past travels part 2!

 so let's pick up where i left off.

when i was in grade 10 (around 15 years old) i had the opportunity to go to europe with a few friends of mine. it was organized through our school but it wasn't like a normal school trip. the teachers that came along didn't really chaperone us, they just came along to be there in case any of us needed an adult. we had lots of freedom to go and do what we wanted which was great. this was the first time i was going on a trip without my parents and it was to a crazy and far away place, excited doesn't even begin to explain what i was feeling before i left. i was so young that i was almost too daft to be scared about it. i mean i was going to friggen FRANCE AND SPAIN! the flight to Paris was  9 hours and felt like an eternity. i tried to sleep but failed miserably. it was sort of a disaster when we got there because of the time difference and everything our tour guide decided it would be best it we just stayed up for the whole day and went on our first few excersions. if i remember correctly i was up a total of 40 something hours, you could say we were dead. i actually started to go a little bit insane during that day, i felt as though i had been drugged and still to this day believe that haha. but i was told it was exhaustion which i guess makes a bit more sense. i don't know why it affects me more than most people, but it does. we visited so many places in Paris, like Versailles, Museum de Rodan, Notre Dame,  the Arc de Triumph and of course the Eiffel Tower. we went to a few other places in France, like orange (pronounced or-rawn-sh) and nice (pronounced like niece).

my friends and i went a little wild and tried to do and see everything we could in between going to the museums and such, that we actually got lost in France at one point! we had an hour break to do whatever we wanted and we separated from our group (the group of students from our school, our chaperones, and tour guide). we had absolutely no. freaking. idea. where we were, and to top it off none of us to speak french. just the odd word here and there is all that we could speak. luckily my one friend had a map and knew where our group was headed to after our break was finished. but, unfortunately we were in a very quiet part of what ever town we were in, there were no people to try and ask directions to! we found a woman after about half an hour of wandering around and tried saying how do we get here? to her in french and then attempted to piece together the few french words we knew that were coming flying out of her mouth a million miles a minute. we thought we were doomed. my one friend knew that she told us to take a right at the end of the street we were on and to turn left after passing a certain shop. so we tried doing just that. but our group was no where to be found. at this point we had a serious conversation as to what we were going to do, seeing as we were lost at large. i was starting to get that nervous tummy ache because it was getting kind of scary, it had been two or more hours and we had no idea where we were or how to find our way back to our group seeing as they were constantly moving from place to place and potentially moving farther and farther away from where we were. this is when the luckiest moment of my life happened, our group appeared out of seemingly no where across the street from us. so, of course, we ran over as happy as can be screaming OH MY GOD WHERE WERE YOU GUYS!? OH MY GOD! this is also the moment we realized they had no clue we were even missing! all three chaperones started to laugh saying that they had done numerous head count and some how managed to miss count FOUR MISSING HEADS everytime. how does that even happen? real reassuring eh? anyways once we were with our group again we stayed pretty close for the rest of the day, until the next day when we went crazy and wandered again, we didn't get lost on the trip ever again though! haha. but a few days later we went for a night walk up this chapel in Paris, it was gorgeous and especially beautiful at night! after the walk we went in to this little town and walked around there and got some mcflurries (we were so surprised they had mcdonald's in france but i guess there's no reason there wouldn't be since they're everywhere) and then we walked through the town and watched people on the merry-go-rounds and all the passers by. this is when i almost got kidnapped. i was approached by a sort of scary man who asked me directions to somewhere, which is when i told him i didn't speak french and couldn't help him and began walking away. as i started to walk away he grabbed the strap of my backpack and pulled me back to him, i screamed and my friend ran over to my rescue, karate chopped his arm, and then we both ran. it scared the beegeebies out of me! but other than getting lost and almost getting kidnapped, France was an absolute blast. i'm going back there for sure.

stay tuned for part 3 where i talk about Espana!

stay cheeky!