Friday, January 26, 2007

Lazy Days, Indian Food, and Shamefaced Running

Sadly, I've really done no schoolwork for the last two days. I haven't been out doing fun and wonderful things either. Lately, I can't seem to sleep enough. Thursday, I slept until 1 pm. Friday, except for a brief half hour interlude at the dining hall for breakfast, I slept until 2pm. Then I was up for a few hours, and crawled back into bed to take another nap. All of the Americans in Wistow House have fallen into odd sleep patterns. We're tired during the day, but midnight rolls around, and we're all wide awake.
We did make a sad attempt to go out last night though. We got all dolled up and took the bus to the city centre. We arrived at the pub of our choice, The Orange Tree, but it was too crowded and smoky. We ended up at McDonald's drinking milkshakes, and we were back to campus by 11:00. In the end we went to the Chicago girls' room (which is so large that I swear that you could fit the whole of my old apartment within it) ordered pizza and talked about girl issues, much to the chagrin of the one guy that was with us.
Tonight, we were a little more successful. We had a craving for Indian food, so we took the bus to Leicester's Golden Mile, which is the part of town where all of the Indian shops and restaurants are located. After wandering around on the Golden Mile for a bit, we settled on a place called Friends Tandoori, where apparently you need a reservation. Luckily they seated us anyway, but the staff acted like it was an imposition to serve us. I swear the server looked offended when we asked him for water He actually had to go and ask someone if we could have water (and quick sidebar--other people in the restaurant had pitchers of water). We got our water, but I felt nervous and out of place just being there.
The food however, oh my god--it was so good. By far the best meal I've eaten in the United Kingdom (of course I do eat most of my meals in the worst cafeteria ever). My mouth was so happy to experience spicy again. Even now, several hours later, my stomach is still happily full. We probably won't be going back there again--not because of the service, but because this meal cost us 60 GBP--that's close to $120 for those of you not familiar with the exchange rate. We'll find a cheaper Indian food place in the future, but I still say it was worth it.
Full and sated we left the restaurant and proceeded to spend thirty minutes waiting for a bus that we spent less than five minutes on. By some miracle, the 80--the bus that goes to the residence halls was at the stop and waiting when we got off the bus. We made a run for it to get to the other bus in time (so we didn't have to spend another 30 minutes waiting for yet another bus), but I quickly discovered that I've lost so much weight in the last two weeks that my pants will fall off my butt if I attempt to run. I'm very thankful that I had a long jacket on. It saved me from flashing my underwear--albeit super cute underwear--to all of the Leicester city centre.

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