Saturday was perhaps the most interesting day to watch this perpetual ‘celebration.’ As I headed out of my flat with a couple of friends to head downtown, our next door neighbours were already setting up their chairs outside around a little table to prepare for their unending day of drinking. Along with the furniture outside, there were bags upon bags filled with different alcoholic beverages ranging from wine coolers to beer to even stronger liquor. I do not think that I have ever seen so much alcohol in my entire life outside of a liquor store, and I could not believe that they were planning on drinking it all. (Also, I could not help but wonder how much money had been spent to make this little thing possible…surely university students over here have to watch their budget as carefully as most students do in the States) Our neighbours kindly asked us to join them for a drink, but we refused and headed to our destination. Three hours later, as we arrived from our adventure in town, we were greeted by an impressive wall of empty bottles which was constructed of only a fraction of the alcohol that was left. I was astounded at how much they had already gone through, and even more astonished to see that they were still at it.
With so much alcohol in there system, it is safe to say that most of the people outside were quite trashed. At first, listening to the ramblings of somebody who has a bit too much to drink is rather amusing, but soon you find yourself wondering why on earth you are wasting your time hearing their ramblings. I heard a couple of interesting remarks from some of the Irish students about someone stealing their shoes (I am not sure if they ever found out who did it), but beyond that, nothing intelligible came of the conversations. I tired of their conversations, so I headed back inside until I was to go out and celebrate some of our friends’ birthdays that evening. Sure enough, when I came back out at six, they were still there with a few new faces sitting in the chairs and the wall of bottles having grown another few feet. It had been six hours since they had started drinking, and they were nowhere near being finished.
My final encounter with this never-ending get together happened about nine. As I was heading back to my flat with my flatmate Ginny, we were stopped dead in our tracks and ordered to sit down and drink. I grudgingly sat down but refused to drink anything (amazingly, their supplies had dwindled down to a few Budweisers, wine coolers, a two-litre bottles of Coca-cola). I introduced myself to the few remaining stragglers, and then, after sitting silently for about five minutes, headed up to my room. Since it was so quiet when I left, I thought that perhaps their day-long drinking expedition had come to an end, but it turns out that I had just been visiting when it was in a lull. A few hours later, and things were back in full swing. Luckily for me, I was already dead asleep in my room, so I could not hear a thing. How long it lasted after I fell asleep, I am not sure, but the remnants of the party still remained the next morning as there were bottles and food strewn everywhere. It was a disgusting mess! Quite a marked difference from the weekends I have spent at TLU.
