Tuesday, January 15, 2008

The best and worst class trip.

I've taken a lot of very cool school trips--to France, to Cape Cod, to the Smoky Mountains. But whenever I think of the coolest school trip I ever took, I always think of my French class trip to Poland in 2002. It was my senior year of high school and I was studying abroad, and I thought it was just so awesome that we could drive to Poland. In a bus. Through Germany and the Czech Republic. In fact, I still think it's neat that Europe has so many little countries, like US states, and you can just drive from one to the next.

The weird thing is that when I look back on that trip, it wasn't exactly fun. I mean, it was definitely neat. And it definitely had an impact. But socially, it was extremely frustrating.

I saw incredibly cool things. We spent a night in Nuremberg. We visited Auschwitz. We spent several days in Poland, which is where my grandfather is from. I woke up on my 18th birthday in Prague to find it snowing. It was an eye-opening trip.


But the whole time that I was in France, I struggled with friendships. Several people in my class actually told me that I seemed like a pretty cool person, but they didn't want to bother becoming friends with me because I was just going to leave in a year. I was in a small public school in a village with a bunch of kids who had known each other forever, and the whole time I felt like I was on the fringes, always having to be the one who instigated anything social. I was never invited to parties and I never knew who to eat lunch with.

There were a few girls in my class I was friendly with, and occasionally we did stuff together outside of school, but that was about the extent of it. When we went to Poland, we spent a total of about 72 hours in the bus over 10 days. Everyone had a seatmate, an automatic buddy, and I ended up sitting next to a very nice girl who was part of a trio of friends, which meant that one of them didn't have a seatmate. She was friendly, but very involved with her friends.


Every time we stayed at a different hotel or hostel, it was a struggle for me to figure out who to room with. I always had to wait to see who had an extra spot and shove myself in with them, feeling distinctly unwelcome. One girl in my class invited me to share a room with her and her friends one night, only for me to be told by one of her friends that I shouldn't really be there because they had been looking forward to hanging out with just their group of friends during that trip, and I wasn't a part of that.

It was hard for me because it felt so foreign--I had never had trouble making friends before. And I was abroad and had this feeling like the experience was supposed to be life-altering and I was supposed to make these friends who would last forever. I felt like I should be bonding with these people and that I wasn't making the most out of my year abroad if I didn't. But I couldn't.


There was one day toward the beginning of the trip when I ended up sitting next to a guy who had always been nice to me, Scott, in the bus. It was morning, and my hair was wet from the shower. We were driving a long way and both fell asleep, and at some point I woke up with my head on his arm. Then he got up and went to talk to a friend of his and I went back to my own seat on the bus.

Later, a girl from my class came up to me and said she thought I should know that everyone was saying that I had licked Scott's arm in the bus. She had defended me, she claimed, but everyone believed him.

I ended up confronting him about it, in front of McDonald's in Prague, where we had gone to eat because our teachers didn't know where else to feed us. We went back and forth for awhile, with me asking what the hell he was thinking, and him saying that he woke up with his arm wet and what was he supposed to think, and me saying that maybe my wet hair that was on his arm had been what he had felt and why hadn't he just come to talk to me before spreading a nasty rumour, and him asking me again what he was supposed to think about his arm being wet. We went around in circles like that for awhile before he finally told me to go fuck myself and stormed off.

Incidentally, that guy never talked to me again, and in fact rudely ignored me when I would bump into him with a friend--he would always kiss the friend's cheek and look right through me like I wasn't even there. A year or so after I got back to the US, I heard that he was in jail in France for killing someone during a drug deal, supposedly in self-defense.


That trip was also when I admitted to a boy that I liked him for the first time. Did you know that in French there's no simple way to tell somebody you like them? "I like you" actually means "I love you," and the only word for having a crush on someone is vulgar slang. I actually asked some of my classmates how they would say they had a crush on someone, and they had no idea. "You attract me" and "You please me" were the two suggestions I heard.

So, one day while we were in Poland and the group was walking down the street, I found myself next to the boy I liked and figured that I was already so isolated from everyone that I might as well tell him I had a crush on him, because what harm could it do? So I said to him that he pleased me. He politely said thank you. I pushed the issue. "No, you please me."

