An Unforseen Force

It's been a while since I have written on here, I know. My excuse is
simply that I have been rather busy and I will begin to write more
often from now on.

Before I begin I would like to clarify that this post will not be quite as emotionally in depth as the previous entry.

In February 2008 the weather in Palermo becomes rather bipolar for some strange reason. I found this out, again, the hard way. For about three days in a row the sky had been completely blue, not a cloud in the sky, and occasionally you could hear those invisible song birds sing. For three days the temperature had been higher than normal, high enough to wear shorts and a T-shirt. For three days, tanning out on the balcony was an option. Of course, the inexperienced, ignorant, and benighted Americans thought it was summer. Palermo being twenty minutes away from the beach, that was obviously the first notion, and choice. We decided the second day of the heat that we were going to go to the beach and awaited in anticipation. The last time any of us had been to the beach was before the school year started, so naturally the excitement level had risen to a rather high point. While we waited through that last day we would look at the sky, let the sun bake our faces and fantasize about the bright blue water flowing across our bodies, the water slowly evaporating off of our slightly burnt skin, and the sound of little children laughing while they dug their moat around the castle they had made. But in eighteen hours, all the dreams we dreamed would soon disappear. The next day we woke up, and for me my first thought was about how wonderful the beach was going to be. I got in the shower, without looking out the window because, of course, the weather was going to be perfect. I finished my shower, popped a couple zits, scraped stubs of little hairs from my face with a razor, smeared a odorous liquid on my armpits, ate a piece of bread, and walked out the door. Within the forty seven seconds it takes for the elevator to reach the Ground floor from the fourth floor, the thoughts that ran through my head had no order or any particular vindication for being in existence. My mind attempted to see into the future by predicting the interrogation that was going to come at school, then it shot to the beach and all the fun that we were going to have in the sun, and once again back to school where Fabio would ask me for the text book in every class, then it switched to after the beach, telling my family the happenings of the day. Then it switched to - with a sudden and unexpected "qualoonk" the elevator stopped, gravity seized this opportunity to jerk my brain out of its fantasy. In the process of thinking, my body had leaned slightly forward and with the sudden attack of gravity, my entire body and any thought that remained in my mind was put off balance. I felt my eyeballs pull a little bit out of their sockets, and my cheeks drooped with the sudden push of gravity. My stomach muscles flexed and my legs stood planted but pushed away from each other in order to compensate for my lack of bodily equivalence. My strange techniques to save myself from falling seemed not to be working at a satisfactory level, and I could feel my body slowly toppling to an embarrassing fate. For some strange reason, my arms flew out from my sides without me having to file a command of any sort. The four small walls of the elevator never made any physical contact with my body, but the action of flinging my arms out at such a speed seemed to balance my body and realign my senses. I thought about what had happened, cocked my head and chuckled as I opened the elevator door. Gravity, on the other hand was not as amused as I, in fact I'm almost positive that gravity was rather frustrated with the fact that I had wiggled myself out of his little trap. While gravity lingered in the empty elevator grumbling to himself, I opened the big metal door to the outside world. Not only were there clouds, but the sky had been utterly enshrouded by them. The air was no longer dry and hot, but it was wet and soggy. It was almost possible to see the air itself drooping and drowning from the overflow of humidity. I stood there staring at this image that sent a shock starting at my eyes and traveling through my entire body down to the lifeless toe jam that was rotting in between my tiny pinky toe and the next toe over. I blinked once or twice, and only in between those flashes of darkness when my eyelids veiled my pupils, I saw the sun covered beach.

Forrest and I made it to school without any troubles, and as predicted, my teacher interrogated me, and as predicted Fabio asked for the books in every class, except one. After class the three Americans debated over whether or not going to the beach was a good idea. Since the majority of the Americans were of the male sex, going home was not an option. Whether or not swimming was going to take place, we were determined to leave at least a small sign of our bravery behind. We took the bus, trying to either prepare ourselves for the cold water,or praying that it would not rain.

