Alcoholloway; or, Royally Pissed

I see fit to warn you all that this entry includes allusion to a fair amount of alcohol consumption. At least, a fair amount by my standards, which are neither as generous nor as flexible as those of most other university students. Also, I should warn that at this point, I am still a little bit jet-lagged and all-in-all messed up, and can offer only that as an excuse for any nonsensical ramblings that follow. With those two cautions, onward!

My plane landed on Saturday at about 11:15 in the morning. The flight was long, but nothing compared to my 36-hour voyage to India earlier this summer. Of course, the facts that my seat's headphone socket didn't work quite right (I could only get sound through one ear, and even then I had to hold the plug-in just right) and that I had a rather large carry-on suitcase at my feet, preventing me from stretching out my legs, made for a not altogether comfortable flight. It wasn't awful, but I was glad to get off the plane at the end of it all. On the plus side, I managed to put up with the headphone trouble long enough to watch Iron Man 2 (good old Robert Downey, Jr...a feast for the eyes, really) and a great National Film Board documentary about philosophy. (If you're interested, it's called "Examined Life" and can be found on the National Film Board's website. We'll also ignore that they incorrectly attributed the quotation from which the title is drawn to Plato rather than Socrates.) Also, the sunset that happened during my flight was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen.

I moved into my room on Saturday as well. It's plenty large enough for one - I have tons of desk space (which is fabulous, because I tend to use every square inch of desk space at my disposal), a single (very comfy!) bed with storage inside the base of it (that's where my empty suitcases are at the moment), a closet with two shelves and a rail, and my own bathroom. It's quite a squishy bathroom - it kind of reminds me of an airplane bathroom but with a tiny shower added - but again...I'm just one person. I wasn't exactly expecting 300 square feet and granite countertops. It's plenty for one person. My shower doesn't drain quite right, but I'm determined to fix it myself. For now, I can't run it longer than about a minute, or else the whole bathroom floods. What this means practically is that I have to step in straightaway (luckily it heats very quickly) and get wet, shut off the water, then use my shampoo, soap, and facewash while the water drains, and then turn it back on in order to rinse. On the plus side, this has done wonders to cut down on my water usage (and production of steam, which sets off the smoke detector). My room is on the first floor (in the UK, that means one above ground floor) and the rear side of the building, and when I look out my window all I can see is a wall of foliage because there's virtually a forest right behind me. I get lots of light in the morning, which has been wonderful because I don't yet have a phone, and hence, no alarm to wake me up in the morning. The sun does it for me. (Maybe I'll just stick to this all year and never bother with an alarm.) Also, what I thought would be a downside has turned out to be one of my favourite things about here: our proximity to Heathrow Airport means that I can hear every takeoff and landing that happens, and since Heathrow is such a major airport, those are very frequent.

And then the drinking began.

Unlike Augustana, not only is alcohol permitted on campus, there's a college-run bar not 100 metres from my building. In the dining halls, they even serve red and white wine with dinner, which is very strange to me. Anyway, of course the bar is where I've met virtually all of my friends so far. But let me tell you, the pints have been flowing. Regrettably, the bar is out of my personal favourite beer (Heineken, of course) at the moment, so I've just been trying lots of other beers. And also asking Ben, the bartender who appears to be permanently affixed to the bar, to come up with new mixed drinks (he seems to have fun doing it). Yesterday he made up some sort of lemonade concoction (the contents of which are still a mystery to me, but I'm pretty sure I saw at least rum go into it) that was kind of sour, but really good. After hanging out at the bar (which I might as well tell you now, because I'm sure it will come up many times in the future, is called 8Bar9), I went with about five other people on a pub crawl...sort of. We were behind the rest of the group by one pub, but we still had a great time, just chatting and drinking. (Side note: tequila shots are much better with lime than with lemon.) We decided after the third pub just to go back to 8Bar9 and hang out there until they closed, and then the six of us decided to head up to someone's room and chill, which lasted until about two in the morning. Another thing that's different between Royal Holloway and the University of Alberta is that here, if you order a drink at the bar, you can carry it outside and drink it on the lawn if you want to. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can't do that at the U of A. Or anywhere in Alberta, come to think of it.

The Students' Union seems to be very active at Royal Holloway, and plans TONS of events. You should see the event calendar they gave us on our first day here. There's something almost every day. They also organised a poster sale, so today I bought two posters. One is an oversized nighttime time-lapse photo of London's Piccadilly Circus in 1967, and the other is a very pretty black-and-white photo of a man and woman kissing on a cobblestone street. It says "the kiss" in French in the corner. As soon as I buy some sticky tack, I know exactly where they're going.

Tomorrow's mission is to track down a mobile phone and a bedsheet.