Apparently the Marine House is in love with me. The house itself, mind you, not the marines, although that is possible as well. This has to be the case because it kept trying to take my clothes.
I came in five layers, as it was damn cold that night. All the jackets and excess layers were being dumped in the weight room, so I followed suit, going into the party proper with a tee-shirt and a fleece pullover. When I found myself on the dance floor later that night, I took off the pull over and put it on a little shelf that people were stacking drinks and clothes on. When I went back for it fifteen minutes later, it was gone. This was annoying, but I assumed someone had grabbed the wrong one and it would show up.
Later in the evening, Carrie and I made a water run to the local supermarket as we didn't want to pay the high prices inside. When I went back up to the party, I was wearing the tee-shirt and another layer: a black sweater.
Now, when I found myself back on the dance floor, I thought I had learned my lesson and knotted the sweater around my waist. But a knot on your pelvis is not a good thing to have when you are dancing with girls, so finally I spied an area where people had their purses and sweaters, put it aside and told myself not to move five feet from that spot.
I didn't move five feet from that spot, but when I turned a few minutes later, the sweater was gone.
I was getting annoyed at that point. There wasn't much to do about it, though, so I kept dancing and talking to people, but now made it a habit to check the spots of both clothing thefts every ten minutes. Did Ukrainians just like to walk off with people's clothing? Did the house have some sort of crush on me and wanted a memento?
As is, twenty minutes later another check found my fleece pullover back at the spot where it had dissapeared. Another twenty minutes after that, I my sweater reappeared. Both went downstairs to the weight room with my other sweater and jacket. Finally, all accounted for.
Except, at the end of the night, when we all went down to get our stuff, I found that my scarf was gone. We searched every bit of clothes in a 20 foot radius of where my jacket and layers had been, but no luck. I was too tired to bother with it anymore, and we left.
So the house finally got something to remember me by.
The home theatre room
The party in full swing
A good pic of Teresa and a not-good pic of me
Pimpin' with Vanessa
At the Bratislava hotel, chillin' with Susannah, Paty and Amy
Kyiv under snow
Some kind of festivity in Shevchenko park
Me, Carrie, an ice sculpture of a cossack, Steve and Lisa
I think the sphinx is going to eat that kid