The rest of the week brought on a deluge of work for me. On top of schoolwork, I now needed to go about getting new identification cards for school and museums, a new bus pass and figure out a way to get my computer fixed in a relatively cheap and timely manner. There was one night that my host mother, Daniella, succeeded in completely taking my mind off of my problems. We were talking about various cultures in America, going from the Pennsylvania Dutch to the Amish and finally landing upon the Mennonites. I remembered some stories about how Mennonites sneakily go about tricking young people in to joining their cults. Daniella promptly coined the phrase, “scary like a Mennonite.” When she used it again at dinner the following night, I laughed out loud.
Finally, I found an English speaking company who would fix my computer and even pick it up at my convenience. So I arranged a meeting with the CEO, Brad, at the train station across the street (I know that sounds shady but just wait). The train station is huge, so I just picked a spot and waited for my phone to ring. When it did, the very obviously British Brad told me to come to the other side of the station and look for the black Mercedes. When I rounded the corner, I found a Mercedes sports car with the steering wheel on the British side. The man stepping out of the driver's door was a caricature. He wore a designer suit, a purple shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest so that his chest hair and gold chain were clearly visible, a huge golden class ring adorned his pinky finger and he was stroking his perfectly groomed goatee as he spoke in a perfect British accent into his bluetooth. Any thought that this man was going to steal my computer in some shady “student deal” had evaporated from my mind. And so off my computer went to be fixed in Rome!
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