Why didn’t my alarm go off? I most definitely set it! Wait… did I? Well even if I didn’t, it should still go off. It’s still right at the head of the bed. I should have heard it. Oh… maybe it’s because I'm using my iPod as an alarm… and my iPod is in my backpack…
This was the basic thought process when I woke up this morning 30 minutes late. Breakfast ends at 7:30 and I got up at 7:08. It was a problem. I scrambled and got out of the room at 7:25. I hurried to breakfast and got in the line at just about 7:29. Thankfully, no one here really seems to care about time and so the line was still open at 7:45 when I left.
I looked around for a place to sit, and saw a guy sitting by himself reading a book. Oh, well, I’ll be nice and go sit by him, I thought. Bad idea. I asked in English if I could sit there and he replied that yes I could. He asked if I was a student here. He almost seemed to stutter, but not quite. I couldn’t quite place my finger on what exactly was off about him. Anyway I replied that yes I was a student. We talked a little bit about this place and what we were each doing here. It turns out he wasn’t a lonely researcher with no friends, in fact he was a tourist from Austria, whose English was well let’s just say it was a “developing skill”. Anyway I struggled through the conversation, trying to shovel my food down as quickly as possible. It was a quite awkward. See, this is what I get for trying to be nice. An awkward breakfast that leaves you with a mixture of pity and the same feeling you get when you discover that the cute little mice you just picked up was in fact a rat.
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