The television, in most countries of Europe, is very, very different from what we’re used to. See, here in America, any word that is considered “risqué” is not allowed at all. This frightens our government, the same government who plans said to the terrorists “Bring it on” and who plan to solve healthcare by making it more complicated, but cry when they hear a dirty word.
We’re simply too uptight here, but their television can be sometimes strange compared to ours.
I was watching a program in England. It looked like a really, REALLY violent crime show. A man shaved all his hair, including eyebrows, nose hair, armpit hair, and even pubic. (Yes, it showed it.) He shaved all of this off into a sink and turns the water on, making all the hairs go down the drain.
It then cut to a dark mansion with an old, heavily obese man walking around in his house. He sits down in his chair and sips at his tea.
Then suddenly, the same man who shaves himself breaks through the window. He has a dagger in his hand. He fights the fat man for two minutes, then, finally, the obese man gives up. The bald man had him cornered.
The fat man said, “I swear, I know nothing! Please, I’m innocent!” This is simply exciting. What could he possibly be denying?!
The bald man said, “All the evidence links to you! We have three Honda Civics that haven’t been sold. You know why? Because they’re too expensive! So you know what you need to buy? A Toyota Prius Hybrid!”
Then the bald man slits the fat guy’s throat.
By far the goriest and longest commercial I’ve ever seen.
But don’t exclude the French from this argument. Oh man, they have some messed up television there.
For example, they have their own version of “Fear Factor” in France. So, a French “Fear Factor”.
Anyway, the challenge was to go through individual small rooms with the person’s “worst fears” in it. Apparently, the French are scared of about anything. As Adam put it, it should have been called “Sentimental Factor”.
So the guy suited us. In this room, he had to crawl under a table and stick his head through an opening that went to each individual section with their fears in them. All he had to do was walk through each, with only his head, and survive each hall of horror.
The first small room had a spider in it. The guy entered with his head and said in French, “Oh, no…”, but the spider isn’t even bothering him. He’s on the other side of the room, bothering nobody.
And the guy’s just freaking out like it’s the apocalypse. He ran through there without looking back. The spider’s just sort of like, “What the hell?”
The guy comes to the second room and it’s filled with three frogs. The guy screams in terror. The frogs are just standing there, staring at the camera while this whole deal is going on.
The guy once again runs through the second “challenge”.
Then the third one came. This was the breaking point. The guy is in the middle of a poorly contained mental breakdown. The next room has dead flies in them. They’re on the other side of the door so they won’t touch the guy. And the guy is yelling at the flies, “GO AWAY!!!!!!!!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!'
And the guy quits the game right there.
After each player completed a challenge, they had to visit some old guy on top of a mountain boiling something in a cauldron and he would give him/her some clues to the next challenge, and I new that what he told them was useful or inspirational because the players always left with a smile on their face. Then after they’d leave, the creepy old short guy continues to stir whatever is in his cauldron.
Then the next challenge came along! They had to pick a woman to put on mountain climbing equipment and their task was to walk with it on.
That’s it.
That’s all they had to do.
Now to give some credibility to the show, they had to do something completely terrifying. They picked a woman to have a pale filled with meat and had to be chased by three Siberian tigers.
But the last one was by far the best.
A person was picked. What they had to do was hang on to an immobile cylinder. They even gave him a ladder to climb up it! And guess what?
HE FELL OFF!
Italy had interesting television as well, like I didn’t know that Billy Ray Cyrus on “Hannah Montana” had the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Actual First Day In Europe
We got on our overnight flight to Amsterdam. The flight took about seven hours. Once I got on the plane, I immediately realized that this was by far the biggest plane I’d ever been on.
Each row was divided into two seats, six seats, then two seats again. Each seat had their own personal T.V. attached to the back of the seat in front of them.
I sat in my seat. Next to me was a little girl and a Munich-native man who looked and sounded EXACTLY like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He looked so German, it was as if he was Hitler’s chosen one.
Since this was an overnight flight, the timing was easily messed up. We probably left at ten at night and arrived at noon in Amsterdam, their time. On the T.V. screen, you could choose from several movies to watch including “Gran Torino”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, “Madagascar 2”, “The Uninvited”, and “Taken.” Everyone around me, at one time or another, was watching “Taken”, about a teenager who is abducted during a trip to France and sold as a prostitute while her father tries to find her. Even the seven year old girl next to me was watching it.
The German dude was very, very loud. He asked me to give him summaries of all the movie choices.
They eventually fed us at about midnight home time. We were given the option of having the vegetarian meal or the delicious chicken and rice meal. Since I was seated in the back, I didn’t have much of a choice, because all the chicken had been taken.
