The RSPCA

This is Archie!

This morning I went, along with nine other ASE students, to the local RSPCA (where all the abandoned or abused animals are kept until people come to give them a home). As part of an intigration program that I'm doing, we are supposed to do things in the local community and this just seemed like the perfect activity for me. So, we walked the dogs in pairs. My partner was a girl named Rachel, really nice girl, and together we were assigned to Archie, a seven month old mutt.

He was friends with Dizzy, the dog in the picture with Meg and Betsy, so the four of us took the two dogs out of the SPCA and onto the trails right outside. We found a really big open field to play with them and let them walk around in the grass. It was so fun, and they were soooo cute... don't worry Dad, I didn't get too attached.

The ten of us met up at the end of about forty minutes to catch the bus back into town, and that's when the trouble started. We had one bus pass for the ten of us, so we had to stay together... luckily for me, the woman who had brought us there had handed that only bus pass to me as she was leaving. We met at one and walked to the place right outside the "Dogs and Cats Home" where we had been dropped off by the bus a few hours ago. We were told that our bus pass would only work on a U18 blue line bus, so we waited, figuring (because we had been told as much) that they come every ten minutes. Well, ten minutes came and ten minutes went. We saw white, red, black, and orange busses, but no blue ones. After about half an hour we spotted our blue bus coming around the corner. We all waived to the bus driver so that he would know to stop, but he just stared at us and drove past. Awesome!

So then we figured that the Bath University was only a couple minute walk from this bus stop and we knew that the busses came and went for downtown Bath ever ten minutes from their stop. We walked to the University bus stop. By now, everyone is beginning to get a little cold, hungary and cranky. It was just around forty degrees, balmy I know, but we had been outside since about 11:30 and it was started to be unpleasant. By 1:40 we were getting to the University stop, just as two blue busses were pulling out. No big deal, we figured, they must come quickly here. Fifteen minutes, six orange busses, two black busses, two white busses, and a red bus later, we were thoroughly freezing and distressed. People were threatening just to walk back to the center of the city, to go into the university pub to get lunch, or to just pay to get on one of the orange busses that seemed to just be teasing us on purpose. Then, a blue bus pulled up. Woo hoo, we all though, as we watched all the people get off and prepared to board. Then, the driver looked at his watch, shook his head, closed the doors and pulled away. FML!

Needless to say, a bus did eventually come, it was about 2:05. We all got aboard and let me tell you that I've never been so excited for public transportation in my whole life. We managed to get off the bus and into our respective housed where we could warm our frozen feet and drink hot chocolate without much more excitement.

Now, I'm going to go read some Jane Austen, and hopefully not fall asleep!