It all started on the second to last day of the school year. You could feel the hype of teens wanting to break out of the prison some of us call school, and everyone was feeling the excitement! The year was drawing to a close at last. Finally all the problems, issues, and deadlines school tosses onto our shoulders were going to cease. Band students had the privilege of leaving a couple days early due to scheduling for a trip to Disney World, so we all had to take extra final exams in a short amount of time, myself included. It was stressful, but I knew in the end it would all be worth the pressure.

     ” Man, I don’t know what it’ll be like to get away from home a whole week. The whole thing seems like an enormous  vacation for me! It’s like a week in Disney World with no parents!” The day had finally arrived.

    ” I know what you mean, my parents are worried that they will miss me too much if I’m gone too much,” said Bryce Sandlund, one of my friends. ” It’s gonna be absolutely awesome! We get almost absolute freedom in Florida for a whole week in a decent hotel and with all the kids we know. It just can’t get any better. As the last day of finals wore on, I pondered about what a bunch of my friends and I could accomplish with no supervision in a foreign state. I knew this was definitely going to be an awesome trip.

    My friends and I boarded the bus we had signed up for a couple weeks prior to departure. The bus smelled fresh with nice air conditioning and excited teens all around. The seats had that “new car” smell and looked rather inviting after a long day of finals. I don’t remember a single sad face that afternoon; as it was the best day of the whole school year in my opinion. We all sat down, socialized a bit, and began relaxing unaware of how long a 26 hour bus ride would actually feel like. It was nice to watch movies the whole way, but the hours became slower and slower. I stopped watching the different locations race by. State by state we kept going. The scenery gradually began to change around me. The normal busy Illinois suburbs I’ve been accustomed to altered into wide open spaces that seemed more peaceful. We went through Tennessee, Georgia, and watched as life got more peaceful from city life as we drew closer to our destination.