I had heard about this term "pub quiz" but had never really participated in one, unti I happened upon one 6 months into my stay in the UK.

We were sitting in the local pub on a Sunday afternoon, reading our papers, drinking our pints and shooting the breeze, as one does. We had arrived later than usual this Sunday, and noticed at about 7:30 pm there was a definite change in clientele. The place started getting packed with people who were crowding around tables and there was anticipation in the air.

It was when the buxom peroxide blonde woman walked up to our table, absolutely hammered drunk, with a metal bucket in her hand filled with pencils and papers and asked us if we were playing the pub quiz, that the pieces started falling into place.

"Sure" we said. And why not? It would be fun to partake in what seemed to be an English tradition.

The quiz is broken down into categories like sports, current events, musicals, name that tune. The questions seemed easy, if you had grown up in the UK and had watched childrens programming, or followed football for the past 25 years. But for an international, I was struggling big time. And when we had to swap papers with the table across from us, I could see the look of empathy on their faces and thoughts such as "Tsk Tsk.. she doesn't even know what toad in the hole is!"

That night we came in dead last, but it was great fun people watching and actually learning some ridiculous non useful facts. We started to become one of the regulars at the pub quiz, along with the tall hippy with the two long braids, who always scored top marks. The buxom blonde took pity on us every time we played, even to the point of giving us answers through coded hand signals. I think she thought we needed the leg up. We did. And while other participants relied on text messaging for finding out answers such as, "What color is the cross on the Greek flag" we chose to wrangle up as many other international friends we could to come along. At least we knew we would do well in the world affairs category!