When I got my vegetarian meal, I discovered it was a type of Chinese Lima Beans with what looked like crap on top and it was simply disgusting. Arnold hogged it down while watching “Caddyshack”. The bread wasn’t great either. If you threw it at someone, it would knock them out.
Arnold paused his movie and tapped my shoulder. He saw I hadn’t eaten much of my food and asked if I wanted his peanuts. He was being sweet, but very, very loud in doing so.
He shouted, “DO YOU WANT MY PEANUTS?!”
I replied to him, “No, thank you, but thank you for the offer.” I tried to keep my voice down to keep attention away from myself.
This answer did not satisfy him. He called over a flight attendant and told him, “PLEASE GET MY FRIEND SOME PEANUTS!”
They gave me all the peanuts I could want. That was when I realized he meant well. He called me “My friend”, which made me feel good.
My flight was not as bad as Ryan’s though, one of the delegates in our group. He sat next to a black woman whom he called the “Grizzly Woman”. She was huge. Once she took her seat, she asked Ryan in the deepest voice possible, “You, look, can you put your bag somewhere else?”
Ryan didn’t want to be rude, but he was terrified about what this massive creature could do to him. His voice went up three degrees to the point where he talked like a small child. Ryan didn’t want to be rude, but it was his bag. He simply told her, “My medication is in my bag and I need it.”
Grizzly Woman then grunted, unlike any terrestrial on Earth. She repeated this horrifying grunt every so often.
When dinner came, Grizzly Woman did not eat it. She inhaled it. While she was doing this, she asked Ryan for more food. He gave her the crackers.
Eventually, she fell asleep while watching “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Not only did she fall asleep, she fell asleep on the T.V., smearing her nastiness onto the unfortunate T.V. screen. She also took up the entire arm rest. Ryan had no room to move or he’d wake the Beast from her slumber.
We finally landed in Amsterdam. Since our first plane, expired this messed up everything that followed. We landed in Amsterdam around 12:00 PM. Our flight for London had already left by the time we landed.
Our leaders went up to the Customer’s Service desk and bought new tickets.
The next flight to London left at 7:30 PM.
We were basically stranded in Amsterdam airport for seven and a half hours. The meetings prior to the trip were useless because we bonded more in this time than we ever had.
To kill time, we got McDonald’s and talked for four straight hours. This was the first time I was ever thankful for the American McDonald’s. Their burger there was lean, dry, and tasted like sour fruit.
Now Chris, another member of our delegation, had a girlfriend, who was from Vietnam, but he was asking us for help because he could not pronounce her race, “Vietnamese”, correctly. We tried to help him. We went so far as to break it down for him.
“Viet…vie…itmam”, he struggled.
“No, Vietnamese”, I corrected him.
“Viet…it…it…it…”
“Alright, one at a time. Say ‘Vie’.”
“Vie.”
“Et.”
“Et.”
“Na.”
“Na.”
“Mese.”
“Mese.”
“Viet.”
“Viet.”
“Good. Now say ‘Namese’.”
“Na…”
“Namese.”
“Namese.”
“Great. Now, put it all together.”
“Vietna…vees!”
“No, Vietnamese.”
“Vietna…ree! Vietnahees! VIETNABEES!!!”
This continued for hours on end. Our plane finally arrived. We got on and prepared for London.
I got my ticket and looked at my seat number. It was row 28 in seat 3. Then I realized. 2+8+3=13.
It was a smooth ride. We arrived in London around ten. We got there and someone’s luggage was missing. So we could not abandon the lost luggage. So, once again, we waited and after and hour later, it came. It was apparently in the flight behind ours.
When we got out of the airport, we learned that the People To People buses stopped running. So, once again, we waited another hour for taxis.
One finally came and there were five of us in it. One in the front and four in the back. We were given an address to our hotel. But once we got in the taxi, we lost it.
The taxi driver was engagingly pissed off, telling us that “We can’t get there unless we had an address.”
We then turned around on the interstate and drove back to the airport. I jumped out and ran for it. Lucky for us that our leaders were still there and I got an extra copy of the address.
When I got in the car, I was welcomed with cheers, but when I looked at the address, I could not read it. Our leaders apparently had terrible hand-writing.
We spent half-an-hour trying to guess what this place was. None of us had our leader’s numbers. We were out of hope until, I got an idea.
On the back of our lanyards, there was an emergency number to the Organization that had all of our reservations. We called them. We got the address. On the paper, it said “Groygan Road”, but it turned out to be Maybury Street.
