The Pub

I miss The Pub. In an abstract sense you understand, as opposed to any particular drinking hole.

I've been in America for a month as of tomorrow and I have yet to fully acclimatize to the social side of life at an American university. It's a Monday evening, early on in the term and I am at a complete loss as to how to fill my time. Ordinarily, back in good old Brighty the pub, with it's pool table, quiz machine, Guinness Extra Cold and delightfully moronic banter with the boys, would provide the perfect solution to such a problem. The library, its "quiet please" study room and Midnight-sodding-Mug coffee lounge, would not.

Before coming to Georgetown I did not envisage spending my nights in an IT lab watching downloaded episodes of last week's Neighbours but that, tragic as it sounds is what I'm doing. The alternative, which is to sit in my room and battle my way through Doris Graber's Mass Media and American Politics is even less appealing.

Weekend activities are, for the most part, equally as tedious. Largely involving treks around campus residences in the futile search for a house party worthy of note we occasionally step inside someone's house, accept a generously given red plastic cup (just like in the movies) of piss-weak lager and endure the drunken rantings (1/2 a shandy) of some preppy rich kid, embracing the novelty that we Brits provide.

I guess it's an age thing. In real terms I am typically only a year or so older than most of them but my drinking age is many times more than that. For me, drinking is a pleasurable activity in itself and not, as the majority of the kids here see it, as merely the vehicle to drunkenness. There is no room for the aforementioned drunken ramblings, inane wit and mutual ridicule; those things it seems, are left in the pub.