First London night out!

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Last night was my first night out in London and it was loads of fun! Erin's friend was having her birthday party at a bar called the Hoxton Pony and invited me so Mama stayed home to re-energize for more exploring the next day. I initially got lost getting there because I was meeting everyone there and had never been in the area, but luckily I made it there about an hour later. The place was packed and the drinks were crazy expensive, but luckily you don't have to tip the bartenders!

It was so great to see Jess and Sharleena again and meet another one of Erin's bests, Abena. I absolutely love the diversity of her group of friends-it's so representative of the city they live in.

After having a thoroughly enjoyable night getting to know Erin's friends and dancing, we went to get the London drunk food: bagels with "Philadelphia", salt beef, and gherkins (the tiny little pickles). The most ridiculous combo of flavors and extremely salty, but probably not as artery clogging as a fat sandwich from the Grease Trucks. Waiting in line I met this guy Nafeez, who was apparently also at the party, but he was absolutely mesmerized by my straight teeth. According to Sharleena, he was "cherpsing" me, which she explained is a little more than flirting since he was trying to get my digits. It's so hilarious that they speak english here, but it's still like another language--it still takes me a few extra second just to fully process the accent alone.

It was probably almost 3 in the morning at this point so we had to catch the bus since the underground stopped running at around 12 or 1. So we caught a bus to Oxford Street, but were waiting for so long for the next bus that Erin got us a taxi. Now this was not your little yellow cab. This taxi was huge and black with a spacious interior like that of a limousine where 3 or 4 people sit in the back and then more seats fold down across from those where more people can sit with their backs to the driver. Really fun and comfy but will probably never happen again because it was SO expensive. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I spoke French with a Parisian I met at the bar and Spanish with with Nafeez, making that 4 languages in one night if you count english and american separately :P I love London!

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