Hello there, welcome to my story.
Hi. My name is Jade West. I got selected to attend this really exclusive boarding school. I chose to go especially for acting. It helped that I have a stellar list of extracurriculars I attended, I know a bunch of languages and it just happens that I aced that interview, as my Mother, the shrink, made sure of that by getting a colleague of her to prepare me for that. My dad was disappointed I chose theater as my main focus. That, and he called the school a sect, or a cult, depending on the topic of conversation regarding it. My parents clearly couldn't get enough of me, they filled out the application and everything. But heck, when you are 16, and your parents give you the opportunity to get out of the house to a different country, fuck that, take it.
Anyway, after I knew I got accepted, I had my going away party, packed some shit and went to Yerba. Well not Yerba directly. I had to stop in Johannesburg, where a school bus would take me to Yerba. I arrived at the Johannesburg airport at 7am, the bus would only leave at 2pm. Now this was before the renovations, and let me tell you, the place wasn't really what you would consider, a secure environment. But hell, I just had a 13-hour flight, I was jet lagged, still hungover thanks to my stupid going away party, and the old dumbass next to me decided he was in a talkative mood, instead of letting me enjoy my in-flight entertainment in peace. I love in-flight entertainment and that bastard was deterring me from it, can you believe the asshole actually sent me an email afterwards?! Whatever, I gave him one of the decoys, one that doesn't even have my real name in it. It was a good laugh though, full of spelling mistakes and saying what a nice girl I was. I almost considered replying, almost.
So: what does a 16 year old do when she is alone in a dangerous city's airport? Plenty, but not sleep, sadly. I had my collection of movies with me and there is no fucking way I was letting someone steal my bags with them in it. As soon as I got out I directed myself to the nearest coffee shop. I love coffee, and you tend to appreciate it all the more in the crap mood I was in. I chilled there for a few hours, reading my favorite book: The complete plays of Sophocles. Now there is a guy that understood irony: having a guy kill his father and marry his mother, classic. After finishing the book for the third time, I watched a movie on my laptop while the battery charged. I got bored after a while and decided to go play with the luggage cart, they had awesome ramps that were a solid hour of pure fun. I knew there were more students arriving for the same bus, but somehow all the people I saw my age looked like complete dumbasses, so I didn't dare make conversation with any them, just in case they were. Let me tell you, when you spend 7 hours in an airport, you tend to get to know it pretty well. And this one, didn't have a decent selection of shops or restaurants. It was however, an international and domestic airport, and the shenanigans people pull in domestic are the most hilariously entertaining things you can imagine. It's all about timing really, had I gone during the afternoon, the most entertaining area would be the international arrivals. You tend to know these things if you've travelled as much as I had. At night the best place is international departures, but that one is way too depressing. Personally I enjoy seeing people act all crazy when they are going on a short business trip. You wouldn't believe what they get up to, an old lady wanted to go with her grown man of a son up until the airplane, she was yelling "Well it's the same bloody country!" And one guy was pissed about having to go through customs, saying that if he wanted to smuggle anything he could just go by car, and that there wasn't anything he would have to declare at the border. I just wish I had popcorn, that stuff was priceless. And the domestic area was so small that the luggage pick-up area was in clear view, as an added bonus. You should've seen those people scurry around for a luggage cart, or fighting over what was their luggage.
About 20 minutes to 2pm I went to the area I had previously surmised to be the arranged pick-up spot. I was right, some of the losers I had seen before were going to the same school. Great. It was going to be a long year.
Turns out, it wasn't so much a bus as a van. A tiny tiny van. I'm going to be stuck and squished with these people for hours in a tiny van during the summer. Oh, it gets better, we are traversing to "dangerous" countries, and because of the trailer that holds some of our bags, we'll be late, so we are crossing the border at night. Not creepy at all. I got a seat next to the window at the back of the van, fortunately I look tired enough to pull my sunglasses on and play my iPod while I "doze off".
After two hours of these dumbasses talking among themselves, I realize that I really don't care about any of them. It's fortunate there are more people going to this school or I'd be fucked. They are boring me to the point that I actually fall asleep, and wake up 2 hours after, when we are stopping at the gas station. I go pee and get a large shopping bag of junk food, with bottles of soda, bags of chips, chocolate bars, gummy bears, cookies, mentos and chewing gum. When we got back in the van people started staring at me for my big bag, I asked through gritted teeth "What" and they just scurried off, wimps.
