GUEST STUDENT OF THE WEEK: Rohan is a freshman at Dartmouth (and loves it) having gotten in ED for the Class of 2023. He's here to debunk myths regarding admissions and student life at his school. ASK HIM ANYTHING!
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Replies to: What was your worst vacation ever and why?
Then we drove back to northern New Jersey over several days. It was blazing hot, there was a lot of arguing. The dog rode on the floor at our feet. Every time the parent driving put on a turn signal or slowed down, the dog would get up from the floor and stand on our laps to look out the window to see what was going on. In Asheville NC we stayed at Days Inn because it was over 100 degrees and too hot to camp, but the hotel air conditioning was broken. I remember this because ever after when my Dad heard the name Days Inn he would say "Days Inn is a nightmare," a phrase he coined on that trip.
Ironically, I later moved to the blazing hot South and I've loved going on road trips with my own 3 kids, although I would never ever take the dog, we stay in hotels and have a 3rd row of seats in the minivan. Although I'm sure my own kids could come up with some "horrible" memories of some of our trips.* And despite how horrible it seemed at the time, what wouldn't I give to be back as a carefree teenager spending time with my parents (who are no longer here) and my brothers.
*at a hotel at Colonial Williamsburg when one of my sons was about 8 and at the breakfast bar some kid carrying a cup of hot chocolate spilled it on my son's foot (wearing sneakers). He screamed in pain, I grabbed him and took him into the kitchen area. I couldn't lift him to the sink to run his foot under cold water so I opened the big ice maker door and stuck his sneakered foot into the ice. An EMT came and while she was examining my son's foot with her bag of medical equipment open on the floor next to her, some curious kid came up carrying a bowl of oatmeal and as he was bending over to look at what she was doing he tipped the bowl and spilled the oatmeal into her bag so everything was covered with oatmeal. We still laugh about that now.
His foot was pretty badly burned but we were able to tour Colonial Williamsburg with him in a borrowed wheelchair and later on that trip tour NYC with him wearing a sneaker with the toe part cut off for his bandage.
On the way home, we learnt that Aerolíneas Argentinas went on a strike and our flight to Buenos Aires is cancelled again. Arrived to a tiny airport, which was surrounded by many thousands of loud angry and exhausted locals trying to get inside the airport building. My husband fights his way through the crowds to the only open ticket counter yelling at everyone that he only needs to ask a question and will be right back. We stay behind guarding our 8 huge, very heavy and very dirty duffels full of hiking gear. Somehow H manages to get to the only ticketing agent, grab her attention and convince her to rebook us to another flight. But now all four of us need to show her our passports. H holds the line refusing anyone to get to the agent and screaming at the top of his lungs to get our attention. Now, it's our turn to fight our way to the counter. The second man in our group grabs 4 huge duffels and drags them behind him on a ground clearing a wide path for his wife and me. People fall right and left out of his way, while he keeps apologizing profusely, however does not slow down. We follow closely behind him dragging the remaining duffels and shouting that my H is up at the counter and the agent requests our presence. Everyone yells, swears and curses at us. Magically, we manage to collect our minds, tickets, passports and belongings and get trough security area. Once we arrive to the gate, the waiting area is very quite, serene and empty, with only several passengers waiting for their flights. We spend the next hour waiting for our flight, which is still unannounced, when accidentally one of us notices that our flight is quietly departing from a completely different gate (not shown on a flight board), and the boarding is about to close. We sprint to the gate and make it inside the plain, which is almost completely empty, just in time for takeoff. We enjoyed the flight to Buenos Aires in a company of about 10 fellow passengers. The rest of our trip from Buenos Aires to the US was a piece of cake, except that our airplane was unexpectedly landed in Miami, where it took us about 3 hours to get through customs, Got back on a plane and finally arrived to our hometown, where we could not land for a long time due to a storm. After this trip, we pledged to never again fly by Aerolíneas Argentinas. And we never got any refunds or reimbursements for our cancelled flight to Argentina in spite of multiple calls, emails, letters and formal complaints.
My H and my sister decided to attend the same medical conference. We all met there with my sister's H, me, and our combined 7 kids, (6 boys, one girl, ages 2-9). Our kids had never seen the ocean before, so we thought we would hang out at the beach during the conference. My other sister (single, childless) came along to help watch the kids.
My oldest son broke his arm 2 days before we left. The condo we rented was grungy/smelly--but none open to move to. My boys all got sick with diarrhea/vomiting after two days. It rained--big lightening storms, so little beach time. We tried to go on a nature walk at a park one day. After only a few yards we were covered with mosquitos. (I slapped my leg and hit dozens of them, blood was running down my leg. It was like a horror movie.) Ran back to the van as fast as possible. Took the kids to the pool one day. My 4yo son made a really loud embarrassing observation about a woman's anatomy, and when I gave him the "omg shut up now" look, he repeated himself louder, pointing at the woman. Auntie (my single sister) was cranky and mean the whole time.(Can you blame her?) General disagreements/bickering over what to eat/where to go/who is watching kids, keeping not-sick cousins away from my sick kids/general chaos. S threw up on the plane on the way back. I have a photo of my 4 kids (including my son with his broken arm) digging in the sand on the beach. Dark clouds in the background. Water looks gray. All kids are scowling, looking ill. A good time was had by no one. And we never went back to Florida again.
