London & Greece - October 2002

Monday, October 14
Well, this week was interesting, cuz I was way sick for most of the time but I got to do some really cool stuff anyway, so it was a nice mix of good and bad. Well, first off, yeah, I'm more sure than ever that too much partying is NO GOOD. I was really sick on Monday, and then Tuesday, I was SICK. Hardcore sick. My Religion professor actually told me to go upstairs and go to sleep cuz I looked horrible and there was no way I was gonna profit from anything he said that day. I missed Great Books too. 2 classes missed, and trust me, absences when you're abroad hurt a LOT more than absences on campus. At least it was Tuesday. An absence on Monday or Thursday counts double.



Anyway, I slept most of the day, but I already had tickets to see John Mayer in concert that night, and I didn't care how sick I was, I wanted to go. There were 6 of us that went to see him, and they had a great time down on the floor. I knew I had to limit myself, so I went up on the balcony so I could sit down for the entire concert. I felt too shitty to really get into it, but it was still awesome. John Mayer is one of my favorites [ewwww, really??] but I gotta give him props, I had no idea he could be that incredible live. I give him way more credit now, just in terms of being a true musician, he is so good. Considering all the songs on his CD are mellow and kinda slow, he can SERIOUSLY rock out with the best of them! And who knew "Neon" could be such a great jam song? I was just very impressed overall. Plus, it was really cool to see someone you like at a tiny venue, there were only 300 people there maximum, and it was a nice little club. Very fun. Still, didn't help me feelin any better, so on Wednesday night, when a ton of people went to Student Nite at Ministry of Sound again, I exerted some much-needed self-control and let myself stay home and recuperate. Good for me! :)

Thursday night was crazy, cuz Southside Pub gives away 2 free pints of Guinness to everyone that gets there early enough, so we ended up getting 17 (!!!!) people from the house over to Southside and had a lot of fun. Some of you may not understand, we were very proud. To get almost HALF of a PEPPERDINE house to go drinking... it's an accomplishment. At least our Spiritual Life Advisor, Bryceson, thought it was! :) Haha! I never thought I'd see Bryceson in a pub in my life. Anyway, then Friday, the RAs were gone, so we got a little alcohol and played Categories in the law student lounge... talk about the craziest game of Categories EVER. Let's just say it involved me and 4 girls (and a sober Tina taking many pictures) and LOTS of nudity. I mean, everyone who was playing ended up at LEAST down to their underwear by the end, but there were a couple girls who were just full-on naked. And it's on videotape! So fucked-up, and so so so funny.

Then Saturday night, 4 of us went to Southside again cuz we were just really bored (damn, I didn't realize I drank 3 nights in a row... that's really unlike me), and I just would NOT stop drinking and got really wasted. We came back to the house at 11 and I was seriously like the only drunk person, and a bunch of us were in the computer lab, and I got to serve as everyone's entertainment for the evening, apparently, since I don't really remember half of it, but people keep saying shit like, "You made my entire week," or, "Dude, if you're gonna make out with Christine, don't lead with your mouth so open," or, "You fell down 6 times, I counted every one!" Ahh, good times.

Sunday I was supposed to write a Humanities paper all day, but of course the bulk of the work didn't get done till 2-4, only 6 hours before it was due. I couldn't help it though, "A Clockwork Orange" came on TV, and everyone was gathered round, and you know, for all the crap we spout about freedom of speech, America has a serious problem with censorship. I mean, we were able to watch the movie unedited, and it wasn't a movie channel, it was just regular British TV, with commercials and everything! Granted, it was between the hours of 10 and 1, which is late, but still. Sometimes I just think Europe has got it so much more right than we do, I'm gonna be very frustrated with certain things when it comes time to go home.

Oh yeah, and by the way, 4 of us went to YO! Sushi on Friday night for dinner, and if any of you ever come to London, you should try and eat there. It was so awesome. They have a little conveyor belt that moves around the restaurant and the food comes on little color-coded plates, so you can pick off whatever food you want as it rolls by, and you know the price by the color of the plate. Then there's a little robot cart that drives around the restaurant and you can grab drinks off it as it goes by, plus every table has its own water taps so you can constantly refill your own glass, and a help button as well, so you can call someone over in case you need your check or run out of soy sauce or some other such emergency. :) It was pretty cool.

Anyway, this week is gonna be crazy, cuz it's midterms week, plus we still have regular classes, as well as having a bunch of papers due, cuz the British professors who are teaching us don't know you don't assign big research papers to be due the same week as big exams. American students aren't as capable as British ones, apparently. But yeah, next weekend everyone will just be able to chill out and next week we go to GREECE! I'm so excited. Everyone is ready for a little break. Sometimes I forget that with everything else I write about, I never talk about the actual classes and work we're all shoving in there somewhere.

Monday, October 21
Well, this week was fairly uneventful. It was midterms week, so everyone just worked their asses off for the most part. Everyone just stayed up late nights and got stressed out and built up all this energy and then on Thursday night, everyone decided to celebrate at Southside. Too many Americans letting off that much steam probably wasn't a good thing. 6 of us were at the pub by 5:30 in the afternoon. I was personally drunk by 7:30. 4 pints usually does it for me (me being the pathetic lightweight that I am) but for some reason I decided to have 5 1/2 pints of beer instead. The last thing I remember is leaving the pub before it was even 8 PM. The next morning, I woke up, confused as hell, trying desperately to remember how I ended up in bed and what had happened after I left the pub. I have no memory at ALL, it is like I completely blacked out. So yeah, I asked around and it turns out that a bunch of people leaving Astronomy class at 9:00 found me passed out at the bottom of the stairway, right in front of the mailboxes and the office of the Program Director (empty, thank god). I felt so freaked that I am making sure never to drink more than 4 pints again. Apparently that's my limit. I'm glad I missed most of the evening though, cuz apparently there are some people in our house that caused some problems and now are really wary to go back to Southside again. They don't think the management wants them there. Then some other people, upon returning home, decided to start more potential drama. All in all, a nice cap to the stress-filled week. :-P

