Archaeology and Guinness

Yesterday I went to the first (of what promises to be many) archaeology orientations. UCL has an entire school devoted to archaeology; it's called the Institute of Archaeology. It even has its own library and Egyptian antiquities museum! All of the overseas students got together and had an informal tea and socializing session, which proved to be rather awkward. More often than not, I would ask a fellow student a question, and receive a barely discernable answer.
Example:
Me: "So what type of archaeology are you studying?"
Random person: "O I thinkiim gona mumble mumble....erm...."
Me: ???
But everyone seemed nice, and if they're interested in archaeology they have to be cool, right? Right.

So I signed up for my classes. I'm taking:
The Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
The Archaeology of Roman and Medieval London
The Archaeology of Near East, 2000-300 BC (this course talks about the Babylonians, Assyrians, etc)
Cognitive Evolution and Early Technology (this course is about how one can explain the rise of the cognitive mind in homonids based on early archaeological evidence)
Don't those classes sound awesome? I plan on nerding out big time. Plus, almost all of my classes (except for the cognitive one) involve museum visits. Yummy.

Speaking of yummy, my girl roommates and I went to a pub for the first time last night. We went to the Jeremy Bentham, which is right near UCL and is marked with a big wooden sign in the shape of Jeremy Bentham's head (He kind of looks like Ben Franklin). Everyone was standing outside the pub, but there were only a few people inside and sitting down. Strange. We grabbed a corner table. I started out by bravely ordering a Guinness. The other girls balked at my drink. "Do you have any girly beers?" they plaintively asked the bartender (and clearly making us look like clueless Americans). They got some beer called Hoegaarden.

My Guinness was in a huge glass, and it was black and opaque. The head at the top was more the consistency of cream than foam. I stared at, and it stared back. An hour later, I had only finished half of it. It was thick and it tasted good at first, but after a while it was too filling, and it left a bitter after taste in my mouth. I couldn't understand why I couldn't finish it. My grandparents knock back Guinness regularly, and my Dad even said it tastes like a chocolate shake. It doesn't. It's like a whole loaf of bread in a glass. Blehhhhh.

The barmaid cleared up my half-full glass. "You're not going to finish this?" she asked me incredulously. I smiled. "No, I'm done."
She didn't smile back. "You're really not going to finish this?"
"Sorry," I replied, embarrassed.
She took the glasses back to the bar, and the bartender looked over at me three times in the course of thirty seconds, giving me a look that read 'You're wasting a Guinness?'
Ouch. Apparently I had offended some people. I got the hell out of the pub.

My roommate and I are throwing around plans about going to Dublin next week. Will it happen? Stay tuned...