Spades

One thing that I have really enjoyed about working a "real" job instead of going to school is the separation of my life at work and my life outside of work.  When I am done with work at six, I am done and there is no homework that I need to do.  This means that once I get home at six, I basically have as much free time as I want until I go to bed.  Some of this free time is spent talking to a certain someone who I love (hint: her name starts with R and ends with -ebecca), but i also have time to do other stuff.  One of the main distractions that I have found is playing games with some of the people that I live with, and one game in particular: spades.

Joel, Conchi, and Amelie.  Amelie and Conchi
were some of the first people I played with, and
 Joel has gotten really good, really fast!

  For those of you who don't know how to play spades, it's a card game for four people played with a 52-card deck.  Everyone gets thirteen cards, and there are thirteen hands in every round.  So, every hand you play one card.  You need to follow whatever suit is led, unless you don't have any of the suit, in which case you can play anything else.  The reason why it is called spades is because spades is trump, and beats whatever else is played.  Before you start the round, you bid on how many hands you are going to win, and receive (or lose) points depending on if you achieve your bid or not.  You are also playing with a partner, who is the person sitting across from you.  It really is a lot of fun because you have to pay attention to what everyone is playing in order to figure out how to gain the advantage in the game, but it isn't so intense that you can't have a conversation with the people who are playing with you.  Since being here, I would guess that I have played with ten different people (from five or six different countries!) and it has seriously been a great way to get to know people.  I have made some great friends, and we have laughed a LOT, all while playing the relatively simple but strategic game of spades.