Okay, so today is kind of a big day for me, and one of great change. To start I was freezing in my bed, because the blanket itself was missing and all I had was the blanket liner, which is all well and good, but not when everyone deems it necessary to ‘crack the windows’ on the Winter solstice at a place with the latitude of 52 degrees North! I don’t care how warm London is supposed to be for how far North it is, it is still cold at night in the dead of Winter. Well, that said, it was pretty nice because I think the cold helped me wake up and get going on things. I awoke too, to the sound of Seamus rustling around at around 7:00 and my alarm clock. I finally convinced myself to get out of bed after that to wish everyone goodbye and good luck in life. Well, apparently Seamus was the last one out, so that only happened with him. By the time I did awaken though, he was nearly out. I went and saw that I still had a slight amount of work to do, but I just tried to get everything together and such, and worked pretty hard on that. I took my last shower in a private bathroom for a long time to come, and shaved the rest of my goatee off so that I would not need to worry about that either. Then I got dressed, took care of as much as I could in the flat and got half my stuff ready to bring to the school, and my backpack to the hostel near Paddington. Well, I got to Paddington and found my hostel, after taking a little while to get ready they gave me my room which was through a very windy and difficult corridor, which I would not normally point out, save to say that I was carrying some rather heavy stuff and it was hard to navigate at times. I finally found the room and dropped off my bag and went to the school to store my other bag.
I got there around 10:45, and had to be out of the flat by 11:00 so that wasn’t going to happen, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I did get back to my flat to find Sharon, the housekeeper there and she seemed okay with everything and said that it looked pretty good so we should be getting our money back. So that was good. So now I had the task of taking all the rest of my stuff back to the centre, and it was easier than the first batch, but believe me I knew I would be happy when it was resting peacefully not on my back. Anyway, I went through and had to use the luggage gate, but at King’s Cross had some trouble until some bloke working for the Underground came and opened one of them for us. After this, I took the bags to school, and dropped them off. I rushed out to buy a sandwich and came back and updated my journal and emailed everyone I could to let them know I would be absent for a long time. Well, I also tried to work with my sleeping bag and everything, and concluded that it was really too hard to do or at least to get it to stay, so over the next few days I’m hoping to rig it right. After some time, while I was waiting to upload some pictures, I went out and bought the rest of my malaria tablets, eight in all and there was a £30.00 with a Gul Darn prescription fee of £5.00 which I had the last time, so they are really making money off me even though they just said just come back and refill. Oh well, I’m not happy with STA and don’t intend to use them again, at least not from Britain. After I got back, I updated the rest of my journal and wrote this, talking a little to Kevin and Brandon, and I’m out! Look for the rest in my written journal tonight!
Peace Out, Yo!
Jason
Second Half Continued, 22 December 2005 since 17:00
So I left the school catching the Hammersmith to Paddington and back to the hostel. When I arrived here I worked my way through the maze of the hostel and back to my room, where I found it free of any sign of lodgers save the bed I took and the bunk above it. I sat down and pondered my strange situation of being left with nothing pressing to do, save finding wool socks, for on my way back from the school, I dropped by and said good bye to Charine and purchased two emergency cameras (disposable) and a one gigabyte memory card for my digital camera. That said, all I really have now left to do is get a Heathrow Express ticket and socks and food for Christmas Eve and Day in case the stores are shut, which I’m sure they will be.
I tried to figure out what to do with myself tomorrow as it is the last day of a normal and open schedule in the city, and my real last day to explore it alone. After a while of this, I went to the Sainsbury’s at Paddington and bought some raw veg, grapes (red and white), clementines, caesar chicken sandwiches, an Irn Bru soda, which I always wanted to try... and brought these all back to the hostel and ate most of them in the basement’s dining room. I talked to a French English teacher (French being his nationality and English being the subject at school he taught), who was proud of himself that he correctly guessed me to be an American (which actually made me happy too) and I watch some British show about the top 100 films of something or other (corniness I think).
After a few movies into it, I came back to my room and dozed into a long series of thoughts and daydreams. Eventually I awoke from these and read my trop dossier very thoroughly and thought a lot about Africa and my expectations thereof. That at some point I named all of the countries I could think of that I should like to visit within my lifetime and wrote them all down. This didn’t include countries I’ve already been to, or the ones I’ll be visiting soon. All in all if I do visit all of these, I will have visited at least 65 countries in my lifetime, so I say bring them on. Well, following that I checked the time and realized just how late it was 23:00! And began to write this entry and ate some more fruit. Now let me explain, I’m trying to change my diet to be healthier, so hence forth, more raw fruits and veg. Also I wanted to go to a pub tonight, but I thought it too late. So with that, I conclude my first entry, with still no sign of my phantom roommate. Oh well, frankly I enjoy the solitude.