in very bad Spanish, yelling out things like "Vamos!" and "A donde es mi cerveza?" and "Hola, amigo!" across the street to each other. I was kind of glad that Marta and Andrea, who are both from Barcelona, weren't there to hear it!