America,
I'm really sick of the Crusades. I say this because they were a pretty nasty idea to begin with, but mostly because I really don't want to write this paper. (As I'm writing this, my lights are off and my curtain is drawn. I've forbidden myself from leaving the room or eating until I finish this paper. But I haven't denied myself access to internet yet.) Anyway, it's really imperative that I finish this thing.... so let's talk about the last few days instead, shall we?
The visa expedition was successful. Or pretend successful. I caught the 2:45 am coach into London, the most direct (by direct I mean unecessary 2 hour layover at Standsted airport) means of transportation that would get me there before my 8:45 am visa appointment because England doesn't like to give you scheduling options (side note: they also pronounce it sked- yull. I don't know who came up with that shed-yull nonsense). The bus was supposed to arrive at 8:05 am (which in English transportation time means 8:35 am) giving me a comfortable 10 minutes to sprint through the winding unmarked streets of the snowy city dawn (there is no sunlight in England). These were my calculations. However, England made history that night and got me to my destination an early. So I had an entire extra hour in the unheated Victoria coach station to people watch and gripe about my lack of sleep. The actual submission took about 10 minutes, and the clerk I spoke to explained to me in broken English that my visa will take a minimum of 15 (this means at least 30 in English speak) business days to process before it gets lost in the mail on the way back to me. There are 16 business days left before Christmas. It's a race against the clock, and the stakes are high, America (Seriously, Jesse Gets a Visa in England would be the most actionpacked blockbuster of the season if they made a full length movie. I had to leave them two addresses because if they take longer than they're supposed to I'll be at a different address. Also, if they don't send it in time I miss my flight, and subsequently my orientation, which translates in Panic Jesse to "I will not be able to go to India and I will have to defer a semester of school, wasting thousands of dollars, and causing me to graduate late, which will inevitably lead to a spiral of career failure." In Normal Jesse, it actually just means I change my flight for a bit more money, miss a few days of class, and have another visa adventure in England).
Anyway, with the visa safely transferred from the hands of Panic Jesse to the confidence inspiring hands of the Consulate in London (they won't lose it, right?) I decided to attend to less pressing matters, namely my frostbitten feet. The sneakers (trainers) I have been sporting in the stead of my alternative option (flip flops), have developed giant holes (much like my jeans in Belgium and Scotland, every item I have ever bought from Primark, and the British Library's account of English imperial history). Luckily, my can-do American know-how led me to a Sainsbury's (the heathens' version of Giant) where I could purchase socks and again insulate my feet with plastic shopping bags (seriously. Try it. It keeps your feet so warm). Then I had hours to kill before my train, as I had expected the visa process to require an entire day of unecessarily queues and forms, like all other English processes do. So I went back to Hyde Park to get more pictures of the fantastic Winter Festival they have. I also had time to visit the Tate, the Imperial War Museum, and drumroll... the Gardening Museum.
The next morning I headed to town early to replace my lost bus pass. I was smart on this one. I bought the bus pass insurance because I knew this was going to happen. So after waiting in several more queues, I headed over to the travel clinic where I discovered that I am definitely going to get rabies in India, and they will probably not carry the extremely expensive and painful vaccine in Hyderabad (a modern business mecca with dozens of hospitals and highly trained doctors) and if they do have the rabies shot, they will probably administer it with an AIDS needle. The travel clinician recommended I consider opting for the three intensely painful, very expensive precautionary rabies shots, so that when I get rabies, because I will definitely get rabies, I will only have to get the slightly less extremely painful rabies shot with AIDS needle. I will also be contracting dengue fever and Japanese encephelitis. (The clinican was actually really reasonable and helpful, and all of these are extremely rare in my area, so I don't need the shots. But try telling that to Panic Jesse).
So after calling my travel agent to tell her that I might need to change flights because of my visa induced future spiral of career failure, making about eight other international phone calls to fix my visa and prevent the rabies which is probably already latent in my blood stream, and researching Indian diseases on the internet (I think I may have prostate cancer. I have some of the symptoms), I went to the secret Norwich library, the Forum, a building which boasts 600 sprinkler systems in case of fire (there will be a fire safety blog post soon). The Forum is actually not secret at all, but students always use the library on campus. This poses a problem because teachers at UEA love to assign the same list of essay prompts (because why would I be allowed to pick my own topic for a paper like I have been doing since tenth grade?) for papers due at the same time, resulting in a mass exodus of useful and available books about crusades. But let's not talk about the crusades. That's what I'm supposed to be doing, and what a waste of procrastination time that would be.
Buddy Holly (the Noble and Lovely Giant), Laura (who was once attacked by a kangaroo), Jess (a normal height Jess, not one of the usual tiny ones that I frequently spend time with), and I explored the Norwich Christmas fairs on Saturday. The one in Dragon Hall, the medieval trading hall in Norwich, was actually medieval themed, including full medieval costumes, a crazy lute looking thing (the lady let me play it! It's tuned like a three stringed violin), and the stalls themselves. I purchased a rhinocerous finger puppet. Jess (of Average Height) and I then headed off to what was advertised as an "Alternative Christmas Fair." "Alternative Christmas Fair" apparently means hardcore terrifying Goth carnival ranging from a book stall that carried only anarchy books, to scary spikey jewelry, to Tim Burtony zombie sock dolls designed to look like dead/evil things. I did not find any presents for my mom as I had originally hoped to on this particular outing.
Final Fun Facts:
1. England does not charge a luxury tax on biscuits (cookies) or cakes. However, it does charge a tax on chocolate covered biscuits. In 1991, HMCE took Jaffa Cakes (one of England's most popular snacks) to court arguing that they are a chocolate biscuit rather than a cake. The company claimed in its defense that by definition, cakes are "squiggy" and they harden when they go stale, while biscuits go soft. Jaffa cakes harden, making them a cake. This argument won.
2. Murtzuphlus, the leader of the rebellion against Alexius IV, which led to the sacking of Constantiople during the Fourth Crusade, sported the nickname Monobrow.
And now I return to the crusades.
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