We arrived at the beach after about a fifteen minute bus ride of junior high Italians trying to speak English. Words were said over and over like "What is you name" or "Where are you from" we would give them the truthful reply of "California" hoping that they had never heard of such a place, but "The OC" supplied them with the material to have heard of California. Followed by the "ohhh"s always came the theme song to "The OC". However, the only words anyone has ever learned from that song are "Californiaaa". The Italians apparently thought that by singing this song they impressed the holy Americans on the bus, and continued to sing the same one word over and over for fifteen minutes. What they didn't seem to understand is that when two of three people make eye contact and groan when someone starts to sing "The OC" song, it is considered a bad thing.

Forrest pressed the small red button on the bus to open the doors when it stopped, and the Italian Children's Chorus broke out in one last verse of "California". At the same time, Forrest broke out in one last particularly loud groan to show his unhappy feelings about the situation. The bus jolted to a stop, and if you were looking at the heads of everyone on the bus you would see that almost every head went down to check their feet, just in case they disappeared and the stubs left would sustain their inability to keep their balance on such a bus. The doors opened and we leaped off the bus as fast as we could and hoped that the choir did not notice our departure and follow us. The doors closed and we waited for a moment listening for the sound of high pitched male voices. There was nothing. Just to make sure, I looked at the bus and saw three or four small heads pop out the window and yell "bye bye!" Pretending to smile I waved back in the hopes of never encountering such people again. As the bus turned the corner two or three fists of glory shot out next to the heads as they screamed "Californiaaa" as loud as they could. Sighing, I squinted my eyes, looked at the ground, and twisted on my heel in an attempt to distract myself from the awkward silence. After a quick moment of relief, we decided to venture our way onto the sand. The cold, yet dry sand crunched and ground on my feet with every awkward and unbalanced step. We arrived about half way to the water and decided to put our bags there. We stood around our bags and began to remove our shoes. While removing our shoes, Forrest began to mumble about his dislike for the Italian youth. While I partly concentrated on the shoes, and partly concentrated on the combination of the weather and the water, Forrest's complaints seemed to get more and more trivial by the second. By the time we finished removing our shoes, Forrest's voice had been completely blocked from my mind. A giant gust of wind came flying down the beach and managed to move its frozen invisible being up my shirt, shooting an extremely uncomfortable tingle starting at my neck, and slowly and painfully moving down my spine, making sure to freeze every pore in my body. I let out a yelp of utter discomfort followed by an uncontrollable twitch, shifting my entire body into positions that are not commonly concealed within the mind. As my muscles hysterically flexed and relaxed, and my spine twisted in odd directions, I heard Chaney and Forrest, obviously unaffected by the wind, giggle at the sight of my uncontained emotions manifested through my body. After a few seconds of my distressed shivers, I calmed down and let out a sigh of relief. Then I realized what I was about to do. Just the thought of diving into water that was probably colder than the air gave me a couple more mini twitches of anticipatory agony. We stood there and shivered while we stared at the bright blue water and I began to wonder if it would really be worth any of it. That thought was immediately broken by Forrest when he said “Well, shall we?” With a slight hesitation in my mind, my voice seemed to make my decisions for me and I heard myself say “Let’s”. Immediately I was telling myself ‘no, no, no, why did you just say that?” but I had no choice. Apparently my subconscious had made my decision without my approval. Regretting I ever came, I began to remove my shirt and felt the evil invisible force torture me once again. I felt a small advancement in the wind and heard a fast rhythmic crunch behind me and determined that Forrest had already started his way into the water. Feeling a good amount less manly, I began to run along behind him. I felt the frozen wind whip across my body. With every leaping step I took, it stung my body like very small needles softly tapping my skin, but with just enough pressure to get underneath my skin. I felt the sand form to every ounce of pressure I planted. I could feel occasional grains of sand tap my back as my feet wildly sprayed it in every direction. I saw Forrest dive into the water and could only imagine what he was thinking. Within seconds I would have the opportunity to think my own thoughts. My feet hit the wet sand and I felt yet another shiver slide its way up my body and attack my senses once again. Then I saw Forrest return from his journey with a shocked face. He began to scream and my left foot hit the water. The shock of the cold seemed to launch me up two or three feet. I let out a yelp as I flew into the air. Forrest’s screams seemed to become delayed, the wind stopped blowing, the water wasn’t splashing anymore, my body was frozen in time. Then I realized what was happening, gravity was going to take his revenge. For some reason, on this particular day an invisible force had something against me. I could see the water slowly moving towards me Forrest’s scream still lingering, but barely. Why had I made this decision to jump? I could feel gravity pushing down on me, and time slowing down to make sure I felt every bit of the ice cold liquid. I moved towards the water and with every moment that passed, my fear began to rise along with my morbid prediction of what was to come. The water touched my foot and time returned to its normal state of rhythm, my body was violently thrusted into an uncaring, soundless, frigid place. And once again, while I was submerged in a frozen hell, time stopped to delight in my wild state of numbed suicide. The cold encased me from all sides, it slowly put more and more pressure on my being. The cold began to seep its way into my body after it chilled my outer layer of skin. I launched my feet towards the direction that I thought was the ground, but the cold began to neutralize my body with every moment that I spent in the gravity-less realm. Finally I felt the rough sand on my feet, I tightened my muscles in my legs and I began to feel the water slowly create friction on my body. It flowed around my body freezing me as much as it could with the little time it had. I began to scream while still underwater, just out of pure instinct. I felt the surface of the water break over my head, and the bubbles protruding from my mouth found freedom from their confined world. Once again time returned to its recognizable flow and my body launched out of the water, my vocal cords tightened and continued to vibrate like an entire orchestra composed of only violinists. I found Forrest through my blurred vision and found him still screaming. We stood there for a few moments and shared our pain by simply screaming in each other’s direction while the wind relentlessly stormed our bodies. Finally I ran out of breath but had too much energy to stop the screaming, I inhaled deeply while small droplets of water flew into my mouth off my upper lip. I choked on one or two of the droplets, coughed just enough to add frustration to my discomfort, and continued inhaling. After my compacted lungs were full, I tightened my vocal cords once again, and blew as much air as I could through them. Forrest followed in my action, or I followed him, either way we both ended up screaming as loud as our bodies would let us, while Chaney stood on the beach and sadistically laughed at our misfortune.

