Bonjour mes amis!
Comment vas-tu? Je suis bien mais je me sens tres inondé avec tout! <-- my French is FINALLY coming along, just not as fast as I would have hoped. I think I'm going to have to walk around Togo with a French dictionary in my hand lol. Unfortunately I'm just not going to have the time to complete the 40 hours of French the Rosetta Stone people requested which sucks 'cause its a great program (not incredibly easy to use though). I'm certainly going to try and get as many hours as I can though...
Anyways, these past few weeks have been CRAZY! So many amazing things have happened, yet work has been uber hectic. Just in the past week, I've had around 10 new cases come in to my region alone! In addition to that, I spent the early half of last week juggling meetings and phone calls associated with three of my kids in the pipeline who are SOO close to being on a plane to the US. Oh and did I mention, this past Friday we spent the whole day rearranging three of our offices (including mine!) so with that move came not just moving furniture but disruptions in our e-mail and phone system! I am really glad this morning to be at my new desk with a functioning phone line and e-mail system that still recieves mail. I can't believe this Thursday is my last day. I am really sad to be leaving and am truly going to miss everyone in the office. I have learnt SOO much these past 5 months and grown a lot professionally too. But at the same time I am happy to be done with work because now I can focus on getting prepared for Togo full-time (well at least after I get back from Costa Rica...)
So yea, what have I been up to these past few weeks? Here are some highlights:
- Beer Olympics 2008 - Props to the Pi Rho Gamma house to sponser again the 2nd annual Beer Olympics. My friends Patrick & Katie (Team Ireland) graciously invited several countries from around the world to compete in 5 grueling competitions of flip cup, beer pong, quarters, cornhole and triathalon. My friend Stoner (*clarification* her first name is Deborah but we all call her by her last name) and I decided to go as Team Colombia since Team India, my obvious first choice, was stolen by another group. Since we were supposed to dress up in traditional costumes from our country, naturally I decided to go as a Colombian Druglord and Stoner was my beautiful trophy wife. The costume turned out more ridiculously awesome than I could have ever hoped for. I even had condoms filled with "cocaine" and spent most of the night with "blow" around my nose. Even though Team Colombia didn't win any medals, apparently I won the best costume of the evening :)
- Greek Sing - I don't know how we did it but somehow we managed to place 1st place (well okay, it was a tie with Delta Chi) in Greek Sing this year! Oh yea, AND get disqualified...for a 2nd year in a row! But it's okay, we did everything we could to get disqualified and as long as the audience enjoyed it, we are happy. The show was amazing and I have to give kudos to AJ and the rest of the brothers who helped write the script. Joe dressing up as Buck was the highlight of the whole show, even the real Buck gave Joe a standing ovation! I'm impressed with how many "non-kosher" things we did on stage...playing Moose...the Girls 'R Fun backdrop...oh and the hazing of a pledge...lol over all a great show. And what makes out win that much sweeter is the fact that we won Mock Rock in the Fall so we basically dominated and pulled a sweep with 1st place finishes in both Mock Rock AND Greek Sing in the same school year (and we got disqualified for both!).
- Bon Voyage Party - Thank you to EVERYONE who came out for my rockin' party. Dinner was wonderful and it was SOO great to see all my underage friends lol. What was SUPER amazing was that my sister Shilpa surprised me by coming down for my party! I hadn't seen her since January, before I knew where I was heading and I didn't think she would be able to make it down to see me before I leave since she's in her first year of residency up in West Virginia. But she came down and I am SOOO happy I got to see her. Anyways, dinner @ Amore was good but then we all headed to CosmoLava for more fun where I had pre-reserved my very own VIP room. I mean when else would I have a reason to rent out a VIP room right? But yea, CosmoLava was uber fun and thankfully everyone had a great time. I even had some surprise guests in the forms of Johnny & Marilyn and Nathan. My bartender, Angel, was incredibly gorgeous and at some point in the evening I ended up with her number and e-mail address, though I can't remember why (whatever, just roll with it right?). Apparently I didn't go to bed until around 4AM but after 1AM, things got hazy for me...All in all, a GREAT night!
- Graduation - So the graduation weekend was insane. Technically, in the span of 36 hours I was invited to 4 graduation parties, one surprise birthday party and one end-of-school party! I'm so popular :) Since I was just starting to get sick and I didn't want to wear myself out before my birthday, I ended up attending the graduation party for my good friend Lori on Friday at Fado's, the graduation party for my good friend Lily on Saturday at her house near Emory, the graduation party for my good friend Patrick at Gordon Biersch, and finally the surprise birthday party for the girlfriend of my fraternity brother Benji. All in all it was a pretty insane weekend. Fado's was fun. The bar moved to a new location a block away and although the building is nicer and bigger with a LOT more space, I actually am not a huge fan since the bar lost a lot of its irish quaintness. Too bad. My friend Lily's party was quite ridiculous. Due to family connections with Tech, not only did Buzz and the Ramblin' Wreck make an appearance at the party, but so did the Georgia Tech Marching Pep Band!!! How ridiculous is that!?! It was a great party and nice to chill with a different group of friends. Gordon Biersch was awesome as well and it was nice to just chill with everyone over some really good beer. Finally Mike and I headed over to Marlow's to meet up with Benji, Kaylee and her Phi Mu sisters. After singing happy birthay and pre-gaming for a bit, Benji, Kaylee, Mike and I headed to Moondogs. I'm really glad we ended up there because I hadn't been to Moondogs in forever and I wanted to go one last time before leaving for Africa, particularly since this would be my last time to be there and not be sketchy (Moondogs is definitely a college bar with lots of drunk underage girls. If you are over the age of 27 and at Moondogs, you're pretty much sketchy). So yea, Moondogs was fun...but not as fun as last year when I actually recognized at least half the people there. I guess that's what happens as you get older. A fun night nonetheless...
- Cinco de Mayo - so after two crazy nights of partying, I had to go one final night on Monday as not only was it Cinco de Mayo, but it was also my 23rd birthday! It was wierd because usually I countdown to my birthday, but for the first time in a long time, I wasn't super pumped about it. It just kinda happened and then it went. I guess after the excitement of turning 18 and the not-remembering turning 21 and even the "let's celebrate the 21st, second time around" for 22, nothing really exciting happens when you are 23. The next exciting birthday will be 25 (which will be wierd as it'll happen in Africa) and then after that its my 30th birthday (okay let's not think about that...). Anyways, the night was fun. Even though we had to wait 2 1/2 hours for a table at El Azteca (we had a group of 15 people) the wait was filled with margaritas, tequila shots and lots of fun. A friend of mine, Laura, shares a birthday with me and it happened to be her 21st birthday so my friends and her sorority sisters all hung out together and had a great time.
Okay so that pretty much sums up the highlights of the past few weeks. A few more fun things have happened but I won't bore you with the details. It's been crazy fun and many good times were had. Time is slipping away faster than sand in an hourglass and I can't believe that in a few short weeks, I'll finally be on African soil. There is so much to do but it's gotten to a point where I just have to take it one day at a time. I leave for Costa Rica in a few days and I can't wait. Till the next time I have time to post...
à bientôt,
-Nikhil