Friday night, we went clubbing at this place called Camden Palace, which is an old converted theater so you can dance on the stage and in front of it, and the terraces are designed to sit and lounge and dance some more. It's pretty cool. A bunch of people from the house went, including the guy RA, and he and some of the more Christian kids I think felt a little uncomfortable with the more rave-oriented atmosphere. But oh well. Me and the people *I* hung out with had fun!!! The rest of the weekend, we all just chilled and watched a LOT of movies, probably more than was healthy, hehe. :) Anyway, today was my only class of the week, and tomorrow morning we all leave for Greece for our field trip!

Monday, October 28
Ok, last week was fun. We had our house field trip to Greece (one of the most naturally beautiful places I've ever seen) and even though we all hated Pat, our tour guide, by the end (bcuz she would NEVER SHUT UP), we all had a really good time. Ok, well, I did anyway. We flew into Athens on Tuesday and checked into the hotel and I ended up playing Hearts all afternoon. Athens as a city really doesn't have much to it. That night, we all had dinner at this "traditional Greek restaurant" where they had Greek folk dancing and stuff. It wasn't very exciting, but the food was good.

Wednesday was when we actually started doing stuff. We visited the Acropolis with the Parthenon and everything, as well as the stadium where the first modern Olympic Games began, and I ran a lap there. Fun stuff. :-P Mars Hill was really cool though, it's next to the Acropolis, and it was just so beautiful in a weird way. On one side were all these rocks and really unique-looking trees, and I'm standing in a field literally surrounded by white butterflies, and then on the other side, there's dirty, ugly Athens. Very surreal. By the way, I've never seen so many butterflies in my life. They are everywhere in Greece. (I think it was mating season though.) We had lunch at the Agora, the marketplace, and it was really the only time we saw modern-day Greece in the 4 days we were there. We visited SO MANY ancient ruins, and yet I don't have much of a feel for what Greece is really like NOWadays. But oh well.

That evening, we drove to Delphi, and on the way there, we drove through this little village set into the side of a mountain called Arachova, and it was the definition of the word quaint. I seriously felt like I had been transported to another place, it was really cool. Delphi itself was BEAUTIFUL. Our hotel had this amazing view of valleys and mountains and water and cities and literally millions (!!!!!!!!!!!) of olive trees. At least the guide said there were 3 million trees in the really long valley, so I'll take her word. Delphi was fun, cuz I played a couple intense games of Mafia with the "good kids" in the house, while all of the people I normally hang out with played Truth or Dare. Hardcore Truth or Dare, too. I dropped in near the end, and boy, was I glad I missed the majority of it. On Thursday, we went to the ruins at Delphi and really, I can't say enough about how gorgeous Delphi is. It's pretty tight. [Omg, did I ever actually use the word "tight"?! How embarrassing.]


We drove to Olympia that night and stayed at the worst hotel ever. The staff HATED us and threatened to call the cops on us a number of times even though we barely did anything. That night was kinda bad. Me and my roommate Josh decided to actually get sleep that night, instead of getting only 3 hours of it (again) so we were about to go to sleep at like 2 and all of a sudden, wasted Bree is pounding on the door and 5 minutes after her come Rudabeh and K, and they were SO fucked-up. It was hilarious for a while, but then Kari and Summer showed up too, and then Bree and Kari stayed after everyone else left, and wouldn't leave, and passed out in our two beds, and when we tried to kick them out at 4:30, they got all bitchy. Drunk people can be so utterly frustrating.

Friday was easily the worst morning I had, just cuz of lack of sleep and cuz Olympia sucked. We saw more ruins and the stadium (if you can call it that) where the first ancient Olympic Games were held, but it didn't feel like anything new. That night, we went to Corinth though, and stayed at the coolest hotel ever. It was called the Kalamaki Beach Hotel, and we were right on the coast of the Corinthian Gulf, and it was so awesome. The water was actually AQUA, like a real green-blue, and super-clear. There was hardly anyone else staying at the hotel, so we practically had the run of the place, and it was really spooky in a way too. It was so fun. That was the one night I actually partied (as opposed to all 4 nights, which is what most of my friends did) and a bunch of us played Sevens, a really fun drinking game, and we all got FUN drunk. No one was stupid or annoying, we all just had a lot of fun, chilling on the mini-pier and whatnot. Although I went to bed about 20 minutes before everyone else, and I accidentally closed the door and immediately passed out, so when Josh came stumbling to the room, and pounded on the door futilely, he had to go next door and climb around the partition separating their balcony from ours. Keep in mind we're on the 3rd floor. I felt so, so bad the next day.

Saturday was our last day in Greece. We went to Epidaurus first and visited what is truly the coolest theater ever. It's ANCIENT, yet almost completely intact and the acoustics were incredible. I've never seen anything like it. Wednesday sang for all of us while we sat at the VERY top, and could hear her perfectly. Then we went to Mycenae, where there were even more impossibly beautiful views, and finally back to Athens and then back to London. It was really cool, and Greece is definitely a place that I need to go back to. Oh, and yeah, it was in the 70's and 80's the entire time we were there. Coming home to London and having it be raining and like 40 degrees was so not cool, but whatever.