Three more hours and we are dropped at the border. One of the losers tried getting me to give him a gummy bear during the trip, I glared at him and I'm pretty sure he started crying. Anyway, we get to the border and it turns out we have to declare all our electronics, with serial numbers and everything. You have a van full of teenagers going to an élite school and you want them to show you all their technology? Do you not want to go home?! Anyways, some of them started panicking, so I got them to line up and give me each of their serials as I jotted them down in a list, meanwhile I got the driver to go see if he could speed the process somehow. I like that fellow, not the talkative type at all, he somehow managed to get a bigger frown during the ride than me. About 20 minutes into the ordeal, I had half of the info, while some of them were calling their parents, just about crying. The driver comes in with a guy and says that we can go through, we don't need to declare our electronics, thank god, because I was about to deal with a whiny girl. We each got our passports stamped, then got through to the other side. We had to dip our shoes in this large shallow bucket with water or something, before officially entering the country, so we "don't carry diseases". Weird thing though: these South Africans had to go get flip-flops from their car to pass through the bucket thing, apparently shoes wasn't really their thing. Ironic, considering their car was a brand new Mercedes.
I asked the guy that came with the driver how long until we reached the school, he said another hour. I asked him what was up with the driver, he said he got hit by lightning. Turns out, it's a common occurrence for people to die getting hit by lightning in this country. Well maybe the year won't go by that slow after all. I was quite impressed after I learnt those facts. Anyway, we got in the van again, this time the duds-for-classmates got the brilliant idea of stocking up on food like I did at the tuck shop, instead of drooling all over mine. I was almost out of battery on my iPod, so this hour better go by quickly.
After zigzagging through roads, the driver stopped at the dip of a valley. We were met by this man who got out of a pick-up truck. He was burly and tanned, and sported a Hitler style moustache. Oh boy. He presented himself as the school's vice-principal. He said the school was on top of the mountain. I looked up, this mountain wasn't the Everest, for sure, but I was used to a flat landscape, and at night, looking up, it looked intimidating. I looked at our van, which was just about to topple with the excess of passengers and luggage. Here's the thing, I hate heights, I hate roller coasters, and they expect me to ride this death trap up? Now I get why they play Stairway to Heaven Backwards. "Excuse me, is this part of the entrance ritual or do you really expect all of us to go in this tiny van up there with the trailer behind us?"
The vice principal faced me after I said that and gave me this stupid condescending smile: "No, I'm hooking the trailer to my truck and taking a few of you to relieve weight. So who wants to come?"
I just shook my head. Some of the losers got out, how nice of them, they helped out with moving the trailer and made us in the trailer go up. I was glad I was with these wimps going up, because their screams of "We're gonna die" and prayers to God and Jesus managed to drown out my own. I prayed for a swift death, while the driver was working furiously with the van's manual gears. Fuck, at least I'll die young and pretty.
It was only a ten minute ride, though it seemed like days of riding through hell. So after those ten minutes, and a few tears (that were cleared off before I stepped out) we finally got inside the gate to the school. As soon as we stopped we got out of the car and got on my knees to thank the gods for their leniency with my soul. The truck arrived just behind us, so I gripped my backpack and got my two trolleys out of the trailer. The vp indicated a set of stairs for us to descend. So everything was very airy apparently, no full-fledged buildings here apparently. As soon as we got down the stairs, after lugging out our bags the way down, we were swarmed. People our age acting all friendly, asking us where we were from, how was our ride… You'd think if they were that friendly they would help us with getting the luggage down the stairs, instead of offering now, where there were ramps. More duds, that's fantastic. I got handed a key and indicated where my temporary room was by this noisy woman. To say the room was tiny is the understatement of the century. There was a bed, and a side table that doubled as a desk, I had to put the chair outside or I couldn't get in to the room. I had to pile my bags on top of each other, because if I opened the door to the tiny closet I would close myself in. I had to jump on top of the bed from the foot of it to reach the table. On the bright side though, the room was right in front of the bathrooms, so I got to take a quick shower and brush my teeth before locking myself in my matchbox or room, whatever you want to call it. Sure I had to give a few fake smiles at the "Hi"s I received from more people, but as soon as I got on my pjs and crawled on top of the bed I was out for the count.
So here it is, I hope you tolerated it, I'd appreciate knowing. I'm not sure if I'll continue with this, even though I have oodles to go on with it, believe it or not this story is about as personal as it gets to me.