To China! With a load of 12 year old boys...
So yes, we all went to China on a cultural exchange and to learn the lingo (yes/no/how much is that?/how much is that in dollars?)
Suffice to say, over a fortnight everybody had terrible food poisoning, apart from me and me steel stomach, I only shit all the way up the walls once and no vomiting. How proud my parents must be.
There was the time where we were walking along the Great Wall and found a part that we couldn't get to as it had been blocked off by a huge concrete slab. This doesn't stop 6 12 year olds and one father from climbing around this minor obstruction, across a 2" ledge 30' from the slightly scary looking rocks below. And again when we found out that it wasn't really that interesting the other side.
There was the time that James' seatbelt failed on the rickety whirly fairground machine of death and I had to hold him in place.
There were the countless times where we couldn't translate the menu, but were very hungry indeed so didn't really care.
This culminated in our return 2 weeks later, at which point James' dad got down on his knees and almost proposed to the tarmac at Heathrow.
So there we are, going through the terminals, and my bag falls apart. I stop for a second to zip it back up, look up and everyone has vanished. Apparently when the teacher asked about me someone said "Oh, his dad came to pick him up, I remember it clearly." Bah!
Well, I make my way over to the police station, phone my dad who has to come over to pick me up. For 3 hours I was sitting in Customs/Police with a bag almost falling open containing dozens of bootleg DVDs, slightly dodgy Chinese currency, a friend's deer penis and god knows what I've blanked out from my mind.

Mind you, the food was actually quite good, even if we did later discover it was some sort of larvae.
(Toucan - http://www.titmonday.com, Thu 7 Dec 2006, 18:38, Reply)