Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (excuse me while I rant)

Man, it was one of "those" days today. Woke up this morning, got ready to take a shower, only to realize that our water had been shut off for the 3rd time in the past 4 days. I sighed and decided that I would just wear a knit headband thing to school to cover my dirty hair and take a shower later in the afternoon when the water would hopefully be turned back on again. (A water line broke a few weeks back, and they've been repairing it for quite a while now to no real avail). Frustrating, but not entirely surprising. Then, I go to turn on my light to find that knit headband only to realize that my light wasn't working. Ok, I thought, no big deal, the light bulb might have burnt out, so I go to turn on the lights in the living room and kitchen, only to learn that they aren't working either. Yep, no electricity. Even at that point I wasn't that frustrated--more amused. It seems like Keiko and I have kinda taken on the attitude of "well, what else can go wrong?" after all of the other drama that we've had with our apartment, so this was just another thing to add to that bag of special experiences that we probably wouldn't have gotten if we were going to school in the States.

Well, luckily I was able to get ahold of the girls across the street to use their shower right before I had to leave for class (for whatever reason, they had both water and electricity), so I was nice and clean for class. The day's looking up right? Well, on my way to school, running just a little bit late because of the shower, another bicyclist runs into me. No real damage done other than twisting my seat around off to the side, making for a very awkward ride for the rest of the way to school. Anyway, I made it to school just about on time, and headed up to the 6th floor where we usually have our classes only to find out that classes weren't being held there today. Of course, our schedule wasn't posted on the bulletin board like it's supposed to be (and was supposed to be posted there on THURSDAY) and which we hadn't received a paper copy of in our mailboxes (like we were supposed to receive on Thursday as well), so I had no way of finding out where I needed to head off to in order to get to Microbiology. Also, not really surprising, the computers in our break room weren't working, so I couldn't check my email, and the wireless internet on the 6th floor (which I don't even think is set up by our school...rather we're tapping into someone else's) was once again too weak to stay connected long enough to check my email for the schedule and classroom locations.

So, I head back down and over to the "real" medical school campus as opposed to our few classes on the 6th floor of the hospital. To get onto the campus without having to go all the way around to the main entrances, there's a rotating gate thing that unlocks when you swipe your student card through it. This thing is notorious for not working, and of course, it wasn't going to work for me today. I stand there like an idiot swiping my card again and again and again, until it finally lets me in. Now, there's a lot of classrooms on the medical campus, so I try calling Susan (one of the girls who lives across the street from me) again to see if she can look up what classroom we're supposed to be in. At first no answer. I know that Keiko is sleeping still, so that wouldn't work...Christal is out an about somewhere, most likely not near internet, and other people who would know are probably in class...so I try Susan again. This time she picks up (she'd gone back to sleep after I had left after my shower) and she finds out that it's in the Pathology building--back on the hospital grounds. So, I turn around and retrace my steps over toward Pathology.

Microbiology was rather uneventful...that is until I tried to get the updated powerpoint during the break. A guy in my class had copied it from the computer the teacher was using, and gave it to me on his disk-on-key. As I'm getting it off of his zip drive, my antivirus stuff pops up saying that there's a virus. I couldn't eject the zip drive and I couldn't perform any of the recommended actions for the virus, so I ended up just pulling out the disk and telling him that he had a virus on the drive that he should try to get off. He found it without too much trouble (and being a Mac person, without much concern) and said that it hadn't been there before, so it must have come from my computer. I started running all of my antivirus stuff, which ended up taking most of the rest of the day only to find that none of them found anything about a virus once the disk-on-key had been taken out. So now I don't know if I have a virus or not, but am going to just pretend that I don't and see what happens.

Well, class lets out and I head to the main university campus across the street to get lunch because I wasn't able to make anything in the morning because of the lack of water (no way to wash veggies). I ended up getting jipped 10 shekles when I was paying, but didn't realize it until it was too late, so yeah, there went some of my money that could have been used to buy like 15 pitas.

Back to class, now biochemistry. We have 2 teachers for biochem, one is great and the other is ok--if you can get past the thick accent and monotone voice, which was not working for me at all. Class ended up running late, so I wasn't able to go down to the travel agent to try to work out cashing in on my return ticket so I can hopefully fly home for Christmas...meaning I have to get up early and do it tomorrow.

After class let out, I went to get my bike and was luckily able to beat the seat back into place and ride home without any trouble. At home, I find out that the water is back on, but definitely not clean. First it came out all red and rusty, even with a little plastic cut out of a rocking horse coming out of the faucet, and then finally clear. But clear and clean are two very very different things. This water SMELLS! I'm not sure how to describe the smell, other than chemical-ie, or metal-ie--so much that I had open the window out of concern of poisoning myself on noxious gas. Even after letting it run for a good 20 minutes, the smell was still going strong. So yeah, still no clean water.

Thankfully, we do have electricity now. I ran a few errands after trying the water out, and when I got home I tried flipping the breaker (which Keiko had done earlier to no avail) and LIGHT! So, praise the Lord, something ended up working!

Ok, that's my rant. I have another much less complaining post about some of the stuff that I learned about the Bedouin that will be up shortly--hopefully within the next few days.

Let's hope for a better day tomorrow.

Love you all--and miss you so much!

Carolyn (or Anna if you ask any restaurant where they take your name. I don't care where you are, if English is not the main language, "Carolyn" is pretty much impossible to say)

Bye!