There is much more to this story, but I feel like it has been to long since I have published a blog, so I will post this much now, and finish the rest at a later time. I will not finish this particular post with a lesson because the story is not over yet. I will definitely make a part two, and if that becomes too long, I will finish it with a third “Chapter”. Enjoy this section for now, and the rest is coming.

Dustin Douros

I Want That.

This post is will not be similar to the other stories I have told before. It is something that happened to me about one hour ago, I couldn't help but skip over the other chronological stories and tell this one. This story is not really a telling of a story, or for me it doesn't feel like that, but more my thoughts and feelings that occurred at a point in time.

This morning at eleven o' clock, Rocco's baby sister was born. I was in French class praying to God that time would speed up, while Anna was probably praying to God asking for the pain to stop. We went to visit the baby this evening with Rocco.

I stepped out of the car and away from the seat-warmer and felt the cold but refreshing air hit my chest and continue it's way up to my chin, on to my cheeks, around my nose and into my eyes. The cold air seemed to clean my lungs from the hot humid air of Palermo. With every breath I took I felt my body freeze and reheat with my exhale. Over and over, I concentrated on this cleansing feeling while I almost unconsciously walked toward the hospital. Then I realized where I was going, this had been the first real memorable time I had been to a hospital since my father's accident. I had never thought about it, but I hadn't experienced the feeling of being in a hospital for over a year. I stepped through the sliding doors, and even though the smell of cigarette smoke overpowered the room, images of the Roseville trauma center flashed through my mind. At first I wanted to remember what it was like, it seemed that I had forgotten a familiar feeling, whether it was good or not, it was familiar and had left my mind for a long time. I wanted to feel it again, so I tried to remember as much as I could. Images overtook my mind and it seemed uncontrollable, I saw my family sitting in the waiting room, I heard Dr. Bosco telling us what was going on. I was finished, the memories became too overwhelming, it became hard to breath, and my vision blurred. I concentrated as much as I could to remove the feeling that I brought on. I heard Rocco's voice asking to push the button on the elevator, and it was gone, I felt free almost, but trapped at the same time. A couple seconds later I managed to forget that that experience had ever happened.

