"I'm just gutted. This stuff always seems to happen to me."
"It doesn't love. It happens to me too. Today I backed into a lamp post!"
And so went one of the many long-distance, middle-of-the-night phone calls between my mum and I a couple of nights ago, from my hostel in Montreal.
I'd been there for less than 24 hours and I'd managed to get ill. Some sort of sickness bug, or possibly a bit of food poisoning, or something, but all I knew since waking up that morning was that I couldn't even keep down a few sips of water. The one part of my trip, apart from seeing my brother, niece and nephew, that I'd been really excited about had ended before it'd really begun.
Well, not exactly. I did have one good night there, meeting some really cool people and ending up checking out a couple of bars with another English girl with whom I drunkenly discovered I shared my birthday...
Ash: "I don't know how to say my birthday in French. How do I say 18th?"
Zoe: "Dix-huit. Dix huit Avril....."
Ash: "What? Shut up. When's your birthday?
Zoe: "Dix Huit. Avril. Eighteenth of April."
Ash: "No it isn't. Get out your passport."
[Cue around 20 minutes of "Shut up's!" and passing passports around, and of course a couple of random French guys who don't speak english, laughing at our photos and saying "Black... pool?" in a variety of ways].
So, two days early I arrive back in Toronto. I wish I could have stuck around and enjoyed my time with the great people I met, but being ill by yourself in a random hostel isn't all that fun - especially in a French-speaking area when your French amounts to "Do you speak English?", "Is there a toilet?" and "Hello, my name is Pierre, and I am a Vet" (which I'm sure will make at least some sense to my fellow classmates from lessons with the legendary Madame Castick!).
It sucks. Full on sucks. But this stuff happens, and you just have to look on the bright side.
Or make one up so you don't cry!
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