That’s all it did. It rained. We went to a cafe and did some work and slipped “home” early for a dry, cozy night in. We went to sleep not long after, and then in the middle of the night, the lights were flipped on, and our host was standing before us as we were blinking sleep out of our eyes, while swayed, asking if we could move, so him and his roommate could eat dinner and watch tv.
It was 3:30 in the morning.
I sat up, briefly, wondering if this was going to be the couchsurfing experience that my cousin, Amy was afraid of. Then I realized, he was drunk. Wasted. Yet harmless, and so was his roommate. I laid back down on my couch and shut my eyes, hoping they would lose interest, turn off the lights, and go to bed instead of hanging out in the living room, where we were trying to sleep.
Andrew, on the other hand, shook himself awake, sat up, and humored our host. He is a champion. Andrew, not our host. I listened as Andrew told them both what we did during the day.
“DO YA WANT SOME CHIPS AND CHICKEN?” Our host’s roommate yelled. I heard Andrew respond that he was ok. If my eyes were open, they would have rolled. We were asleep, no, we don’t want to eat chips and chicken. It was nearly four. in. the. morning. And we’re only three feet away from you. Why are you yelling?
It’s since become a huge inside joke between me and Andrew, yelling to each other in our ridiculous attempts to do a South African accent “DO YA WANT SOME CHIPS AND CHICKEN?”
Andrew explained how we went to a cafe, how I wanted to try to catch up my blog about our trip… and that the weather really kept us indoors…
“YOU DIDN’T GO TO THE BEACH? WHY DIDN’T YOU GO TO THE BEACH? DON’T YA LIKE THE BEACH? IT’S WONDERFUL. YOU CAN WALK ALONG THE BOARDWALK, THERE’S ALL SORTS OF CAFES AND SHOPS… IT’S THE BEACH! GO TO THE BEACH!” The roommate continued yelling.
Andrew, again, tried to explain that it was raining all day. We like the beach. We’d love to go to the beach. When it’s not raining… Eventually the roommate lost interest, or was full of his CHIPS AND CHICKEN! and went to bed. Our host took that as his cue to sit down with Andrew and have a heart to heart about how much he wants to travel and a lot of other possibly too personal things to share online. (This has happened before, where people we meet along the way seem to be intimidated by the fact that we’ve been, and will be traveling for awhile longer. This seems so silly to both me, and Andrew. As wonderful as this adventure is, there have been hiccoughs (like tonight?) and sometimes we miss the “normal.” It’s an adventure. A wonderful one. But it is a challenging one. Dude owned his own restaurant. Bottom line: grass is always greener.)
Anyway, his heart to heart somehow included showing Andrew his camera and taking pictures of me (trying to sleep) with the flash on. I reminded myself we were sleeping on his couch for free and continued to pretend I was asleep. He talked for awhile. Andrew listened and agreed with everything that he said, playing along.
“He was just drunk…” Andrew came to his defense the next day as I shook my head in complete awe that the night happened. Until now, we have had a flawlessly wonderful experience with couchsurfing, and while this experience wasn’t the worst experience ever, it is now the story we tell when we’re asked if we’ve had a bad experience.
“I don’t know if I should admire you or think you’re an idiot for how patient you were!” I told Andrew. He explained how he’s done this before. Humored good (but very inebriated) friends when they have no control over themselves after several drinks.
“But, they’ve (his friends from home) earned it. He (our host) hasn’t.” Andrew concluded.
