Still in shock I stare at the black remains of what should have been my food. “You’ve got to be kidding me” I say to myself. “Why do these things always happen to me?” It’s just too damn typical. When I lived in England I set the fire alarm off 3 times. Once because my baking paper managed to get on fire, actually had to use a fire extinguishing blanket, and twice because I was drying my hair, the stupid alarm was way to sensitive. Each time it went off everyone (about 25 students) had to leave their rooms and we all had to gather, don’t think that anyone was happy with me causing all of this. Worst were the two times I set it off because I was drying my hair I had to come out of my room with my hair half-dried and frizzy on one side and still totally soaked on the other, looking an awful lot like Hagrid.

Actually I got quite lucky, my mum didn’t come home to a burned down house. Saying this sounds quite overly dramatic but I’m pretty sure that there have been cases of burned down houses which could have been prevented if someone had just taken action a bit earlier. I felt a bit stupid calling the emergency number, but it seemed like the right thing to do when I couldn’t extinguish the fire myself. And in my defense; flames higher than half a meter can enlarge really fast.

At my university we actually had to take a fire extinguishing course so we’d be able to work in the lab safely, or at least safe ourselves if something went wrong. for me this was a dream come true, as a kid I actually wanted to become a firefighter. Not really what you’d expect to be an 8-year-old girl’s dream job. \but hey, why be a princess when you can climb on ladders, fight fires and save people?