24 December 2011

RAISIN WEEKEND.

Here it is: RAISIN WEEKEND.

My Raisin Weekend started in the afternoon of Sunday November 20 when I walked over to my Mum’s house for “tea”. Charlie combined our family tea party with her friend’s family, so there were a total of 10 children present. After a sufficient amount of drinks were consumed, the 10 of us were split into teams to complete a St Andrews scavenger hunt. Our team (me, Marcus and Mathilde) placed 2nd and as a reward for our efforts, we won a potato and a bottle of rum. Marcus was very pleased. From there we went to meet Graham and his friend’s family, where we were once again split into teams to complete a scavenger hunt (scavenger hunts are very popular on Raisin Sunday) before going to Graham’s friend’s house for the real party. This party was based on the British game show The Crystal Maze, so rooms throughout the house were transformed into the "zones" featured on the TV show, and drinking challenges were devised to fit the zones. It was all very elaborate, and very fun. After finishing the "crystal maze", Graham, Marcus, Mathilde and I kind of wandered around and joined in on various house parties going on in the town. At some point Marcus left and Graham, some of Graham's friends, Mathilde and I ended up in some guy's kitchen having our own little dance party. At this dance party, the song "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues came on, and I was so sad that Marcus wasn't there because he loves that song and often sings it when he's drunk. Singing any Pogues song while drunk is way more authentic anyway.

I had to get up the next morning bright and early to go round to my Mum's house again to get dressed up in our foam fight costumes. I was dressed up as R2D2, Mathilde was dressed up as C3PO and Marcus was dressed up as Chewbacca. We had some of the best costumes that day. Also, our Dad gave us our Raisin Receipt(s). Normally on Raisin Monday, your Dad is supposed to give you an object in exchange for a "pound of raisins" (this has now devolved to a bottle of wine), and this object is often very cumbersome and awkward and has something in latin written on it. Graham gave us a really cute sign that had all of our pictures on it and said "United One Under Graham", referring to the fact that all five of us children come from different countries. Also, because we're not allowed to keep our Raisin Receipts, Graham got little tokens for each of us that represented each of the countries that we're from. We had to choose a country other than our own at random, and then we would receive the item associated with that country. I chose Northern Ireland as my country, and I got a little styrofoam rocket launcher. I love it. It is so much fun to play with. Marcus chose Canada (where our sister Debbie is from) and got a black teddy bear, Mathilde chose England and got a model Spitfire plane, and Debbie and Alanya weren't there, so they got stuck with the other two, a chef hat for Denmark (Danish pastries...a stretch I know) and a baseball with Obama written on it for America.

We then proceeded to Sallie's quad bearing our Raisin Receipt and sporting our lovely costumes, and got in to the foam fight to find that we had definitely missed peak foam fighting hour. No matter, we still walked out of there COVERED in foam.

All in all it was an amazing weekend, and confirmed that St Andrews is where I want to be. I love both of my families--biological and academic--and love you all for being so patent in waiting around for me to feel like writing new posts to put on here.

Thank you, and have a very merry Christmas.

--Rachael

PS. View photo highlights of Raisin Weekend here!