The elevator doors opened and we walked into the room where Anna and the baby were. We greeted them with the usual "Congratulations" and "she is so cute!". They began to speak Italian very fast about things that I probably wouldn't have understood in English. I began to look at the sleeping baby, but not just look, I examined all I could see. Her head and her hands were the only things showing outside of the blanket. She was asleep, her eyes closed, moving slightly every minute or two. I stared at her for so long, I had never really gotten the chance to really look at a baby for a long amount of time. All the sound in the room seemed to disappear, the congratulations, the laughing, even the sound of people moving and breathing faded into silence. It was just me and this baby that was born mere hours before. Her skin was perfect, not a blemish, or wrinkle anywhere, her eyes were closed and I could have examined just her eyelids for hours. There was nothing, completely blank. There was a small circle right in the center of her noticeably larger upper lip, followed by small folds that waved out from that circle. Her hair was never consistent, a spot of hair here, another one there, a noticeable hair line was nearly impossible to find. It just seemed to exist, there was not a starting or stopping point of her hair, it faded from skin to hair, it's almost impossible to explain using words. And her hands, I can't even begin to talk about her hands, because there is no way that I can possibly describe the perfectness of them. They were small and seemed so frail, she had no control of where they went or what they did, her fingernails were long and hard to distinct from her actual finger, they seemed to blend in with the rest of her hands. The color of her skin never changed to a different shade, there was no tan line, there were no freckles, no moles. It was her skin that I was most fascinated with. She seemed so peaceful lying there, people all around her congratulating, eating, giving flowers, and there she was, completely unaffected. All I could think while I spent what seemed to be hours staring at her was "I want that". Over and over, the words ran through my head. I knew that I could not have that peacefulness for myself, but I wanted to get as close to it as possible. All I wanted was to have something close to me that was unaffected by the world, untouched. Then, all of these wonderful thoughts were destroyed within seconds.

A smell floated across the room. A dreadful and yet alluring smell, A smell that not only took me away from this peace, but put my mind in a place that seemed to be a hell at the time. The smell was simple. It was a disinfectant that they use in hospitals. In January 2006 we had to put a disinfectant foam on our hands before entering into a room where one of the most unpeaceful men lay for six weeks. This smell ripped me away, punched me in the face and threw me back to January 2006. Now instead of not hearing anything, I heard one of the most spine tingling noises I know. A calm and yet choked breathing, that sounded as if it was being breathed through a tube. Slowly, and calmly, it never changed it's pace, it never changed it's tone. Then another noise followed, two high pitched beeps, quickly and then pausing, then again. Never in time with the rhythmic steadied breathing. Then came the images, I saw myself turning the corner and entering room number 11. I was shaking and my palms were sweating, along with the images came more sound, I could hear the nurses walking and talking as if nothing was wrong, but something was wrong. I saw my father, whiter than I have ever seen any man, there were tubes and wires coming out of holes all over his body, tubes that didn't seem to go anywhere, and wires that didn't seem to do anything. Then I turned to my right and saw the small bottle hanging upside down with the nozzle pointing at the ground. I pulled the nozzle towards me almost as a reflex, a muscle memory. The disinfectant foam fell into my hand and the dreadful smell that would haunt me two years later flowed into my nose and implanted itself in my mind, making sure that I would never forget those weeks. A tube was going down the throat of my father preventing him from speaking, and providing yet another haunting memory that was to be planted in me. He had very little control of his head and could not move it easily. I walked in the room and his eyes opened, scanned the room for someone or something. His small shrunken pupils found me, and watched me put the latex gloves on. I walked over to the left side of the bed, and his hand reached out and limply grasped my fingers. I was pulled out of this memory once again, by a screaming baby. Although she seemed to show it more than I, she was not the only one who felt like screaming. I felt limp and loose, again my vision was blurred and I was dizzy. It had been a long time since these memories had hit me this hard, and at such an unexpected time. I couldn't breath and I felt sick, I had to find a chair but they were all taken by the women tending to the screaming, helpless child. I fell up against the wall praying that I would be able to take control over my body and my mind. The smell still lingered, and although I was not thrusted as violently into the memory as before, disturbing images and sounds flooded my mind. Tubes filled with flowing bile, thousands of machines beeping uncontrollably, my father's face cringing from the pain of the dozens of cuts and slices in his body, nurses yelling at others to get various implements. In and out of reality I flashed, both unbearably chaotic. The last thing in the world that I was thinking was "I want that", I didn't know what I wanted, it was to riotous to know. And all of a sudden, it stopped. I don't know why, or how. All I know is that the baby stopped crying, and I was once more able to think clearly.

