Entry 14

I am going to give a little background about my personal essay that I am turning in on Tuesday. After high school, I travelled with my six best friends to Europe for a month to celebrate graduation and depart our separate ways to different colleges. We went to three places in Spain, Paris, Greece, Amsterdam and Israel. We had an unbelievable time and I will never forget my experience with my best friends.

While we were in Amsterdam, a ton of crazy events seemed to be taking place. To start off, we arrived to our hostel and realized it was a complete piece of shit. All seven of us were placed in a basement room, no windows, holes in the roof; graffiti all over the walls and the door didn’t even lock. We, seven LA boys, felt more uncomfortable than we had in our lives. We instantly made the decision to move hostels and find another place to stay. After walking around with our entire luggage, we found a hotel that was in the similar price range yet with much better living conditions.

After we checked into the hotel, a process that took well over two hours, I was walking across the street to meet my friend when I knocked over a bicyclist. Let me just start off by justifying myself. First, I was distracted since I was talking to my friends and not looking where I was going. Second, Amsterdam is overcrowded with stinking bicycles! They are everywhere. This is not an exaggeration. I felt out of place not being on a bicycle.

Anyways, I knocked over a young lady, broke her stockings, scraped her leg and broke her pair of glasses. We sat down in a coffee shop right there and the owner gave her a glass of water as we discussed how to handle the situation. We decided that I would give her 200 Euros to replace her glasses and that if she had any money left over she would call and give it back. I didn’t think I would ever get a phone call but she did call me later on that evening to tell me that the glasses only cost 140 Euros. I told her to keep the change for the damages I caused, mainly because I just didn’t want to deal with the situation any longer.

After all this took place, we spent the next few hours relaxing, taking naps and just hanging out before the night started. Once it became late, we got ready and went out to walk around the town. As we were walking along the Amsterdam canal late at night, heading back towards our hotel, the event I describe in my personal story takes place. IT was at this moment that my friend Omid became a hero and saved another human beings life. I truly witnessed a miracle that evening and will never forget it. This moment will live with my the rest of my life as a remind to how thin the line is between life and death.