9 Oct -- Woke up early expecting to go to the market. So I just hung about my room for a long while until I started to wonder where Alice was. At about two o'clock I called my mom and we talked for a while. Afterwards, I went to knock on Alice's door. She was home and said that he had to catch up on work and do her laundry so she just didn't go. She also didn't feel like it because she had stuff to do. I said all right, come get me when you are really going to go.
Then I took a shower and went to bug Oscar, who was majorly hungover. So he didn't want to go shopping. Then I took a bit of a chance and knocked on Marianne's door. Marianne is from Norway and I met her a few times and our personalities seemed to mesh in just the right way, you know? I asked if she wanted to go shopping, and she said she was studying before a small dinner party she was having because a friend of hers was in town. And because we were getting along, I got my things to study myself and we studied in her room for a few hours.
Yes, I studied. Amazing!
I joined Marianne and Syria* to Tesco where they bought the materials for the dinner. While we were shopping, they asked if I wanted to join them for dinner. I said I would love to, thank you for asking! And we had a blast.
Dinner was at 8.30p and consisted of baked salmon and vegetables and some noodles. Kieron from Ireland was in the kitchen as it was cooking and he came back in after we finished eating. We gave him a glass of wine and the six of us talked for a while. Kamina left because she had to get some studying done, then it was the five of us and four bottles of wine.
The Irish are big drinkers but so are the Danish. Nina and Kamina are originally from Denmark, Syria and Marianne from Norway, Kieron from Ireland, and me the American. Every time Kieron finished his glass, Marianne reached over and refilled it. The wine was mostly gone by midnight, about the same time we thought we should get going if we were going to go out tonight. But no one made the effort to start leaving the table just yet. We were also depressed because London stops selling alcohol at 11:30p (which the Scandinavians complained about because stops doing everything so early compared to Denmark!). That was the time we needed more wine.
Sometime during the night, Oscar came in and wanted me and Kieron to join him in watching a sad movie in Lynn's room on the sixth floor. The movie was My Sister's Keeper and the ploy was that Kieron and I were to help him carry cushions and pillows to Lynn's room. Except, it could have easily been done with just two people. Kieron complained about carrying Oscar's stuffed T-Rex and his stuffed bee, which I could have easily carried up despite the blanket and couple pillows I had. We returned to the first floor kitchen because at that time, there was still wine to be drunk. Free wine for Kieron, I might add.
We talked about Danish politics and the wars we mostly learned about in each of our countries. Once the movie was done, Oscar joined us. He asked if the US felt like we bailed out the world, and I said no. There was the Depression, and then the isolationist way of thinking, and then Pearl Harbor, and that's how we got into the war. I told them about the conspiracy theory that Pearl Harbor was planned just so we can get into the war. I also told them that we fought on two fronts because there was the Japanese on the Pacific and we also sent over troops to Europe. But before that, we were trying to be neutral but we were really sending supplies to the Allies. Also, WWII is when women workers took over the factories because all the men were fighting. Oscar said, "Oh, you guys did that too." Yep, we did.
Also talked about the education system differences. In America, there's something graded almost every week that has to be done. In Britain, it's not the case but the quality of the work is higher than it is in the States. In Denmark, the work is more similar to the States in that there is more to do, but the quality is actually really high. So I would have been shocked if I went to Denmark for a semester instead of London. Comparing Denmark to London, there's not a lot to do, but the girls were keeping up their normal quality of work. Good for them.
We talked a little bit about religion. In that the Irish will declare being Catholic, but a vast majority of the population doesn't practice it. It's the same in Denmark but they're all Protestants. Although Nina and Kieron admitted to being atheist, Nina did say that she liked the idea of an all encompassing spirit or something. That idea can neither be proved or disproved. And then we talked about the reason of religion and why can't people just accept the fact that we don't know everything about the universe just yet. But wait, religion is a fine way to keep a community together.
And that somehow got us onto Hitler. Nina, Syria, Marianne, and assumably Kamina (though she was gone by this point) all study psychology. Nina would love to do a psychoanalysis on Hitler because he is a fascinating character. Yes, he was evil, but he could do so much with just his words. If we grew up during that time in that area, we might have been part of his followers.
And the conversation moved on from one topic to another like they always do. I left at around three in the morning because my eyes were bloodshot and I could barely keep myself awake. Part of it was the wine. I get sleepy when I get tipsy.
Woke up around 11a, good for me. Talk to you later!
* Truthfully, I don't know if this is how you spell her name. But it's spelled how it sounds to me, so that should be enough.
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