Good morning, good afternoon and good evening readers,

Whenever I have been out the night before, the next morning I always feel like on of those D-List celebrities that have just left rehab. Sunglasses on, fingers pointed up in the peace sign and walking with the request of “No photos please, no photos”. Fortunately, there weren’t any paparazzi outside my flat today, just the usual onset of elderly men staring at me as though I were from another planet. To be fair, they’re not wrong.

No one turned up to English Club because of the protests. I’m not sure why we even organised it. We even bought biscuits, English tea and milk. Absolute fools, we are! We decided to leave the meeting room to go and watch the speech of the oppositions party leader. Amy had found a live English translation on the ol’ Google. BAZINGA! It was a peaceful crowd and it was nice to actually be able to understand what was being said. I mean I don’t want to blow my own trumpet but uh… TOOT TOOT I’m pretty much a political scientist now.

Once the speech had finished we went and met a Japanese man that we had met previously in a bar. My oh my, am I glad that we did. What an absolute belter of a night. He had bought some of his friends along, all of which were from different places around the world and interesting in their own right. Buzzy intellectual conversations were flying around the table. I’m a child psychologist, BAT. I’m a street dancer, BAT. I love anime, BAT. I’ve travelled the world, BAT. BAT, BAT, BAT, BAT, BAT. I was always anxious that there would be a humour barrier when a language barrier was present. However, I was most certainly wrong. The banter was ripe and these guys were bloody hilarious. We raised a glass to our meeting and the Armenian man gave a genuine speech:

To all of us gathered here from different countries, I am extremely grateful for our meeting. Before nationalities and languages, we are all human and we are connecting right now, just as that.

Oh jeez, these guys get me in the ticker every time! It was so true though and the night continued just as it had started. On to the next venue my friends!

Two English girls, two Japanese men, an Armenian man and woman and an Iranian walk into a bar…

We get the beers in and then head straight to the dance floor for some good ol’ fashioned boogy woogy. It wasn’t really a dance floor, more just a space next to some tables. Perhaps, this is why the other people in the bar were staring at us. I’d have liked to have thought it’s because we are such a cool bunch of people, but we looked more like a multicultural cast of The Inbetweeners. All complete with our own set of awkward and unique dance moves. We danced for hours, talked politics, practiced speaking Armenian, rapped to Eminem and just had a bloody good laugh. Oh what a night. Amy and I had only meant to go out, but we had ended up out out and were loving every second. You could tell that we weren’t planning to go out out from the material shopping bag we had, which contained a pint of milk, some biscuits and English tea bags.

The night ended and we all departed. I hope that we will meet again soon. Friendships in an instant and all that. One of the Japanese guys said something really beautiful to Amy as we left the bar.

He turned toward her, looked at her with deep focus and said:

“Your bag doesn’t match your outfit”.

Golden.

In kindness,
C x