Reverend Green...In the Kitchen...With the Recurve

Here are some photos of our flat's kitchen. In its defense, these were taken the morning before cleaning day. That being said, while the surfaces are looking rather grimy, there are more clean dishes than I have seen all week. Apparently the concept of washing the dishes as you use them has not reached my freshman flatmates. They put the exchange students in with the "freshers" so that they can have all the newbies in one spot. It's a bit like living in Jewett as an upperclassman, minus the S.A. responsibilities. You want to sleep, they want to party in the hallway at 4:15 am. You spend your Tuesday night studying, they spend it getting wasted and attacking unsuspecting flatmates like Harry with shaving cream and tea. Last night was quiet, though--I think classes are finally starting to catch up with them. And I still love living in this flat most of the time--just not at 4 am on Tuesdays.

The main drink of choice--not when we go out, but when we're pre-funking the bars (yes, they pre-funk the bars), is orange squash and vodka. It's about the color of Mountain Dew. When I first heard this, my initial reaction was "Eeew!" Orange, squash, and vodka? I mean, I knew English taste buds were reputed to be bad, but surely not that awful. Seeing the revolted look on my face, Ben offered me a sip of his. It actually tasted pretty decent. After some roundabout conversation of "I can't believe you put squash in a drink, but it tastes good" and "I can't believe you've never had a squash and vodka," we figured out the culture gap. "Squash" is highly concentrated juice. Yes, there is regular juice here, but it is much more common to buy squash. Orange squash, apple squash, grape squash, etc. You put a thimbleful at the bottom of a tall glass, fill 'er up with water, and voila! It doesn't much taste like real orange juice, but it certainly is cheaper and more space-efficient.

On a separate note, I learned that in the original, English version of Clue (called "Clue-do"--our name is definitely better), Mr. Green was actually Rev. Green. When the board game hit U.S. markets, the manufacturers changed it to Mr. Green so as to not offend U.S. audiences. You learn something new every day.

The SocMart was yesterday. In the UK, you do not have clubs, you have societies. SocMart is the society fair, where every club gets a table to market their group. Kassy (the other American in my flat) and I joined the International Student Society, or ISS, and archery society. ISS (my idea) takes the exchange students on weekend trips and throws parties and movie nights. Archery club (her idea) is a lot more legit than the U.S. ones. We had our first meeting yesterday afternoon. The coach corrected some of my bad shooting habits that I'd gotten from just doing archery by myself, and I met some nice people. Richard, for example, started archery a couple of years ago. When one of the girls (Rhyannon--she's got her own fancy-schmancy bow and does competitions) pulled a Robin Hood and split one arrow with a second, I discovered that Richard knows next to nothing about Robin Hood. Neither do several of the people in archery club. I'm taking this as an excellent sign that I'm not hanging out with weirdos, i.e. they like archery for the merits of the sport, not because it helps them live out their 24/7 Renaissance Fair fantasy. They like giving each other guff about bad shots, not throwing out words like "touche" and inclining their heads like they're a bunch of pompous 16th-century earls. Reason #1 why I quit Whitman's fencing club.

I need to dash off to class, but I'll post more later.