I don't know why I wrote about this, but afterwards, I stood there leaning against the wall and thought to myself, "The only way I am ever going to understand this is if I write about it". The only problem is, is that now that I'm done, I still don't understand. If you began reading this hoping that there was going to be some end point or some moral, I apologize. I originally thought there was going to be.

-Dustin Douros

Little Red Men

This next story I have to tell is most likely the most exciting story that has happened to me yet.

As I am sure everyone has been told at some point, European drivers can be kind of crazy. I had been told this but it never really hit me, until it actually hit me.

I walk back from school every day on one of the main roads called Via Notarbartolo, coming off Notarbartolo are many smaller streets. So it all begins here, I was walking back from school one day, crossing the mini streets normally when I had to, glancing to the right and glancing to the left. Then I came upon that one street, that one street that would almost be the death of me. I remember looking down at my feet for second, quickly examining the newly made hole in my shoe, looking up at the small illuminated yellow man that seemed to be telling me, "Don't worry, cross the street, you have nothing to worry about". Almost taunting, challenging me to take those eleven steps to make it across. I took up the challenge, I was going to show that yellow man that I could cross a street safely. Determined, I fixed my gaze on that yellow guy, staring it down and intimidating it. After the first three steps I thought "Maybe I should look both ways..." Quickly I looked to my left to make sure no cars were going to disrupt my subjugation of the little yellow man. Confirming that no cars were coming from the left, I swung my head in the other direction, what used to be yellow had now turned red. "What was that?" I thought, I stopped half way through the turning process to center my head, the little yellow man didn't look so taunting now, in fact he looked kind of angry. He had changed from the seductive yellow to the infuriated red. This time it was not me who was intimidating him, but rather the other way around. Then there was a sound, not a nice calming sound, but a sound that seemed to represent the feelings of that small man. The sound blared in my right ear, if I had time to squint and mush my face into unnatural shapes I would have. But there was no time for this, I saw out of the corner of my eye a car, thinking as fast as I could, I decided not to run ahead or to jump backwards, but to jump a foot or two in the opposite direction of the car. This however did not aid me whatsoever because the car's reflexes weren't as fast as mine, and it had no intention of stopping. People tell stories and they say "Then everything seemed in slow motion..." Let me say right now that what happened next, was not in slow motion. It was very fast, and very painful. The next thing I knew I was on top of this motorized piece of metal with the horn still blaring in my right ear, but this time more intense because I was directly above it. The horn finally stopped and I lay there for a couple second savoring the silence. Once again, my peacefulness was interrupted by a click and a voice speaking words that I didn't understand. Slowly I got up, my vision blurred, I looked around and saw yet another red man, this time not so small, but red nonetheless. This red man was more animated than the first, and seemed to be more furious. All I could say to this man was a mumble of Italian words that seemed to flow, dribble and roll through my mind. Words like "Scus... dispia... giorn... dove..." A couple of English words leaked their way through, random words that had nothing to do with the situation. Once consciousness was gained I was able to blurb the words "No parlo Italiano". The red man did not seem to care whether or not I spoke Italian, in fact he seemed to care more about the fact that his car might be hurt more than me. Since I was in the middle of the street I did not plan on going back to where I came from, like I said I was going to show that red man who was boss. I waited until there was a break in the traffic to finish crossing the street. Once on the other side I realized that I had just been hit by a car. I turned around, saw the car that had hit me, waved to slightly less red man, slurred a quick "Ciao" and immediately began to examine my legs. Determining that they were not broken, since I was able to walk, I continued on my way home. It wasn't exactly "continued" it was more like, "limped."