It took forty five minutes to the hotel. Since we were in England, they drive on the opposite side of the road, which messed with my mind.
We arrived at our hotel, where I first met Magdalena, our tour director.
I had been awake for thirty hours and I thought I would get a great night’s sleep.
Right as soon as I got in my room, I turned on the T.V. and relaxed.
The headline on the screen was “Michael Jackson found dead.”
How could this get any worse?
Each row was divided into two seats, six seats, then two seats again. Each seat had their own personal T.V. attached to the back of the seat in front of them.
I sat in my seat. Next to me was a little girl and a Munich-native man who looked and sounded EXACTLY like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He looked so German, it was as if he was Hitler’s chosen one.
Since this was an overnight flight, the timing was easily messed up. We probably left at ten at night and arrived at noon in Amsterdam, their time. On the T.V. screen, you could choose from several movies to watch including “Gran Torino”, “Slumdog Millionaire”, “Madagascar 2”, “The Uninvited”, and “Taken.” Everyone around me, at one time or another, was watching “Taken”, about a teenager who is abducted during a trip to France and sold as a prostitute while her father tries to find her. Even the seven year old girl next to me was watching it.
The German dude was very, very loud. He asked me to give him summaries of all the movie choices.
They eventually fed us at about midnight home time. We were given the option of having the vegetarian meal or the delicious chicken and rice meal. Since I was seated in the back, I didn’t have much of a choice, because all the chicken had been taken.
When I got my vegetarian meal, I discovered it was a type of Chinese Lima Beans with what looked like crap on top and it was simply disgusting. Arnold hogged it down while watching “Caddyshack”. The bread wasn’t great either. If you threw it at someone, it would knock them out.
Arnold paused his movie and tapped my shoulder. He saw I hadn’t eaten much of my food and asked if I wanted his peanuts. He was being sweet, but very, very loud in doing so.
He shouted, “DO YOU WANT MY PEANUTS?!”
I replied to him, “No, thank you, but thank you for the offer.” I tried to keep my voice down to keep attention away from myself.
This answer did not satisfy him. He called over a flight attendant and told him, “PLEASE GET MY FRIEND SOME PEANUTS!”
They gave me all the peanuts I could want. That was when I realized he meant well. He called me “My friend”, which made me feel good.
My flight was not as bad as Ryan’s though, one of the delegates in our group. He sat next to a black woman whom he called the “Grizzly Woman”. She was huge. Once she took her seat, she asked Ryan in the deepest voice possible, “You, look, can you put your bag somewhere else?”
Ryan didn’t want to be rude, but he was terrified about what this massive creature could do to him. His voice went up three degrees to the point where he talked like a small child. Ryan didn’t want to be rude, but it was his bag. He simply told her, “My medication is in my bag and I need it.”
Grizzly Woman then grunted, unlike any terrestrial on Earth. She repeated this horrifying grunt every so often.
When dinner came, Grizzly Woman did not eat it. She inhaled it. While she was doing this, she asked Ryan for more food. He gave her the crackers.
Eventually, she fell asleep while watching “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Not only did she fall asleep, she fell asleep on the T.V., smearing her nastiness onto the unfortunate T.V. screen. She also took up the entire arm rest. Ryan had no room to move or he’d wake the Beast from her slumber.
We finally landed in Amsterdam. Since our first plane, expired this messed up everything that followed. We landed in Amsterdam around 12:00 PM. Our flight for London had already left by the time we landed.
Our leaders went up to the Customer’s Service desk and bought new tickets.
The next flight to London left at 7:30 PM.
We were basically stranded in Amsterdam airport for seven and a half hours. The meetings prior to the trip were useless because we bonded more in this time than we ever had.
To kill time, we got McDonald’s and talked for four straight hours. This was the first time I was ever thankful for the American McDonald’s. Their burger there was lean, dry, and tasted like sour fruit.
Now Chris, another member of our delegation, had a girlfriend, who was from Vietnam, but he was asking us for help because he could not pronounce her race, “Vietnamese”, correctly. We tried to help him. We went so far as to break it down for him.
“Viet…vie…itmam”, he struggled.
“No, Vietnamese”, I corrected him.
“Viet…it…it…it…”
“Alright, one at a time. Say ‘Vie’.”
“Vie.”
“Et.”
“Et.”
“Na.”
“Na.”
“Mese.”
“Mese.”
“Viet.”
“Viet.”
“Good. Now say ‘Namese’.”
“Na…”
“Namese.”
“Namese.”
“Great. Now, put it all together.”
“Vietna…vees!”
“No, Vietnamese.”
