Day Three: My mood matches the weather

Day Three
Saturday, May 14, 2011 

{With a shout out HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Rachel Staves and Happy Anniversary to my parents!}

Weather Conditions: Cold and rainy.




Can you say...

“Dead. To. The. World.”

              ?                                 

                                     
               

{Because that is exactly what I was Saturday morning.}

 Apparently I was tired because I turned my alarm off in my sleep and woke up at 6:45am...15 minutes before we were supposed to leave. Oops. Needless to say I had to rush pack and get ready. Luckily, I had packed most of my things the night before so it wasn’t too bad. I did forget my razor though (I’m guessing, because the next day I couldn’t find it anywhere). Good thing the Europeans are hairy! I will blend right in! 

Also, in my rush I didn’t stop to use the restroom...before a four hour bus ride...

...yeah...

All that was going through my mind was the quote from What About Bob?

{What if, I have to go to the bathroom and I can’t find one!? ....and my bladder explodes...?}

Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

We left the hotel around 7:15 (turns out I did have time to pack after all, lame) and stopped for breakfast at a rest stop about two hours later (9am).  I used this opportunity to take preventative measures against bladder implosion (i.e. I used the restroom). I figured a trip to a British hospital was one site I didn’t want to see in Europe. Then I ate a nice large “Classic” English Breakfast, composed of two eggs, bacon, sausage and a hash brown, to tide me over for the rest of the day since we wouldn’t be having lunch. 

After breakfast we drove another few hours to Preston, England to the Preston Temple. We stayed on the temple grounds in the patron accommodations. That was nice because we had a kitchen downstairs where we could make big group meals (covered by the program, saving me some food money). The rooms had five people apiece. I was put with Shardae, Suzy, Hannah and Heather. After checking in, we all went downstairs to the common room where people were talking and playing a few games. The directors went to get groceries for us and about an hour later we had a group pasta dinner. Yum. 

Homemade American-style Italian food in England. 

Totally normal. 

Totally delicious.

(Oh, and ice cream for dessert.)

{Living. the. dream.}

After dinner we all just stayed in the common room and played games until 11 o’clock. We played a few rounds of Mafia and then I got bored and went and talked with people in the kitchen (Heather and Rogelio mostly). 

I’ll be honest. This first night, as fun as it was, was not really that fun for me. I was still trying to find a niche in the group. Annoyingly, a lot of people had already formed cliques and friendships, but I wasn’t feeling the love. There wasn’t really anyone that I even cared to know (as sad and mean as that sounds) so I was feeling a bit down. All I can say is I was sincerely concerned that the rest of the trip would continue in this way, because if it did, I don’t know if I could get through four more weeks. 

...and there was no wifi in the temple accommodations...this, in addition to a lame social situation, had a detrimental effect on my immediate happiness...

Spoiler Alert: 

Things eventually got better in a couple days, and I am quite content right now. But I was legitimately worried that this trip would be terrible and I had wasted a lot of time and money that I didn’t have to waste. So don’t worry readers! Life is good. 

{Keep reading to find out why...}