Lesson learned: Always look both ways look both ways before crossing the street. And never take on seductive yellow men, because they will kick your butt, or your legs.

Dustin

What Were We Thinking?

If anyone has ever mailed food or anything breakable and found it completely and utterly annihilated on the other side, read on! For I can relate.

Because we could only take one bag with us on the plane to Palermo from Bologna (yes it's a city and not a food) we were forced by ASSE to mail the other that we had brought. After waiting about a week, my bag finally came. I was rather eager to open it, not only because it had more clothes that I needed, but more because we had packed a couple jars of blackberry jam in there for my family. Not only had we packed blackberry jam but we had also packed some shampoo. Just in case my host family had privacy issues I guess.
I opened the bag hoping to find the blackberries from heaven. I found blackberries, I found blackberries all over my clothes. Not only was there blackberries on absolutely everything, but it was coated with a thin layer of the shampoo. I opened the bag, reached my hand in to begin unpacking and a slightly cold substance touched my fingers, the nerves beneath my skin immediately detected this and sent a message up through my arm, past my shoulder, to my neck, into my spinal cord, and arrived at my brain in an instant. At this point of the arrival my brain became stunned, for the first time in my life, my body was completely unable to function. For about a minute or two (or what seemed like it) I stood there staring at the cold slimy substance that had just transfered itself from my clothes onto my hands. And then it happened, I blinked once or twice, my mouth opened and my tongue became dry, I swallowed and the next feelings were strange. At first it was shock, then fear, from fear it went to fury, from fury to curiosity, and back to fear. I called out and my voice cracked "Lilli...", there was no answer. I called again, and she came in, "Abbiamo un problema".
From that point on I had to unload my suitcase and place every contaminated article of anything on newspaper that covered more of the room than the actual floor. Once my suitcase was completely unloaded onto the floor, we took it into the bathroom to hose it down. However they did not have a shower head that was made for efficiency, but more for looks. So we spent about an hour hosing a mix of shampoo and blackberries.
We then left the suitcase to dry in the bathtub while we tended to the massive amounts of jam exposed clothes. Because Lilli is a magicianette, we managed to get all of the stains out of my clothes using bleach. And I now will refer to the title of this post, when we were in America, what in God's name were we thinking when we packed six glass jars of jam into a suitcase that would be traveling in control of the airport staff.

Lesson(s) learned:

1. Never ever put any type of breakable glass filled with staining fluid into a suitcase.
2. Bleach will solve even the greatest of problems.

Dustin

Well my first couple days in Italy after I arrived were rather uneventful, so these next stories won't be quite as interesting as the others, but they are stories.

The plane landed and we met our host families for the first time. I must admit that I became quite confused because not only did I meet my host family, but I also met Chaney's at the same time. So I had no idea who I would be living with or what anyone was saying. So after I sorted all that out and discovered who was who, we got in the car and began to drive to Lorenzo's house for a quick meeting about the year that was to come. We drove past a famous theater called "Teatro Politiama" Gabriella (who speaks perfect English) pointed it out to me by saying "Dusty if you look to your right you can see Politiama which is a famous theater." And of course, you can guess what I did. I pressed my nose up to the window in anticipation, my eyes were wide and I was breathing only through my mouth, I was about to see an international Italian monument. This action was responded to by Gabriella saying, "No Dusty, your other right." Congratulations Dusty! What a first impression. It was then followed by a slight awkward exchange of looks and then an explosion of laughter. She then yelled, (because it was the only way to speak at all because we were laughing so hard) "I said it in your own language!" Thus fueling another eruption of laughter. By the time we had finished laughing I barely got a chance to look at Politiama, so much for the epic viewing of the monument.

The lesson: Well I suppose I learned two lessons that in a way, contradict themselves. 1.) If you ever feel that you need to create a more loose or comfortable first impression, just act a little stupid, but make it look like an accident. 2.) Learn your Rights and Lefts.

