I never drink water; that's the stuff that rusts pipes.

People here drink a lot. I’m tempted to just leave this blog at that, since it sums up the message pretty succinctly, but I’ll continue with some anecdotes and ramblings because I’m still a little jetlagged and wont fall asleep for another half hour at least. And when I say people here drink a lot, I don’t mean, “whoa, those uni kids can play, like, a bajillion games of flip cup.” This is more of a nation-wide, state-sponsored alcoholism that people just choose not to confront. My dorm is attached to the pre-med campus (which is also a very reputable hospital, Guy’s Hospital, and the ambulance bay ten stories below my window occasionally wakes me up at 4 am, probably with victims of an alcohol related accident) and a bunch of the science-y kids came back from their first day of classes with horror stricken looks. Not because the classes were hard, but because there is a pub attached to the hospital, which the doctors flock to during their breaks and lunch hours. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against someone kicking back with a cold one after a hard day’s labor, but a pub in a hospital sounds like a comically (tragically) bad idea. And when English people drink, they drink. It’s not like the binge culture of American Universities, with the super-intense drinking from 10-12 and then seeing who can make it until the wee hours of the morning, it’s more of a constant deluge. I went to visit my British friend and his group of other Londoners for brunch and they started drinking the moment everyone arrived and didn’t let up until we left at around midnight. With these guys, it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. When they turn sixteen or so (the legal age is 18, but if the drinking laws are universally disregarded by Americans how do you think the far more tolerant limeys are going to respond?) they hit the bottle, and with them it tends to be love at first taste. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out English people are buried with a pint of Carling. But it’s just a different atmosphere. Most of the English kids I’ve hung out with I could probably drink under the table, and I’m a D3 drinker. They wouldn’t last a night at the University of Wisconsin, because they don’t know how to respond to “sprinting” style drinking. They drink massive amounts, but over vast periods of time. Also, there are no drinking games or any sort of peer pressure. They don’t drink kegs of Bud Light, they drink bottles of dark, flavorful beer in a really relaxed way. They drink alcohol the same way they drink tea, it’s more of an appreciation than drinking just to get drunk. I like it, but it takes some getting used to. And I miss pong ☹ It’s not uncommon to see people staggering the streets drunk at 11 o’clock on a Tuesday, but they’re usually foreign (American), and the English give them a chuckle and a wide berth. And damn straight, because it’s funny as hell. Well, it’s 4 a.m. and the ambulance siren is going off. seriously, I wrote that first half at 2:30 then took an hour and a half break to see if it was possible to watch Jersey Shore online in the UK. It isn’t. And now the ambulance is actually going out at 4:07 a.m. I’m gonna test to see if I’m a prophet or just got lucky...the sun will come out tomorrow…the sun will come out tomorrow…the sun will come out tomorrow…