“Vietna…ree! Vietnahees! VIETNABEES!!!”
This continued for hours on end. Our plane finally arrived. We got on and prepared for London.
I got my ticket and looked at my seat number. It was row 28 in seat 3. Then I realized. 2+8+3=13.
It was a smooth ride. We arrived in London around ten. We got there and someone’s luggage was missing. So we could not abandon the lost luggage. So, once again, we waited and after and hour later, it came. It was apparently in the flight behind ours.
When we got out of the airport, we learned that the People To People buses stopped running. So, once again, we waited another hour for taxis.
One finally came and there were five of us in it. One in the front and four in the back. We were given an address to our hotel. But once we got in the taxi, we lost it.
The taxi driver was engagingly pissed off, telling us that “We can’t get there unless we had an address.”
We then turned around on the interstate and drove back to the airport. I jumped out and ran for it. Lucky for us that our leaders were still there and I got an extra copy of the address.
When I got in the car, I was welcomed with cheers, but when I looked at the address, I could not read it. Our leaders apparently had terrible hand-writing.
We spent half-an-hour trying to guess what this place was. None of us had our leader’s numbers. We were out of hope until, I got an idea.
On the back of our lanyards, there was an emergency number to the Organization that had all of our reservations. We called them. We got the address. On the paper, it said “Groygan Road”, but it turned out to be Maybury Street.
It took forty five minutes to the hotel. Since we were in England, they drive on the opposite side of the road, which messed with my mind.
We arrived at our hotel, where I first met Magdalena, our tour director.
I had been awake for thirty hours and I thought I would get a great night’s sleep.
Right as soon as I got in my room, I turned on the T.V. and relaxed.
The headline on the screen was “Michael Jackson found dead.”
How could this get any worse?
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
First Day In Europe (Or On Our Way)
One of the last meals I had in the United States was Chick-Fil-A. I was totally unprepared for the adventure that waited for me that day.
Today, I was to leave my home and comfort zone for Europe, representing my country overseas. I am a United States Student Ambassador and I am proud to fulfill this duty.
Once I ate my Chicken sandwich, Dad and I hurried to the airport. We were to meet there three hours early before our flight, to check on last minutes things. We were both concerned about time and about the fact that we needed to be at the airport three hours before.
We arrived at the airport at 12:58 and barely half the group was there.
There, we were assigned “Count-off Numbers”. This was an efficient way to make sure everyone was here. They would start down the line and if, say, 37 wasn’t there, we had a missing person on our hands.
My number, out of all possible numbers was 13, which just made me anxious about the trip.
I went up to check in. Nothing especially weird happened during check in, which I was glad.
Once I got my boarding pass, I went through security, where the airport crew really, really try to make you have a good day. I mean, what a better way to make someone smile than airport security.
It was especially unpleasant considering the fact this was my first time being frisked, and oh boy, were they graphic for their search for bombs.
Since we had two more hours to kill, we were allowed to wonder around the airport as we pleased, but only in groups of three or more. One of the girls in our group would not shut up. I’m actually not sure whether or not she breathed while she was talking. She had a lot to say, including how she thinks it’s absolutely adorable when her two puppies do it “doggy-style”.
The flight schedule was as follows: We were to leave from Charlotte to Detroit, for no apparent reason, then from there to Amsterdam, and finally to London. If only fate played out so beautifully.
We got on our plane, which was a small jet. When it was time to scan my ticket, it completely crashed the system. 13, I thought.
The flight attendant gave us a simple “Hi” and we went to our own individual seats. I passed through the first class section and they simply snarled at us as if to say, “Why are you here?”
I sat in my seat. There was a woman behind me who, behind her, was a baby that was calm. She said to her neighbor, “I’m not gonna listen to no god***n baby f**king crying.”
In front of me were two men. One is drawing a picture of a man with his eyes gauged out with a computer network plug in his mouth. The other is reading an article entitled “Rape In Prison: How It Effects You”.
While I was sitting, waiting to take off, I felt this amazing feeling of having to chance to do the things that I was going to experience and how privileged I was to do so. I could not wait to go.
Right as soon as that enormous feeling crossed my mind, an announcement came on, saying that it was not confirmed, but we might have to wait for a bit longer.
So we waited for about thirty minutes when the captain announced that our flight would be able to take off in two hours time. The reason was that the plane apparently had an expiration date and today, the plane expired, so all the necessary checks were needed to be done before take-off.
Nerves and families were beginning to be shattered. A woman trying to Facebook on her laptop finally snapped and shouted out, “Jesus Christ! Cyberspace sucks a big one!!!”
