Good points, on top of that, the friend needs to love you! By the end of your interaction with the friend, she should be trying to sell her friend to you, not save her. If the friend had walked up and you had said "introduce me to your friend...its the polite thing to do" and then you started entertaining them both until the friend could see that you were safe and cool, then you could have probably gotten the girl. Anytime a girl is from Russia or some outside country, its time for a future projection, maybe 2-3 beats later on, I use this constantly in Europe, this is where heavy attraction begins with these girls "Ok, when I take you to Russia, and and we are walking down the street and seeing all the fun cool things, what is the ONE thing that we have to see?!" and she says "blah" and you say "Oh my god! we are going to have so much fun, come here!" and you "hug her", then pull away, and be like "hmmm..I am very thirsty..I would like some cola..." totally not paying attention to her and looking away, watch her in your perphperial, right when she is about to pull away, you come back with something else, like "ok, I have like seriously 2 more minutes, but I wanna show you something awesome, check this out" and bring her to the coach, now you do 2-3 quick qualifiers "I love pizza hut!" and she says "me too!" and you say "you are so cute!, but we could never go there together... you would eat my all of pizza" and shes like "no I wouldnt!" and so you go "do you pinky swear?" and she is like "yea" and does the little pinky thing (if you have on a ring you will break her finger...trust me :-(...ends badly ). and you go hmm, alright, so since you are cool...so far, check this out... and then you can do the cube. I actually like the cube for day 2. (notice, she earned the cube, now it has value, she doesnt WANT to share it with her friend)
That is like 60% of a foreign girl pick up, after the cube, start getting personal. I would only do this if I was aiming at a same nigh lay.