Oh The Places We’ll Go

Yes, I am aware that it has been over a week since I have last posted.  So sue me.  It has been a busy, crazy, wonderful, confusing, all of the above kind of week.  

I am officially 20 years old, which to people here means “I’m getting old”.  The only girl older than me that I live with is my roommate Laura, who turns 21 in the beginning of next year.  Everyone else is 18, and not being a teenager makes me old.  Before you know it I’ll be spouting wrinkles out of my face, my limbs will give, I’ll need a hip replacement, and I’ll just wear pajamas all day.

My birthday festivities were absolutely amazing.  I’ve had good birthdays before, but my birthday this year was far and wide one of the best birthdays of my life.  My parents managed to send me some gifts so it was like it wasn’t all that different from any other year.  Back in Santa Barbara I’d get a few cards and some little things from my parents.  I had thought I’d start feeling homesick around my birthday, but after I realized it’s just about the same as it would be in California, the feeling went away.  The girls in my flat and the Americans gave me a little surprise birthday party at midnight of the 29th/30th complete with cake, ice cream (mind you, it’s almost snowing outside), and a blow-up doll we dubbed William Wallace.  I wasn’t expecting anything so I was geniunely shocked they put so much effort into making my birthday all festive and fun for me.  I opened my parents gifts they gave me during my mini party: an Obama t-shirt and Obama bobblehead.  A little awkward opening them since 2 of the Americans are Republicans, but I was excited so I don’t think it really mattered much.

My actual birthday was… epic.  No exaggeration.  I had been planning on doing Pub Golf for about a month before my birthday had even come up in conversation after doing our last pub crawl.  Pub Golf essentially requires all participants to dress up like golfers and go around to 9 holes (pubs) and drink different drinks in a certain number of pars (gulps), aiming for the lowest score to “win”.  I had organized the whole thing: all the different Underground stops we were doing, the rules, the addresses of the pubs, the pars for all the drinks, and the drink progression.  We left the flat around 6:30 and headed down to Curlers for our first drink: Jaegerbombs.  I managed to round up 10 people for pub golfing, a good showing if I say so myself, so ordering 10 Jaegerbombs got me a strange stare but as we got drunker and stopped caring as much people were staring, all the insecurity about it faded away.

Jaegerbomb consumed, we hopped on the Underground, unable to lean or sit down while the train was moving (per pub golfing rules), swaying back and forth with the train until it got to the next stop.  One tequila shot, pint of Guinness, bottle of Corona, vodka lemonade, sambuca, white wine, blue girlie drink, and apple sour shot later, we landed on Buchanan Street properly drunk out of our minds, William Wallace in tow decked out in my Giants jersey.  Megan puked on the street.  We were refused from Waxy O’Connor’s (the 9th hole).  And I fell onto the street on Buchanan.  Twice.  Bruises to prove it.  To end the evening, and complete the course, we descended on Bar Buddha, who carry the most delicious strawberry cosmopolitans, and from there the rest of the night gets a bit fuzzy.  I spilled over half of my cosmo, somehow got someone to buy me another one, comforted a drunk girl in the bathroom, and took a cab home, falling asleep in my bed with all my clothes on.  I spottily remember the getting home part of the story, and still have no idea why I just up and left Buddha in the middle of the night.  It’s a mystery.

After the recovery, I stayed in and watched my first Warriors game of the season instead of tramping around for Halloween.  I’m pretty optimistic about the squad this year.  Nellie always does a good job with the team, and I feel like we’ve gotten bigger (height wise, of course), so the rebounding has gotten a lot better.  Still miss Baron Davis but the new guys have stepped up pretty well so far.  We’ve still got swagger and attitude, and that’ll do us well this season.  I’m amazed Matt Barnes is doing so well out in Phoenix.  He’s starting for them and scored something like 21 points last night, +18 differential.  Crazy.  Happy for him, though… Barnes was a good guy for Golden State just like Baron Davis.  No hate there.

It’s going to be a long day or two for me since I’ve slacked on my papers and have to get down and dirty with them.  It’ll be like studying for midterms: very very little sleep and pounding tons of information into your brain at once in a very short amount of time.  Luckily I did a good job today and have a focused topic for my paper (and an interesting one at that), so it shouldn’t be too painful tomorrow afternoon sitting down and just doing it.  

I’m going to post all of the pub golfing pictures to my flickr account so you can click over there if you want to oogle at the ridiculousness that was my birthday.

Hope things are well back in the States!

-Catherine