Last Minute Plans for Turkey

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Last day in Brasov before heading to Turkey! It started off like any other in the hospital, and I worked with Beth, Mary, Sarah and Steffi. My favorite baby was on the 4th floor again, so I spent as much time with him as I could since he would probably be gone by the time I got home. After my shift, I said goodbye to everyone and that I would see them in a week, before heading to the office to email Gökhan about some last minute details. Gökhan wanted to know about the bus details for when we would be getting into Izmir, and since I hadn’t made them yet, I investigated some options and quickly made reservations. I talked to Phil on gmail chat for a little while, emailed Temple and Shenandoah about interviews and tried to think if there was anything else I needed to take care of before I left. When there wasn’t, I went back to Elisabeta’s to finish packing. Then I ran some errands to get some last minute things I knew I would need (sunglasses, chocolate, etc.). After that, I went to an internet café to double check messages from Gökhan, and then came home for dinner.
At 8:30, everyone had agreed to meet at the fountain to go out for a drink, so I went to meet them. We went to Fantasia first, and each had a drink there, before deciding to try another bar that Mikkel suggested. When we got downstairs, Lotte said she couldn’t walk very far because her knee was bothering her, and could we please go somewhere else. We walked to a few different places, all of which were full, so finally we went to Brittania, below McDonalds, and there were a few seats (luckily) in the non-smoking section. By this time though, the Dutch girls had decided that they would just call it a night. We sat around talking and drinking for a little bit and tried to think of some good drinking games, but no one came up with anything good that didn’t involve cards. I volunteered to run home and get my cards (it was only 10 minutes away), and as I was leaving, I tried to take the stairs 2 at a time, not realizing they were as steep as they were, and tripped in front of a group of people! Even worse, they spoke English, so I heard them say “well, someone has had too much to drink!” . . . oh man, how embarrassing! I had only had 1 drink!
I came back with the cards, and we nixed Mike’s idea to play Red or Black and instead played Ring of Fire, which is a game almost exactly like Kings, with one extra rule: if you break the ring of cards, you have to drink whatever is in the middle. This turned out to be a lot of fun, and we ended up learning quite a lot about Elliot and Mikkel through the never-have-I-ever part of the game. Finally, Brittania was about to close, so we migrated over to Bavaria. By this point, Mikkel was sufficiently drunk. The boys ordered bloody marys, Lisa got a beer, and I got something sort of fancy. As Elliot was shuffling the cards for our next game, Mikkel was mesmerized by the way he could move the cards and stated that it must be an American thing to be able to shuffle like that, because he’s never seen it before. Mike tried unsuccessfully to teach us another card game, and then finally we decided it was time to go home. As we were walking out, Mikkel jumped on Mike’s back and got a piggy-back ride out of the bar. Outside, we said goodbye and they wished us luck on our trip. Mikkel gave me an abnormally long, drunken hug and then we parted ways. I couldn’t wait for tomorrow!!

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