A Quebec Experience I’ll Not Soon Forget, Part I

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February 7, 2014 by mark81186

I like Canada. I really do. I think I might secretly be Canadian. I love hockey, I occasionally drink Molson, and I live in Maine, a state most people think is a Canadian province anyway.

While I may love Canada and all of their contributions to society, the feeling is not quite mutual. I have some bad experiences, albeit humorous, with Canada and its lovely, lovely people.

Most of those close to me already know my story of my first trip to the Great White North, an eighth grade class trip to Quebec City, but I figured to go further in depth with this tale of humor, regret, and rejection.

It all started one early morning as our class piled into a tour bus as we ventured into a foreign land. I get onto the bus and I find that one of the few seats left was right next to the bathroom on the bus. It was at that point that I should have realized it was an omen.

The bus ride wasn’t terrible on the way to Quebec, except for the miles and miles of timberland when you first enter Quebec and the homework our teacher gave us for the trip. Who gives homework on a class trip?! But I digress.

Many, many hours later, we reach our hotel. It was a one-star hotel at best and the room I shared with my friend had a lovely view of a consignment shop and some railroad tracks. Lovely. I’m sure I have pictures somewhere of it, but I’d ratehr not dig for them.

On the second day, we met up with our penpals that we had in French class. Our schools had a partnership of sorts where our French class would write to kids at their school. My penpal was a girl whose first name I don’t remember, but her last name was Gamache and I only remember that because she shared the name as a local boxing champion. I was pretty stoked because it was a girl and at the time I was terrible with girls, but this one might actually like me.

We finally arrive at this huge, sprawling school that dwarfed our small middle school. Our class goes into the auditorium, again it was huge, and go through this whole assembly. Then the time finally came where we met our penpals. Miss Gamache walked down the aisle and was immediately crestfallen when she saw me. She wanted nothing to do with me and I could tell. I had a gift for her, some trinkets from Maine, but I opted to not give them to her.

After we finally met them, we were supposed to go to class with them. Except for one small detail, mine bailed on me. So, here I was in this great big school alone. I wandered down some hallways hoping to find someone, anyone I know, but nothing. At this time I was thinking that I have to just go into some classroom, so I walked into band class. It was a blind choice and luckily there was someone from my school there. Lunchtime was a different story though.

At lunch, I was relegated to a table of people I didn’t know and didn’t speak English. Also, I didn’t know what to order at lunch due to my lack of grasp of the French language, so that was fun. I finally rushed through lunch and placed my tray on the wrong table because, well, I’m an idiot.

Later that night, we went out to dinner at a place that had music and dancing. The wait was forever to get seated, but it was worth it. A girl there had asked to dance with her, but I couldn’t dance and didn’t really want to, so as I got up I decided to fake a leg injury because I’m hilarious (not really). She knew I was faking and moved on to the next guy. Looking back now I think I’m an idiot for turning her down. It could have made me look good in front of my peers, but alas I did not.

There is too much about this whole trip experience to fit in one part, so, if you enjoyed this, check out Part II tomorrow and here about me being abandoned (again) and my first trip to a sex shop.