Friday Night, Saturday Afternoon

So last night CTLS held a little cocktail dinner thing to conclude our first week. I sat with an Italian girl named Maria, a Swiss girl named Diane, an Australian guy named Ari, and two professors: one from Israel and one from Singapore (though he isn't Singaporean, he's French Canadian). Because of the way the seating was set up, I ended up talking a lot to the two professors, which felt a little unfortunate, but they were pretty interesting. We talked a little bit about Israel, and I could tell the Israeli professor was pretty liberal - I noted that I'd read that Barack Obama might want to initiate low-level diplomatic talks with Hamas, and he seemed to be in favor of that. We also talked a lot about America, and about their travels, etc.

After that, a big group of students decided to go out somewhere, and somebody led us to a club, which I think was called Sway. It was kind of dance club-y, though sort of lame. I think many of us would have preferred a pub, but this was okay, I guess. I took a few pictures there:

On the left, an Italian guy named Giancarlo; on the right, the Italian girl I had dinner with, Maria.

Left to right: me, Spanish girl named Isabel (I think), Swiss girl named Diane.

The girl on the left is a Singaporean whose name I don't know, the girl on the right is an Australian named Hannah.

So then we went home, and today I went with some people living in the student housing to a little restaurant down the street from us called The Well, which was delicious. Another Georgetown girl and I got tarts with goat cheese and carmelized onions and stuff, which was wonderful. Others got fish and chips, which looked good, and one guy got this sausage and mashed potatoes thing that looked amazing - if we go back there, that's what I'm getting (giving up the vegetarianism during my stay here, I think).

And that's been the weekend so far. I want to do some touristy stuff, but it's quite cold here, so I think that stuff might get put off until it gets a little milder. We'll see.