Everybody In The Club Gettin Tipsy

My third day at Lancaster began with a 2 hour orientation session. The session ended at noon and there was an optional library tour in the afternoon, but I wasn't really interested in doing that so instead I rounded up some people to go into town and do some more shopping. The group consisted of some of my new friends and fellow international students. There was Nate, who is Iowa I think. Dana, who is also from Iowa. Alexa, who is from America, but I forget where. And Ben, whom we call CT cause he is from Connecticut, although he goes to school at Boston College.

In town the first order of business was buying phones. We all got pay-as-you-go phones and I bought an international SIM card for mine so I can call home for cheap if I choose to. Phones in hand we walked towards the old town square, which has market days on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Passing all of the food stands pushed us over the edge and our focus shifted from shopping to food. The problem was where to eat. We probably spent 45 minutes walking around, eyeballing menus looking for something relatively cheap. We finally ended up going to a pub called Weatherspoons. The food wasn't bad and the price was reasonable. I did what I felt was required of me and ordered fish and chips. They weren't as good as Nine Irish Brothers or Claddagh back home, but still respectable.

After lunch it was back to shopping. I showed them the way to the store I had been to the day before and we all loaded up on things for our flats. The one major thing that we couldn't find, however, were blankets. It seems that blankets are not very common over here. Instead you use a duvet, which seems like the stuffing for a comforter. Nate and myself refused to accept this and we became obsessed with finding a normal blanket to replace the crappy duvet that came with our rooms. We walked all over town checking in various stores, but with no luck. Finally we ran into another international student who just so happened to have found a place that sells blankets. Taking his directions we worked our way back across town to this interior flea market. The results weren't exactly what I was hoping for. I ended up buying another duvet, but a very thick one cause I was tired of sleeping in all of my clothes to avoid freezing. By this time we were all exhausted and we headed back to campus.

Back at campus we all split up to unpack our stuff and prepare for the evening. I decided to give the shower another try and my flatmate was indeed correct. It was pretty funny having to take a shower completely crouched down. I headed out at about 7pm to join up with everyone at the Fylde bar.

The turnout for the evening was great and I got a chance to talk with a lot of people whom I didn't meet the night before. I snapped off a few pictures:



That is Rachel on the left and Annie on the right. They are both from America.



That is Nate on the left, next to him is Mark, and CT on the far right. I forget the name of the guy in green. They are all American as well.

After about an hour of talking and drinking we were invited to join our first pub quiz. My team consisted of half of the international students. We sucked but it was a lot of fun. After the quiz people started to talk about going for a night on the town. We loaded up the buses and descended on the quite city.

Our first stop for the evening was a bar called LA One. It wasn't anything super fancy and it was pretty small, but we still had a blast. The crowd was a good mixture of local and international students. I met a number of locals at this bar, including the captain of the women's ultimate frisbee club. She gave me some info about the men's team and it looks like my first practice will be Wednesday and I might be going to a tournament in Newcastle this upcoming weekend. I also got a beer bought for me for being one of the newbies. I was pretty psyched about that. I took a few more pics at this bar:



Thats Nate again. His smile reminds me of Jack Nicholson in The Shining.



The girl on the left is Alexa, and the other girl I think is Lauren, and there is CT again.

They rung the bell for last call around 11:50, so we all downed our drinks and bundled up to move to the 2nd stop of the night.

We ended up at a club called Cuba. It was quite a bit nicer than the first bar, but about the same size. I headed straight for the bar to resume my drinking and when I got there I noticed something odd. The same bartenders were working this bar. Then I noticed that the same DJ was here too. I'd never seen that happen before.

We drank and danced the night away at Cuba and then around 2am the crowd started to thin as people went in search of taxis back to campus. I ended up catching a taxi back with 3 friends: Torri, Mo, and Amanda. Amanda is from Kentucky, and Mo and Torri are locals. When we got back to campus we hopped out and Mo paid for the taxi and refused to let me pay him my share; the second display of generosity for the evening. I walked Torri back to her flat on the opposite end of campus and crashed, closing the book on a fantastic first night out with my new friends.