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Published: January 21st 2014
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The English are a lively, alcohol-loving people. One night at a pre-game I went outside to get some air and I was passed by a girl dressed as a cow, a boy dressed as a penguin, more than a few she-males, and a pack of Mexican wrestlers. While I stood watching them, trying to understand what I had just witnessed, a second pack made entirely of rugby players came thundering down the street, singing a drinking song. I thought to myself,
Why would I ever go back inside and miss all of this? Another great place to observe drunken behavior is a kebab shop. These culinary treasure troves are usually open until the wee hours of the night and offer anything from pizza and fried chicken to donner kebabs. One of my favorite parts of the night was getting chips and going to Maisie's house to talk about the night. Her place was much closer to our favorite kebab shop and by the time I got home my chips would be cold and soggy, so it was a great excuse to hang out some more. Hull has this amazing creation called chip spice; I have no idea what's in it,
but it's heaven.
More than once, I found myself in the role of babysitter. Most of the clubs that we visited were one room affairs, but there was one place in the city centre called Spiders that drove me up the wall. The club itself was a lot of fun, but trying to keep track of several of my drunk friends at the same time was a nightmare. I was like a Mama duck, constantly counting my chicks and chasing them through the club's ten rooms and two floors. I followed behind Maisie, apologizing when she stole someone's hat and laughing as we danced with our favorite Frenchmen.
The ISA hosted an international potluck at someone's house, and as a Texan I felt compelled to bring quesadillas. Never mind the fact that I was an entire ocean away from decent fajita meat and my greatest culinary talent was boiling stuff. Never mind that when I was sixteen I tried to make pancakes for my mom on Mother's Day and made them so large that I couldn't flip them over. Side note: you can't scramble pancakes. Don't even try it.
As it turned out, my biggest challenge wasn't
the tortillas or even the meat, it was the freakin' cheese. My only recognizable options were cheddar and mozzarella, which any decent Tex-Mex cook will tell you is completely unacceptable. Somehow I managed to make a passable quesadilla by pretending that it was a giant grilled cheese. They were a hit and I didn't take anything home except my plates. That night I tried quiche, Dutch mashed potatoes, Swedish/Finnish meatballs, genuine bratwurst hotdogs, and bruschetta, which Antonia taught me to properly pronounce. The highlight of the night was when we realized that since Rakesh was about to move into our open bedroom, he had a perfect excuse to ask for Mark-Nick's real name. Our little group was quivering with excitement, because of course Tia and I had told everyone how awful we were. We watched Rakesh bounce over to Mark-Nick with an outstretched hand and a grin on his face.
"Hi! I don't know if Kelsey and Tia told you, but I'm moving into the fourth bedroom in a couple of days. I'm Rakesh."
Mark-Nick smiled and shook the offered hand. "Lukas. Nice to meet you."
Poor Lukas. I don't think he ended up liking us very much, and I really don't blame him.
During this early period I also nearly set my room on fire. I hadn't quite got the hang of prong converters versus voltage converters, and during a dungeon raid on
World of Warcraft the socket that my laptop was plugged into went
POOF and started smoking. I was on Vent with my guild at the time, which lets you speak with people on the same channel, and I froze in shock.
"Gotta go, the plug's on fire," I said before logging off and yanking my laptop free. I waved the smoke away, convinced that I had ruined the socket or started a fire in the wall. Luckily it was just the voltage converter itself that had been smoking, and I didn't actually manage to kill myself and everyone in the house.
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