my first Hanukah

I went up to oxford yesterday to visit with my friends Sasha and Orly.  Sasha was the 2nd MBA that I met way back in September of 2006.  He and Orly have two boys, Nir (4) and Dan (1).  Sasha works for a small investment bank that focuses mainly on Russia and eastern Europe.  He's also Belarusian and speaks Hebrew, Russian and English.  They invited me to come up to have dinner, get drunk on vodka and stay over the night.  Russian style vodka drinking consists mainly of downing ice cold vodka shots in a single gulp.  It's great fun, and went along very nicely with the lamb Sasha cooked.  The boys were already asleep by the time I got there, and Orly went to bed after dinner, but Sasha and I stayed up late drinking plain vodka, chili pepper vodka, Irish whiskey, and even some red wine.  More accurately, you could say that Sasha and I stayed up late drinking ALL THE plain vodka, ALL THE chili pepper vodka, ALL THE Irish whiskey, and even ALL THE red wine. 

Sasha was predictably a bit rough the next morning, but I was totally hung over!  He suggested drinking a beer, "hair of the the dog" style... and while this seemed to sort him out, it just made me more sick.  So, I slept it off at their house while they took the boys to the park.  I was only feeling something like 30% human again by dinner time, so they had me stay for dinner as well, and Sasha made Moroccan style couscous, which is really good stuff, though I obviously couldn't eat too much of it.  Then, they lit the Menorah candle because this is the first day of Hanukah.  This was also my first Hanukah, so it was very interesting to watch.  They dimmed the lights, lit one candle, and then used it to light another one, while singing a song in Hebrew.  Just as the the song finished up, Sasha said, "Ok Orly, now bring in the Christian babies' blood..." and we all cracked up laughing.  We finished up the process with some home made doughnuts, and presents for the boys: Dreidels of course.  I rode the train back down late today, and capped the night off with chicken soup and the unbelievably horrible "National Treasure 2".