Some Call Me Rebecca

Okay. So before I delve into the more important details of what happened this week, let me just start off by saying that the research this week has been pretty awesome! I've officially started on my experimentation with my adviser, so it'll be interesting how the next two week digress...in that regard.

Now. I'm going to try to explain the most attention-grabbing part of my week without having horrid flashbacks, so bear with me and here we go.

It was a calm night. I'd had a nice day of research, a good shower and had just finished the final season of Downton Abbey. I was ready to feel refreshed and recharged for the next day. Well, it seemed like the universe had something else in store. While I was sleeping, at approximately 2:00 am, I casually opened my eyes as I was prepared to flip from my stomach to my back, but I quickly realized there was something on my wall. It was a lizard. And no, it wasn't just your average pesky Gecko that lurks on your front porch at night, nope. It was the size of my whole forearm.

At first, I screamed a little and immediately tried to call the rest of the team to fetch help since I was pretty much paralyzed. But, since it was 2 in the morning, no one was even remotely close to being awake. So, I sat in the middle of my bed, watching this reptilian vermin slide and slither all over my wall while I was freaking out. It eventually made its way to the door, just chilling right above it, which was the only reason why I hadn’t made a run for it.

After about ten minutes of repeatedly checking its location and whimpering silently on the bed, I had finally reached my breaking point when I saw something else from the corner of my eye, scurry across the floor from underneath my bed to my desk area. *Cue blood curdling scream*

I screamed at least three times, consecutively before I hollered for help since I pretty much had no idea what was going to pop out of where or when. My heart was racing, I was sweating and my hands were clenching to the covers just so I could gain some sort of calm. Next thing I knew, my other three peers were at the door along with the night guard from downstairs, asking me what was wrong and to calm down. From what they tell me now, it was pretty hectic out there since the guard spoke no English and he was freaking out, trying to understand what was going on. The guard eventually went outside and used his Spidey powers to scale the wall, climb up to my window and beat on my door to try to get me out through the window. That flopped. I was even more terrified of his beating that it made my nerves worse, so one of my peers had to go outside and tell him to stop before I had a heart attack.

The consensus at this point was that I had no other choice but to come and unlock the door since the door was locked and the only people who had the master keys were the maids who wouldn’t be there for several hours. That said, the next ten to fifteen minutes were spent trying to pep me up to I could make a run for the Promise Land: outside my room. The group outside kept trying to get me ready by telling me, “you can do it” and “make sure you’ve got socks on just in case it jumps out”. But then, one of them gave me a reference to a popular movie from my youth, Gotta Kick it Up. She repeated, “¡Si se puede!” multiple times until I started chanting it in my head and eventually believed that I could do it.

At this point, I devised a plan to take the cover off of my bed and drape it around my body so that I wouldn’t be touched if it decided to lurch onto me. I thought about this for a good five minutes before I was finally ready and started playing Eye of the Tiger in my mind. And then, I did it. I bolted for the door, fidgeting with the key to try to unlock it until I finally got it and sprinted apparently “faster than Usain Bolt”. I ran all the way down to the opposite side of the hall to completely make sure that nothing was on me or remotely near me.

There I was, standing at the end of the hall, shaking and shivering, feeling the most adrenaline I ever have, on the verge of fainting. Two of my peers ran up to me, comforting me and consoling me back to health, until I followed one of them to their rooms where I stayed for the night and try to sleep off the fear.

UPDATE: Another lizard incident happened in the room the very next day, so after I had stayed in the room of one of my peers, I was eventually assignment a different room, which is lizard-free. I am currently still terrified of snakes that have four legs, but am looking forward to these next two weeks as a way to regain my sanity.