British Birthdays

Last night, we celebrated by flatmate's birthday, officially making hers the first birthday I've celebrated in the UK. I didn't know what to do so J and I headed to the grocery store and pretty much bought out the birthday section to decorate our flat with.

We got lucky and ran into everybody but Lauren (who's birthday we were celebrating) so we got to work on the kitchen.

And we were just finishing when Lauren walked into the room and we all temporarily lost our minds and screamed. I was kind of disappointed that we didn't get to blow bubbles and make lots of noise when she came in but hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

Afterwards, we all went out to go celebrate at some cute little pub about 3 minutes from where we live. All six people in our flat get along pretty well so we headed out together. Thankfully, it wasn't too cold or rainy so we got to lay off the umbrellas and heavy coats for a while. Apparently, the nice weather brought out all sorts of people and the normally reasonably-crowded pub we had anticipated turned out to be having a wildly popular Thursday night for no apparent reason. So, after growing alarmingly claustrophobic for about three hours, we decided to leave for the always mandatory late night meal.

The most popular kind of fast food joint around here are restaurants that specialize in fried chicken and curry and somehow, we managed to find a place that would welcome us with open arms at two in the morning. It was a pleasant experience at the time but fried chicken from this part of town is never a good idea. I spent most of the morning feeling like I had fallen into a life-size deep fryer. Not so nice.
At the time though, it sounded like a wonderful a wonderful idea. Don't we look like we're having a good time? Probably because this is pre-chicken. Just ignore the girl who looks like some sort of predator in the back. I was having a rough night.