Thor's Day!

Thor's Day!





It's 2 AM. How could I possibly know that? Yup, you guessed it. Need I say more? This was announced with a:

                      'SHIT! She's using the fucking plug!'

Yes, I am. Deal with it!


I turned over and went back to sleep. One hour later, another  new girl enters the room and turns on the light. Through the slit in my bed curtain I see her looking around. She chooses the bed on top of mine. Great.

She puts her stuff down, rifles through he bag and goes out turning off the light. 

I get up and unplug my stuff. It was charged and I'm not a self-centered bitch. I crawl back into bed. Miraculously, not three minutes later another plug is in the same outlet. Odd that. 


A few minutes later, the light is turned on again as the new girl gets back from her shower. She makes her bed, rifles through her bag again, turns off the light and climbs up. It's about 4AM at this point.

I plug into my audio book and try to sleep for 2 hours. No such luck. When my alarm goes off, I shampoo, rinse, repeat and head down for breakfast pretend connectivity.

This is my email to my mom:

I'm ok. had connectivity issues. Class is good, accommodations suck. Probably have a MRSA infection. Never again. So tired I want to cry.
Keeping warm.
talk soon,
L

But... I've had Asian flu...

I'm exhausted, dehydrated and annoyed. I go down to breakfast. I don't want toast. I don't want cornflakes. I did buy some Musli a few days ago, and I did have the bowl courtesy of VA. Sounds good to me!

Fruit Musli next to my notebook.

I also made some hot cocoa with the Cadbury Cocoa I bought. :)

Mmmmm... rich, hot cocoa. What could be better on a cold morning?

Unfortunately, when I put the lid on my favorite thermos, I must have cross-threaded it. So when I shook it, it exploded and scalded my hand and upper arm. 

Not my hand but that's what it looked like.

I'm not stranger to burns and scalds - having done this a few months ago.

Yes, that is my foot.

But I digress. This was starting out to be a great day.

Class was class. At lunch, a few of us hit the canteen upstairs. My body was crying out for something other than carbs.

I got the veggie special. Not too expensive but a lot of food.

The veggie sausages were kinda gross, but the broccoli and salad were greatly appreciated. I choked down as much of the potatoes as I could.

Not too gross, and a good amount for the money.

Class that day, for me, was a disaster. I'm sorry to admit that, but it's true. I was feeling quite the ultimate failure when class got out late.

I was brooding and depressed. We didn't have homework and I didn't feel like going back to the hostel so I went souvenir shopping.

I didn't find much. Just a small bottle of lemongrass paste.

I also found this:

Crawfish sandwich

Now I don't care how depressed or how un-hungry you are. If you're from New Orleans and you're in another country and see a CRAWFISH SANDWICH, you are obligated BY LAW to purchase and eat that bad boy. So I did... purchase it that is.

I went back to the hostel after that. No one was there, which was just as well considering my mood. I can't take responsibility for what happens when I'm like that. Some bovine twins might have been nothing but entrails. 

Don't mess with me today bitch!

I sat on my bed and opened my Nexus. I had a whole 15 minutes of interweb to use.

 Here was the email that awaited me:

GET OUT OF THERE.  You have your credit card.  Find someplace else.

GO TO THE PHARMACY.  Tell them your symptoms.  If you need to

go to the clinic, tell them you DON'T have health insurance.

I know you are under time constraints, but you know where the Boots

is.  Take care.  Love.  MAW

Mom had taken my email seriously as expected. And hilarious. I was just chuckling and writing a return email, letting her know I was only somewhat kidding. But I was depressed and tired today. I had quite literally just pressed send when I saw something slide out from under my bed. Something quiet. Something that looked like this:

Now, I don't know if it was a mouse, rat or chinchilla, and I'm a pretty tough girl, but there is something about rodents and London that made my skin crawl. What was it...?

Oh yeah, I remember: THE PLAGUE!

It took all of 5 seconds for me to come to this conclusion.

I trotted down the stairs to reception and discreetly notified the girl behind the counter that I'd seen a 'mouse' in my room. She asked me if I'd like to be moved to a different room while they checked it out. 

Throughout this conversation, I kept picturing the rodent eating my face off.

I smiled and said that I think I'd like to check out now. For some reason she seemed surprised by this remark. HAHAHAHAHA

After all, my mom was right. I did have a credit card. I was tired, dehydrated, cold, depressed and rather freaked out.

I ran back up the stairs and packed. Quickly I might add. It didn't occur to me until a few days after I got back that one of my very expensive pair of woolen tights was missing. I didn't care if I left it there or if the rat got it. Seemed like a reasonable price to pay.

I checked out, filled out the 'refund form' (still haven't seen that money on my card) and wheeled myself and my bags da hell outta there!

My first stop was the President's Hotel across the street.

They didn't have accommodation available through Sunday. Not a problem. I was well acquainted with the neighborhood by now and rolled my crap a few blocks away to the Bloomsbury Holiday Inn.

I walked in and was immediately offered a cup of mulled wine. As my mom would say, 'it was like manna from heaven'.

I don't know why they were giving away mulled wine this day. I didn't care. I took it as a sign.

mulled wine

I went to the counter, explained my situation and begged reception for a room. They gave me a double room, but only charged me a single room rate. At that point, I didn't care. They could have maxed out my card and I wouldn't have batted and eye. Thankfully they didn't do that.

Ahhhh... Civilization. A warm shower. A warm room and television.

Yes, I know. This is what I should have done in the first place, but I was trying to be responsible, remember?

I took a scalding hot shower to get the rat germs off. I plugged my hairdryer into my adapter and plugged it in. I turned it on.
POP! Smoke and fire come out of it. 


WTF???? That's not supposed to happen. This was an expensive hairdryer and an expensive adapter. What's going on????? OH CRAP. I may have blown out the whole wall.

I hunted around and found a tired hairdryer attached to the bottom of a drawer. Better than nothing. I got as much water out of my hair as I could.

I curled into bed with a big glass of water and my crawfish sandwich. I turned on the tv. I enjoyed the offerings of BBC and TVI and fell into a much needed, rat free sleep.