Laura's story

Yesterday morning at 6.45 we arrived at school to start the trip to Voghera. Even though everybody was pretty tired we started the trip joyfully. The time went fast thanks to the movies (Friends, She’s the man, Slumdog Millionaire) in the bus, and before we had realized we were in Switzerland. That’s where the real fun started. When we drove out of one of the many tunnels Switzerland has, we heard a big bang. We started to drive slower and slower and before we knew we stood still at the side of the highway. At first we thought it was a flat tire, but it soon became clear (when the bus driver tried to drive away and the engine didn’t start) that it had to do with the engine. The bus driver wanted to see what the problem was and told us a few minutes later that it would take a while before it would be fixed. So everybody went out of the bus to take a walk outside and some of us did some limbo dancing. Tessa made a very clever notion; If Harry Potter had existed we wouldn’t have to wait so long because then he could fix the engine with his wand.
20 minutes later we were told that it would take at least one hour and a half the mechanic would arrive. Bummer. At that time it was half past seven so mister Mobach went to find a nice restaurant where we could have dinner. When he came back he lead us to a nice restaurant 2 kilometres from our bus. We walked across the highway, which was a bit scary, but there were no cars so that was ok. We ate nice French fries and Schnitzel (and the vegetarians had pasta) and for them who were 16 and over there was a nice glass of wine, if they wanted (but only one! as mister Mobach insisted). When we finished our dinner we returned back to the bus and thank god, it was fixed! We drove through the Gothard tunnel (17 kilometres long, thank god the bus didn’t break down in there) when we heard that again something was wrong. When we came out of the tunnel we stopped again but this time it only took 45 minutes to fix. After that we drove along safely. Eventually we had a delay of 4 hours and we arrived at 02:00 am instead of 10:00 pm. We felt very sorry for ourselves, because we could not go out anymore, but also we felt very sorry for the busdriver and of course the hosting families! When we came out of the bus we found our Italian hosts very soon and we all went to sleep very quickly, I think.
Today was our free day with the Italian family, and Eva and I (we stay together at one host) first slept till midday. When we woke up we went for a great lunch at the restaurant of Eva’s parents (our hostess, same name!) where mister Mobach, Ms. Reichart and Ms. Marchese also came for a little while. After a wonderful meal we went to Bobbio to go shopping but unfortunately almost all the shops where closed but we had a nice ice cream and watched a nice movie. Tomorrow we have to wake up very early (6 o’ clock) because we live 30 kilometres from Voghera, and then we are going to debate. There will soon arrive a new story about our time here, so watch the site!

Laura Tseng (5A)