"Oh," he said. Then he sped up and walked away from me to catch up with his friends.

The next day, a rumour started that I had asked that boy to have a threesome with me and another boy in the class. It was so ridiculous that I could not understand how it even caught on. When I asked one of my classmates how she could possibly believe it, she said, "Well, you did lick that other guy's arm."

45 comments:

  1. Kids can be so cruel. No screw that, adults can be cruel too. At least you still recognize it as an awesome trip, regardless of the idiots who were on it with you.

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  2. awww. I it such a bad feeling when you can't click with people. Especially when you are in an environment that seems like the optimal place to make lifelong bonds. I kind of went through something similar in grad school. I thought I would make all these life long friends...but it was so hard to connect with everyone.

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  3. god, high school. this is such a flashback. reminds me very much of what my middle school was like. i could do no right with most people (except my small group of friends). eeesh. so frustrating, especially abraod where youre already feeling vulnerable.

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  4. I can't even fathom what it must have been like to visit Auschwitz. You'll have to dedicate a whole post to that someday. I'd be very interested.

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  5. oh fuckin high school. i dont believe you could pay me to go back.

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  6. Oh lord, this was SAD. Kids are SO DUMB what with the arm-licking and all. SIGH. It's a wonder we're not all in a rubber room after high school.

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  7. It's so annoying that a couple of bad eggs can ruin what should be a wonderful and memorable trip. I'm glad you didn't let it affect you as much as it could have and that you were able to make the most out of such a unique experience!

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  8. Kids really are mean. I switched schools in second grade, and it was so hard to break into those cliques. It must be ten times harder as a young adult.

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  9. oh-em-gee... the rumor mill? HATED it. 'Twas the most evil thing to lurk my high school halls. It took me YEARS to get over the ones I dealt with.. Gah. I may blog about it one day. Gawd, did I hate high school.

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  10. What a horrible story...I'm sorry, but I chuckled to myself a little. Hopefully you can laugh a little now about how ridiculous the events were...

    Kids not wanting to become friends with someone because they were leaving anyway? That's crazy. At my school, people seemed to swarm around the foreign exchange students.

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  11. This post is just so painfully hilarious. Brilliant, really.

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  12. Wow... French kids are cruel! I would totally defend you in the lick-the-arm incident, by the way.

    xox

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  13. Arm licking? Kids can be so cruel and incredibly stupid. Sorry to hear that this trip doesn't only bring back great memories.

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  14. Your study abroad stories always remind me a little of Footloose. You know, without the ban on dancing...and in France.

    It's been my experience that the kids who work so hard to hurt others are the ones who like themselves the least. That never helped when I was 15, but it sure does now.

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  15. I accidentally read Rebecca's comment as "It is such a bad feeling when you can't lick with people." Ha ha ha!

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  16. Is it wrong that I giggled at the end of that post?

    And also? Your school trips kicked ass! The only place we ever went was to Six Flags.

    Now I'm thinking about making friends in school next week and I'm SCARED!

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  17. Teenagers are such a disaster. I think we all have memories of how horrible we were to one another.

    When I was in high school, I remember all the "cool" kids constantly teasing this one kid. He was autistic and all he wanted to do was hang out with them. Be like them. They let him hang out with them and let him be the butt of their jokes. He killed himself our senior year. And every single one of them had a very guilty conscience.

    Thankfully you had the will to survive!

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  18. Kids are so damn mean. I just hate it.

    On a side note, I used to know a guy that, upon meeting you, would bite your neck. Vampire style. Nto to draw blood, but to be totally strange. He was a total freak.

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  19. I'm so glad to be done with high school.

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  20. Ouch. But I've got to admit, the last sentence of your post made me laugh. :)

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  21. sheesh. That doesn't sound like a very funt trip.

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  22. So you look back fondly on the trip?!? I liked the twist that the guy whose arm was not licked is in jail. :-)

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  23. I think that this proves that no matter what the country, teenagers are a-holes.

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  24. OMG, French kids are so mean!! If I'd had your experience of France instead of my (very positive) one, I might be eating Freedom Fries right now.