Dustin

The Beggining

First, I would like to make sure that Jeff J. gets credit for this blog. It was his idea for the topic and the name. Thank you Jeff!

for now, this blog will be dedicated to all of the adventures and stories I have experienced here in Italy. Each post will be about a new story or experience.

The First story I have to tell is from very early on in the trip. In fact, It happened the same day I left America. In New York we met up with about ten other people who were also going to Italy through ASSE. They flew with us to Frankfurt, Germany. We had about a five hour wait in Germany, so as you can imagine it wasn't very interesting and became rather boring. One of the other ASSE members and I decided to walk around the airport while we waited. Not thinking at all we left the gate area. Don't ask me why, we were very tired and bored. However, we did ask the woman "guarding" the door if we needed to bring anything with us (e.g. passport, boarding pass). She said we didn't need any of that. We walked around for about ten minutes, found a small bar and decided to get sandwich. Then we realized that neither of us had any money, we decided that since we were dying of hunger, bored, and had free time, we would just go back through the door that we came from, get our money and buy the sacred sandwich. We made our way through the door and heard a voice yell something in German in our general direction. We looked around to see a German woman waving her hands and blabbing off in a language that we definitely didn't speak. We looked at her for a couple seconds, marveling at her ability to cough, hack and choke without actually dying. After the awkward staring session we come back to our senses and told her that we only speak English. And what do you know, so does she. We ask her what the problem is and she simply says "boarding pass and passport". Not really understanding what she wanted, we raise our eyebrows, twitch out heads, and reply with a thoughtful "huh?". The next attempt at communicating with the Americans was a bit more elaborate, it went something like "to get to the gates I need to see your boarding pass and passport." Finally understanding, we nod our heads, say "oh ok, totally" a couple times and pat ourselves down. After the unsuccessful search, we realize what she actually said. Our eyes shrink, our toes scrunch, palms sweat, arms tingle, fingernails ache, and worst of all we begin to pop our knuckles to no end. What are we going to do? How are we going to get on the flight? What will happen when other ASSE people come looking for us only to get stuck without the passport and boarding pass? How can we get in there? Wait, wait wait, who are we? We are American! So what's the first thing an American does when in trouble? Duh, bargain with them. "Well, uh, can we just go in and come back and show you? no, ok. Can one of us stay while the other goes and gets them? no, ok. Can you come with us to go get them? no, ok. Is there any way at all we can get in there?" All that this very sick woman had to suggest was to call someone we knew inside to bring out the documents. I remembered that Chaney had her phone with her, Tara, the other person I was with had a calling card. Finally we might be able to figure this out. We try and try to call Chaney, since we don't speak German, that proved to be rather difficult. We even got someone else who spoke German to help us. In the end the calling card didn't work, to this day I still do not know why, maybe it was because Chaney's phone was off, maybe the card didn't have money, maybe the phone was broken, or maybe this German lady just wanted to watch us suffer. So after about fifteen minutes of attempting to use the calling card, we finally gave up, decided to go ask Mrs. Hitler for another suggestion. As we are walking up to her, mind you we didn't say anything, she sees us and the first, and only thing that she says is, "no". Another stunned and awkward silence, after a couple seconds of shock/confusion we ask her if there is anything else we can do. Finally she has a suggestion that is worthy of note. Lets call the cops! Which is exactly what we did, let me tell you right now, German police are some of the most intimidating and scary police there are. We go through security, get wanded (twice) and continue our journey to the documents. Once we find our group of ten (whom we had never met) we routed through our bags while people stared at the police-accompanied-exchange students. We showed our documents, and the problem was solved... for the most part. We had to explain ten times why on our first day with ASSE we got escorted by the cops. After that experience I do not believe that we left the gate again during our stay in Germany.

I will try to end each of my posts with a lesson I have learned from each experience.

Lesson learned: 1.) Don't ever, EVER, leave a gate without your boarding pass and passport. 2.) If you ever need help be sure to ask police first and not Germans.

Thank you

Dustin