The Honeymoon Period is Over…

October 12, 2009 to October 18, 2009

So I’m only three weeks in and I’m beginning to feel the stress of all the work crashing down on me. A song due for this class, monologue for that class, I’m already behind and forgot that dance…the honeymoon period for London was officially over. I was no longer fascinated to sit and listen to people talk for ages just so I could hear their accent nor was I excited to travel to school everyday just so I could really be living the “London life” and all that jazz. I mean, I’m still in love and want to be here but all the glamour, magic, and the sense of everything being new was over.

Wednesday I decided to go see Billy Elliot. No one else was really up for it so I decided to go by myself. Billy Elliot was the one show on my “must see” list so I was going to go see it. I got out of Anything Goes rehearsal and headed straight downtown to Victoria where the theatre is located right outside the station. I got there and realized that Billy Elliot doesn’t have student tickets at a discounted price. I figured it didn’t really matter because I was already here and I had to see the show anyway and so as long as it wasn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg I’d see it. It only ended up cost me £25 and I was very happy about that! I went and found my seat and waited for the show to start. As I was sitting there in my really good balcony seat, I turned around to see my little Tulsa friend, Erica, standing in the aisle taking pictures! She was the girl that I wrote about a couple of blogs post ago who is from TU. We didn’t meet each other until we got to London and realized we were both from the same school. How funny that we also decided to come see the show on the same night! Weird! Anyway, the show was absolutely amazing. The people were so talented and the Billy was absolutely incredible! I waited after the show and got several autographs with Erica. Afterwards, I walked her and her friend back to the tube station and headed back home for the night.

Thursday morning I woke up sick as a dog. My throat was killing me and I had a terrible headache so I decided to stay home for the day. I went down to Boots, the pharmacy here in Muswell Hill, got some OJ and medicine and came back to Chester House for some sleep. After I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep, I decided it was time to catch up on a few TV shows from the States that I had missed such as The Vampire Diaries and Brothers and Sisters. I decided to go to bed early that night in order to be extra prepared to hopefully go back to school on Friday. I couldn’t sleep and it wasn’t because I wasn’t feeling well. It was something else. Something just wasn’t right. After hours of just laying there, not being able to commit to sleeping and at around 3 am in the morning, I saw that I had a missed call on my American cell phone. My dad had called me twice: once from his cell and once from the house. I knew immediately something was up. I called him back and he explained that Papa, my grandfather on my father’s side, had just had a massive stroke and wasn’t doing well at all. I knew it. I knew something was wrong when I couldn’t fall asleep. I knew something was wrong when I saw that my dad had called me. I knew before I ever came to London that Papa was going to die while I was studying abroad. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just did. So after my dad talked to me for a few minutes we decided to skype instead just because the phone bill was going to be too expensive if we stayed on the phone much longer. After I skyped my parents, I skyped Natalie. I didn’t want to be alone right now. I was over 4,000 miles away and I needed to talk to someone about this besides my parents. I need to just talk. I needed to vent about how I was feeling. After I finished talking to Natalie and after tossing and turning for a while, I finally fell asleep around 5:30am. My alarm woke me up around 7:30 and I just hit the snooze button. After the night I had and with me still being sick, I was in no mood or mindset to go to school. I stayed in bed that entire weekend just trying to get better. I watched movies and continued to communicate as much as possible with my parents in order keep up with what was going with Papa.

I started making arrangements to be able to leave town at a moments notice and started preparing myself for what was about to happen in my life.