Leicester woes
Don’t let all of the whining I’m about to do fool you, I’m having an amazing time. I’ve seen cathedrals, towers, palaces, monuments and museums (and toured many of them), yadda, yadda, yadda. But that’s not what this post is about.
I’m sick. I don’t want to point fingers, but I blame it all on the blackcurrant juice I had for lunch yesterday, because I felt fine before that. What is a blackcurrant anyway? Probably some sort of poison berry that these wily Brits have built up a tolerance for so that they might kill poor, unsuspecting Americans like myself. Although the stress, time difference, long waits at the bus stop in the cold and massive amounts of digestive biscuits I’ve consumed, probably haven’t helped matters. In the future I fear I will have to limit my digestive biscuit purchases since I obviously can’t control myself around them.
My trouble with distinguishing between right and left has made this whole driving on the wrong side of the road thing the English do very hard to figure out. Half of the time it seems perfectly normal to me, while the rest of the time I keep having thoughts like, “Good lord! What is that very small child doing driving such a large car?!” I’ve pretty much given up on trying to figure out which way to look when crossing the road. Sometimes I just look one way the whole time because I figure that this at least gives me a 50/50 chance of making it across safely.
I’m no longer blaming this cold on the poor blackcurrant juice. I now blame the POISONED water I have been drinking! That’s right. Apparently making all tap water come from the same clean source is just too simple and safe for the English. The only water that is safe to drink is cold tap water from kitchen (and certain specially marked) sinks. Water from hot water taps and sink water tap is not for drinking, because it comes from a “tank” and is not safe to drink even when boiled! I have been blissfully consuming the tap water from my bathroom since I got here. If the nice British girl from down the hall had not seen Emily about to use hot water in the kettle when we were making tea, we never would never have known that we were drinking water from a tank where rats sometimes crawl in and die. I feel very betrayed by all of the study abroad coordinators, travel books and friends that have lived in the UK who failed to warn me not to drink the dead rat water.
Leicester is home to one of only two remaining paternosters in the entire country. It’s this elevator thing without doors that moves constantly (like the beads of a rosary, hence the name) and you just hop on and off. The Americans (myself included) have had an embarrassing amount of fun with it. Then I learned the paternoster’s dark side. It breaks down and people are forced to either wait in the ridiculously long queue for the single elevator or take the stairs. Wheezing up fifteen flights of stairs with my sickly lungs was not exactly a good time.
I’m sick. I don’t want to point fingers, but I blame it all on the blackcurrant juice I had for lunch yesterday, because I felt fine before that. What is a blackcurrant anyway? Probably some sort of poison berry that these wily Brits have built up a tolerance for so that they might kill poor, unsuspecting Americans like myself. Although the stress, time difference, long waits at the bus stop in the cold and massive amounts of digestive biscuits I’ve consumed, probably haven’t helped matters. In the future I fear I will have to limit my digestive biscuit purchases since I obviously can’t control myself around them.
My trouble with distinguishing between right and left has made this whole driving on the wrong side of the road thing the English do very hard to figure out. Half of the time it seems perfectly normal to me, while the rest of the time I keep having thoughts like, “Good lord! What is that very small child doing driving such a large car?!” I’ve pretty much given up on trying to figure out which way to look when crossing the road. Sometimes I just look one way the whole time because I figure that this at least gives me a 50/50 chance of making it across safely.
I’m no longer blaming this cold on the poor blackcurrant juice. I now blame the POISONED water I have been drinking! That’s right. Apparently making all tap water come from the same clean source is just too simple and safe for the English. The only water that is safe to drink is cold tap water from kitchen (and certain specially marked) sinks. Water from hot water taps and sink water tap is not for drinking, because it comes from a “tank” and is not safe to drink even when boiled! I have been blissfully consuming the tap water from my bathroom since I got here. If the nice British girl from down the hall had not seen Emily about to use hot water in the kettle when we were making tea, we never would never have known that we were drinking water from a tank where rats sometimes crawl in and die. I feel very betrayed by all of the study abroad coordinators, travel books and friends that have lived in the UK who failed to warn me not to drink the dead rat water.
Leicester is home to one of only two remaining paternosters in the entire country. It’s this elevator thing without doors that moves constantly (like the beads of a rosary, hence the name) and you just hop on and off. The Americans (myself included) have had an embarrassing amount of fun with it. Then I learned the paternoster’s dark side. It breaks down and people are forced to either wait in the ridiculously long queue for the single elevator or take the stairs. Wheezing up fifteen flights of stairs with my sickly lungs was not exactly a good time.