Seafaring Is Daring

This week many of my friends from my program decided to buy tickets for the Thames River Cruise offered through the City University Student Union. The night was to be themed "Casino Royal" (James Bond), so I went shopping yesterday to buy a black dress, gold heels, and a black/gold/pearl headband. (Very Theta, I know!) All of us looked great! Every girl was wearing a black dress and every guy was wearing a suit and tie.


We took the tube to Temple station right along the river at 7pm and arrived at Temple around 7:45. We walked across the street to the dock, and met up with everyone else from the program who was going on the boat as well. The thing to note at this point is that I randomly saw Paul Mancini - who I went to elementary school with - and he was visiting some friends in London for the weekend while he studied in Barcelona. So random and such a small world.


So we get on the boat and it was very fun. There were two levels, the first level was well lit with tables and a bar. The second level was darker with dancing and a bar but also a place to go out side. Here's a picture of the view of Parliament from the deck of the ship as well as me and some of my friends standing outside on the deck (it was really cold).




So we were all having a perfectly fun time aboard ship up until around midnight. At that point, two sketchy British guys came up next to me, Christine, and Haley and started talking to us. I immediately got up to go to the bathroom as an excuse. However, Christine stayed with Haley because Haley was feeling sick and laying on the bench that we were sitting on. The two guys were very drunk and perhaps even on drugs. They started harassing Christine and then even took a campaign bottle and purposefully sprayed it all over her. The bartender came over to stand up for her, and that is when tensions started to escalate. The sketchy guys were banished upstairs but came downstairs very soon after and started trying to hit on another girl named Vanessa on the other side of the room who also happened to be in our program. Some of the American guys in our program were around to witness all of what happened, and they started rallying together to help defend the girls against the sketchy British guys. The sketchy British guys started to get really aggravated, and after the boys in our program asked them to leave us alone and go somewhere else they refused. One thing led to another and a fight broke out involving a few guys. The bartenders clearly had no idea what to do, so immediately the boat was told to dock as soon as possible. The sketchy guys were carried off the boat as well as some of the American guys I hear (not ones that I know well...but since there were about 100 Americans there from our program and visiting, I'm sure I will find out who they were). Overall, it was a very upsetting ending to what started out as a fun night, and I made sure Christine got home safely and tried to take care of her when she felt responsible and hurt by what they said to her.



Now everyone is home and doing fine. I just wanted to write about this because it really helped my friends learn that some men in Britain do not act the same as American men when it comes to leaving women alone.