There was a radio preacher on the cruise and about 350 of the 750 passengers were his followers; they had all used the same travel agency. so the name tags were to let them find each other. He was preaching in the towns where the ship stopped. The preacher was allowed a microphone to say grace and make announcements during dinner--usually involving what time the buses to his talks were leaving. The group took over the movie theater for their meetings, etc. At least a dozen of them signed up for the passenger talent show and sang or played hymns and most had no talent.
Many of them were nice people but at least several dozen saw this as their opportunity to proselytize. For example, an elderly couple at our table loved to dance and did it every night before dinner. The second night a group approached them on the dance floor and told them dancing was a sin and they were eternally damned if they didn't give up dancing. If you ordered a drink during a show, someone was sure to tell you that drinking alcohol is immoral. Things got particularly ugly when any of them found out someone was Jewish, as they seemed to think the cruise was a great opportunity to try to convince Jews to "accept Christ as your personal savior." Saying "no, thank you" once didn't work; they just wouldn't give up.
But then the tide sort of turned. The rest of us discovered that the group wouldn't enter the night club. It became the safe place every evening. (In any other public lounge, you were likely to be approached by someone trying to convert you.) Though my daughter was 9 she was allowed in in violation of the normal rules. (She was the only English speaking child who wasn't part of the group.) The entertainers even dedicated songs to her and the passengers were nice about her being there because they understood we didn't want to spend the evening arguing with the preacher's fans. The performers and servers HATED the group because they tried to convert them too and, unlike the rest of us, they couldn't be rude to them or just walk away. And, of course, since they didn't drink, the staff in the bars and at the shows were getting a lot fewer tips.
It was pretty much open warfare between the "saved" and the "sinners." I'm NOT saying all of them were obnoxious--that wasn't the case. One young couple was particularly nice to us. But enough of them saw the cruise as as a wonderful chance to evangelize to make life pretty miserable for the rest of us. The upside was the rest of us bonded in a way I've never experienced on any other cruise.
Okay, there's more: it was in California and Christmas time is the rainy season. It rained all day every day, except for the day my husband and daughter went out for food poisoning. (NB: Never use hotel ice bucket.)
Then, my SIL got furious at us for attending church services on Christmas eve (though we'd cleared this in advance) and being 15 minutes late for the dinner that she had moved up an hour on a whim.
And I got stuck in a hotel elevator for 90 minutes at 6 in the morning on a Sunday, so the elevator company wasn't available to let me out. They played the worst holiday music ever in that elevator. Now I know every single bad song from 2006. I will sing them if you'd like. I wisely did not drink the coffee I'd picked up in the lobby. When they finally let me out, my mother in law screamed at the desk to make it right. She was unaffected by my ordeal, but enjoyed making a scene. I will never stay at the Sofitel in San Francisco again. They probably have my mother-in-law's picture on the wall in the office, and if they associate me with her, will inject my mattress with bedbugs.
We were walking in one town when they had a Hezbollah rally which turned into a riot with overturned cars on fire. Then we got lost in the Negev desert on roads clogged by flocks of goats before driving over a rise and between two rows of tanks firing at each other in maneuvers. We all screamed, "Back Up! Back Up!" and my husband always maintains that it wasn't live ammo, but there was dust flying! The daughter fascinated with archaeology proclaimed, "Forget that," after we visited digs in the desert which sucked every bit of moisture from our bodies in 5 minutes. In the Bedouin market where they trade camels and sell the obligatory souvenirs, a guy kept pulling on my arm saying, "How old are you? You have good teeth." My family thought this was hilarious and even today when a girl gets dressed for prom or something fancy, this phrase is revisited.
The iconic float photo in the Dead Sea was a disaster, as both girls had slid down rocky trails and every scratch and scrape was painful in the salt water, so instead we have hysterical pictures of two girls crying miserably as they stand in the Dead Sea. Our rental car was struck in a hit and run in Beer Sheva, and since the copy of the police report was all in Hebrew we thought it might say, "These stupid American tourists are complete idiots." Our rental car company held us responsible in the end, so we wasted 4 hours trying to find and get the worthless report. One daughter went into a changing room for the pool and the door knob broke off. She was trapped crying for two hours before we could get help and tools to break the knob. She refers to this as "flashbacks from Nam" when she's in stalls without a way out. My husband was very intent on wading through an old tunnel, but when the girls were handed candles, the wind blew them out within seconds. Also, water up to an adult's waist was neck-deep to them. They pictured rats swimming onto them. They both had shrieking panic attacks and we got the guard to unlock the metal gates and let us go back out the entrance.
Years later when our son went on a more subdued trip, he too would eat only popsicles and pita bread. Our friends who choose the luxurious bus tours miss all of the adventures.
I could not wait to get home! And home wasn’t exactly around the corner!