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  25. It's not just French kids who are mean- it's all kids. Subbing junior high/high school has taught me that. It's amazing to see kids so readily turn on each other- and worse, kids going back for more brutal treatment. Thankfully the majority of us grow out of that. It's bizarre though- how we act sometimes when we are young. And I hate to say it, but I did giggle at the last bit.

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  26. I was just having a conversation with my roommate about how if I ever find out that my kids are being mean to other kids at school, I'll be that crazy mother, storming through the neighborhood looking for her kid so I can slap him/her. Kids are SO effing mean.

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  27. Oh god. Kids can be so damn cruel. A lot of similar stuff happened in middle school - drawing markers around groups of friends, outlandish rumors, etc and it sucked for all involved.

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  28. De-lurking...so obviously teenagers are mean no matter which country you're in, huh? You couldn't PAY me to go back to high school. And, seriously... arm licking?! *roll eyes* That is beyond ridiculous. ~LA

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  29. Reading this made me feel right back at school. I didn't hate every minute of school, but lots of them I did.

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  30. This world is full of mean people, whatchya gonna do about it? Don't give a damn.

    I did laugh a little, I sat next to you translates to I licked your hand, I like you translates to a threesome, man at that rate I think my life is a fulltime New years orgy of booze and sex.

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  31. That sounds like an amazing trip, and I think you deserve a "do-over" without all the assholes in tow.

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  32. oooooh growing up is such crap. kids are crap. it's like the telephone game where something totally innocent starts out and then it ends nasty and someone is left feeling stupid.

    this reminds me of when I told Mr Big that I liked him. totally wrecked our friendship because it was awkward for him.

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  33. It amazes me how kids treat each other. This post was great, told with humor and the wisdom that comes with hindsight.

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  34. Kids can be so mean.

    Seriously though, you went to amazing places on school trips. I got to go to reject towns in Michigan and if we are lucky maybe a museum. Those are awesome trips!

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  35. Hi. I found your blog through Molly at theselittlemoments and I wanted you to know that so far I love your posts. I can really relate to your posts about weight and high school. I just started blogging, but hopefully I can someday sound as honest as you.

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  36. Okay you have to stop this depressing stuff. You keep riminding me of my awful childhood. One of these days, instead of taking the piss I'll be writing about those b*tches back in primary school. Anyway you did manage to make me smile, you boy licker.

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  37. GOD. People can be sooo vicious with their rumors, right? That's ridiculous. Sorry you had to go through that!

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  38. ok that last line just did me in. sooo funny!

    oh, and WHY are girls such bitches?! srsly...i cannot believe how catty these people were to you.

    i am however, envious, of the amazing experience you must have had studying abroad.

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  39. I feel you on the traveling thing. Sometimes, I hate traveling in groups because things are always misconstrued in small environments.

    My study abroad in England? I was miserable until I finally said screw it and walked away from the people I was traveling with.

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  40. This story is why I am so grateful that there is no possible way I could be forced to time warp to any time between the ages of 13 and 18. If threatened with that possibility, I would get down on my knees and pray for God to just beam me on up rather than having to relive those years.

    It's amazing that anyone of us turns out to be normal (or even semi-normal) adults. I don't think I can eat breakfast now.

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  41. That sucks.. but at least you got to go somewhere cool during school. My school banned overseas trips because some kids got hurt jet skiing in Mexico like 10 years before I went to school there. It sucked.

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  42. Weird french people....tsk tsk tsk. Obviously only thinking about one thing.

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  43. Those people sound so nasty - how sad that it really dampens your memories of the amazing trip opportunity.

    And I'm always amazed by how close most of Europe is to each other. I mean, being in England - it's only a few hours to dozens of other countries, incredible!

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  44. I hate the feeling off being the odd one out.

    We had a foreign exchange student live with my family when I was in high school, he was from Belgium and it was the best thing. We got so attached and still talk all of the time to him.

    Now, in college I have met many friends from Spain which is cool because that is where my grandma is from.

    I hate when people single someone out and don't accept them. At the end of the day though, it is their problem. :-)

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