Europe? Yeah, Whatever by likeanopenbook

Summary. A trip to Europe is likely to be full of adventure and hilarity, but my trip 2 years ago was so unique that I realized I had to tell everyone about it. Names have been changed, but the majority of what happened was so memorable that I have hardly changed any of it. The parts I did alter…well, I’ll leave that up to you to decide what is fact and fiction. (Also, as a precaution: if anyone from the fateful trip happens to come across this, none of it is meant to offend! You were all lovely people…at least most of you.)

And now, with no further ado, I ask you, dear readers, to recall back two years ago. Remember the world we lived in then, or remember (or imagine) yourself just a few weeks after your graduation. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy my colorful little life.

Chapter 1: June 6, 2006

Already Annoyed

The last time I flew was summer break three years ago to visit my grandpa in Boston. I traveled with my parents and two little brothers. Today was unique to my previous flying experience in that I was with thirteen classmates I barely knew to a place I would know no one.

I hadn’t planned it that way; but my ability to adapt was one of my best qualities. When you say to your friends, “Let’s go to Europe!” the immediate reaction is, “Yeah!” But when it comes down to it, real lives get in the way, funds are short, and really wouldn’t it be better to do it next year? Not for me. I was ready.

So there I was, boarding the very tail end of the plane after a harrowing wait in the Miami International Airport. Yes, it was harrowing; a seemingly quite girl named Sheri had left her passport at home. Her house was an hour drive north. No one was home to bring it to her. You have got to be kidding me.

While Sheri called every known friend and relative in south Florida, swishing her chemically straight hair over her shoulders, I noticed that my friend Gio was silently hovering around her, looking strangely subdued. This was strange because I knew Gio through Drama Club, and he was only happy when he was the center of attention. In fact, he always surrounded himself with the loudest people he could find, so life around Gio was a party. For now, he and his gaggle of obnoxious girls were quiet while waiting for Sheri’s passport.

Other than Gio, the only other person I knew well on the trip was my French teacher, Madame Jones. Our French department was very small (I was one of five students in French IV), and I happened to love French, therefore I knew Madame Jones very well. I knew that she was an absolute Francophile to the point of tackiness, I knew that she hated children but decided to teach and give birth to her own anyway, I knew that she did not have enough patience to fill a teaspoon. And there she was, chaperoning a group of fourteen of possibly the most insufferable students in school to Europe.

Unfortunately my love for learning French gave Madame Jones the idea that I loved it because of her. Nothing could have been further from the truth; I did all I could to disrupt her lessons with my mundane questions about idioms and French music and such. The whole class was in on it. But her Francophile self just couldn’t resist explaining the difference between accents aigu and grave, or of the subtleties between the imperfect and past tenses.

I had resigned myself to sitting with her in the sandwich shop while everyone waited for Sheri’s stupid passport. The name of the shop, ironically, was called Au Pain, which sparked all of the other students to loudly ask why a shop would call itself anything about “pain” when it really sold sandwiches. See, the only other French student on the trip was a freshman named Stephanie, and by the sound of her echoing everyone else’s confusion, she had no idea that pain actually meant “bread.” Madame Jones was already rubbing her temples wearily.

Senora Diaz seemed to be either unaware or consciously blocking out the sound of her students’ lack of intelligence, but instead was glaring mutinously at Sheri. I didn’t know Senora Diaz at all, but from our first trip meeting I could tell she was a woman of organization and hard work. And there was Sheri, an hour before our plane was to leave, nonchalantly realizing her passport was sitting on the kitchen table an hour away.

Gio came silently over to our table with an update. I could tell that he was finding amusement in every second of this, but he politely held back his laughter to keep our chaperones at bay. “Sheri’s aunt and uncle are on their way to get her passport,” he said, biting his lip in attempt to resist smiling. “What an exciting start to a trip, right Senora?”

“Oh, niño,” was all she said.

Another girl joined our table, and Senora Diaz addressed her as Jocelyn. I realized that I was meeting my roommate for the first time. I smiled; she looked quiet and intelligent. I was extremely surprised when Gio asked the two of us if we wanted to play cards. I would have assumed he would go back to his girls, who were steadily growing louder and louder, but apparently he was a better friend to not desert me.

Not a minute later, my bubble was burst when a boy named Danny came and sat with us. Like Senora Diaz, the only time I had met Danny was in our trip meeting, where he proved himself to be the most annoying person on the planet. He cracked stupid jokes throughout our game of Egyptian Ratscrew, but fell quiet when yet another girl, Jade, came and stood beside him.

I thought I disliked Danny on first meeting him, but it was nothing compared to Jade. Her face was wide and squished, and could form nothing but the ugliest sneer imaginable, which didn’t compliment her very poorly applied make up and three inches of black roots over long, straw-like hair. She didn’t speak, she whined. The sound made me grimace.

“Danny, why’d you leave me sitting over there?”

Luckily, Danny did not have to answer. Just then, Senora Diaz stood up, and she’s the kind of teacher who somehow gains the attention of every student in the room by doing so. Au Pain fell silent.

“If everyone could grab their belongings, please, we’re going to move over to gate fourteen.”

We caught relief when, forty minutes later, Sheri’s passport arrived. And that’s how I ended up on the tail of Flight 197 with over a dozen strangers, the strange beginning to an even stranger trip.

There was slight chaos as everyone tried to sit next to their friends. I was already sure the flight attendants hated their lives at that point, shooting falsely pleasant smiles at our constantly growing noise. Jocelyn and I immediately took two of the three middle seats, and to my great surprise (again), Gio joined us. Apparently, his four girls, Sheri, Callie, Marissa, and Angelica, had paired off and left him to fend for himself. Jade and Stephanie, who were friends from freshman cheerleading, sat together, and Danny wound up next to some old man. I still had not met the others in our group.

The exasperation of my dimwitted group mates was starting to wear off, and the excitement of traveling was settling in me. Jocelyn and Gio were feeling it, too; but then again Gio is always excited. We were flipping through the little pamphlets that tell you what kind of candy and sodas they had to offer, and frantically rummaging through the different headsets and remote controls that attached to the screens on the seats in front of us.

“Ellie! Ellie!” Gio called to me, “they have Beauty and the Beast, Ellie! My God, your favorite!”

From that moment on I knew the trip could maybe turn into something okay. Right after take off (my favorite part of any traveling; it’s like a roller coaster in midair), Gio, Jocelyn, and I watched Beauty and the Beast straight through, occasionally being interrupted by one of our classmates shouting over the seats.

One thing that hugely surprised me was the lack of shouting coming from Danny. An overwhelming change had come over him, and he was no longer seeking every ounce of attention he could. Instead he sat very still, his eyes focused on the blank screen in front of him, not even a small goofy smile on his face. My jaw dropped when I saw this, because for half an hour before we boarded the plane, he had been throwing cards across the room with a big boy named Ray, trying to get them to land in a hat. I pointed out Danny’s sereneness to Jocelyn, who goggled the way I did. “Maybe he’s scared of flying?” she suggested.

An hour later we were served dinner in neat little trays. This was when I started to notice Jocelyn’s quirk… I couldn’t help but see that she had avoided eating any of her food, but politely pushed it around her tray and took out a package of artificial peanut butter crackers instead. I tried not to be rude when I asked her if that was all she was going to eat, and she bemusedly replied yes.

After reading two chapters of the book I brought, Jane Eyre, almost everyone else had somehow fallen asleep. So, admitting defeat, I plugged my headphones in to the Garden State soundtrack, and fell asleep.