Drunks All Around

So tonight was our high table dinner with Michael Adams, and it was ranks high on the list of most entertaining nights since I've been here. First, he gave a speech about the increased number of university students choosing to study abroad (from 3% of the graduating class in 1997 when he started to now 30%) and made connections between Oxford University and the University of Georgia. He really did his research about Oxford and dutifully noted that it's much older and a bit more prestigious than UGA.

Then after a short question and answer session (mostly students asking about the progress on Tate 2, the expansion of the current Tate Student Center), we headed out on the lawn for champagne and general chatting before dinner. This was great because the girls I sat with had three glasses of champagne each and held their own while talking with the president. I was impressed. But their relatively stable facades quickly disappeared at dinner when they served both red and white wine with the chicken. I forgot just how entertaining drunk people can be until tonight! The most interesting conversations can come out of these encounters.

"Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony." -Robert Benchley

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." -Ernest Hemingway

"Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine." -Isaiah 5: 11

"Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune." -Dr. Thomas Fuller

"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading." -Henny Youngman
-quotes courtesy of www.quotationspage.com

I think what makes this experience so intriguing is how UGA's infamous drinking culture made its way across the pond to one of the most distinguished universities in Europe. To some extent, I think UGA students are isolated from the rest of the Oxford community -- we live, eat, and attend classes within the gates of Trinity College, so it's easy for us to immediately feel at ease in our own little section of town. And with this comfortable atmosphere (and a lower drinking age) comes the desire to drink. A lot. So while part of me was surprised when my classmates decided that going out to pubs every night was a good idea, the larger part of me subconsciously (and now consciously) expected it.

Today was also interesting because we watched The Motorcycle Diaries in my journalism class. This isn't a movie I'll run out and rent and/or buy, but it was very interesting. It told the story of two best friends (Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Alberto Granada) from Argentina traveling by motorcycle (obviously) through South America on their way to work at a leper colony. Along the way, they meet so many people who have lost everything they had, been kicked off their own land, or by some other unfortunate circumstance become dependent upon their neighbors for survival from one day to the next. Ernesto's letters and diary entries help narrate their adventures along the way and show why he opted not to be a doctor and help lead the Cuban Revolution later in life. Here's a good quote from Ernesto toward the end of the film:

"Even though we are too insignificant to be spokesmen for such a noble cause, we believe, and this journey has only confirmed this belief, that the division of American into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race from Mexico to the Magellan Straits. And so, in an attempt to free ourselves from narrow minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a united America."

Tomorrow in class we'll be discussing the answers to this question: "What can you, a child of capitalism, learn from an icon of communism?" Should be interesting. :)