While we continued to wait, I heard one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard. A woman was talking to her neighbor and said, “People are hard to repair by human standards.”
After these two miserable hours, all the requirements had been filled and we were on our way to Detroit, or so we thought.
A woman had left the aircraft before take-off. The flight had been sold-out and they were trying to find this one woman. The crew thought the people were lying when they told them that she left to get on another flight. So another half hour was spent trying to find her. We eventually just left.
Having our flight being delayed screwed up everything here on out.
We landed in Detroit. Immediately, they told us to get on the flight to Amsterdam, that it would leave us in five minutes. Two women shouted at us, “Go to Gate A5! Go to A5!”
We told them that we couldn’t, that we’d have to wait on our leaders first to make sure it was alright. She snapped right back, saying “I don’t care. If you don’t go now, you’re going to miss your flight!”
We tried to find our leaders, because we all knew the consequences of abandoning our leaders. They then ran out of the terminal A5 and told us to get on.
Today, I was to leave my home and comfort zone for Europe, representing my country overseas. I am a United States Student Ambassador and I am proud to fulfill this duty.
Once I ate my Chicken sandwich, Dad and I hurried to the airport. We were to meet there three hours early before our flight, to check on last minutes things. We were both concerned about time and about the fact that we needed to be at the airport three hours before.
We arrived at the airport at 12:58 and barely half the group was there.
There, we were assigned “Count-off Numbers”. This was an efficient way to make sure everyone was here. They would start down the line and if, say, 37 wasn’t there, we had a missing person on our hands.
My number, out of all possible numbers was 13, which just made me anxious about the trip.
I went up to check in. Nothing especially weird happened during check in, which I was glad.
Once I got my boarding pass, I went through security, where the airport crew really, really try to make you have a good day. I mean, what a better way to make someone smile than airport security.
It was especially unpleasant considering the fact this was my first time being frisked, and oh boy, were they graphic for their search for bombs.
Since we had two more hours to kill, we were allowed to wonder around the airport as we pleased, but only in groups of three or more. One of the girls in our group would not shut up. I’m actually not sure whether or not she breathed while she was talking. She had a lot to say, including how she thinks it’s absolutely adorable when her two puppies do it “doggy-style”.
The flight schedule was as follows: We were to leave from Charlotte to Detroit, for no apparent reason, then from there to Amsterdam, and finally to London. If only fate played out so beautifully.
We got on our plane, which was a small jet. When it was time to scan my ticket, it completely crashed the system. 13, I thought.
The flight attendant gave us a simple “Hi” and we went to our own individual seats. I passed through the first class section and they simply snarled at us as if to say, “Why are you here?”
I sat in my seat. There was a woman behind me who, behind her, was a baby that was calm. She said to her neighbor, “I’m not gonna listen to no god***n baby f**king crying.”
In front of me were two men. One is drawing a picture of a man with his eyes gauged out with a computer network plug in his mouth. The other is reading an article entitled “Rape In Prison: How It Effects You”.
While I was sitting, waiting to take off, I felt this amazing feeling of having to chance to do the things that I was going to experience and how privileged I was to do so. I could not wait to go.
Right as soon as that enormous feeling crossed my mind, an announcement came on, saying that it was not confirmed, but we might have to wait for a bit longer.
So we waited for about thirty minutes when the captain announced that our flight would be able to take off in two hours time. The reason was that the plane apparently had an expiration date and today, the plane expired, so all the necessary checks were needed to be done before take-off.
Nerves and families were beginning to be shattered. A woman trying to Facebook on her laptop finally snapped and shouted out, “Jesus Christ! Cyberspace sucks a big one!!!”
While we continued to wait, I heard one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard. A woman was talking to her neighbor and said, “People are hard to repair by human standards.”
After these two miserable hours, all the requirements had been filled and we were on our way to Detroit, or so we thought.
A woman had left the aircraft before take-off. The flight had been sold-out and they were trying to find this one woman. The crew thought the people were lying when they told them that she left to get on another flight. So another half hour was spent trying to find her. We eventually just left.
Having our flight being delayed screwed up everything here on out.
We landed in Detroit. Immediately, they told us to get on the flight to Amsterdam, that it would leave us in five minutes. Two women shouted at us, “Go to Gate A5! Go to A5!”
We told them that we couldn’t, that we’d have to wait on our leaders first to make sure it was alright. She snapped right back, saying “I don’t care. If you don’t go now, you’re going to miss your flight!”
We tried to find our leaders, because we all knew the consequences of abandoning our leaders. They then ran out of the terminal A5 and told us to get on.
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