Funny Days of Europe

So I am back from this trip where I participated in the 80th D-Day Parade and Ceremony. And so far, some funny things have occurred.

First was our bus being escorted out of Omaha Beach. We were told that higher up officials could show up during our trip. Meaning that those officials don't stop for us and our schedule could shift. At Omaha Beach, President Biden was showing up to the beach and in the neighboring town of Bayeaux, President Macon was visiting. This caused a MAJOR traffic jam where cars, buses, reenactment Jeeps, and others were stuck. Some of our buses were stuck in Omaha and my bus was in the middle of traffic. Actually while writing this, we are being escorted out and stuck again.

Second was me being lost in Pont Saint Mère. Which wasn't entirely my fault but it happened. I took the shuttle back to the general area where we were being picked up. Supposedly it was gonna be our bus and the others left 30 minutes earlier. So I followed someone from the band and turns out it took me 30 minutes out with the wrong bus because they were missing 2-3 people. So I was escorted to my bus who had those missing people too. Which my bus was excited I made it back safely and were curious how I got lost.

And finally was the parade. The parade was my favorite part because I miss marching band. This experience got me back into it and enjoy the thing I did a lot in undergrad.

But the parade was rocky.... First my band (we were split into 3 mini bands) were told we may not perform because they wanted to make sure we got in on the tours. Let me tell you something... Tell band members they may not perform in something they look forward to and you'll see some pissed off members including family from overseas.

With that chaos solved and we got to the parade, some of us got lost again. So one of the heads got us to the parade just in the knick of time to march. Panting and sweating a little, we marched all the way down and the crowd was HUGE! We all were grinning with excitement. Then my band played some tunes at the end like YMCA, Dynamite, and more which is what you see at the bottom photo. I ended up in someone's photos since they wanted to take pictures with the band as memory.

While there's LOTS more to discuss, I figured let's talk about some chaos that I can chuckle about now. I can't wait to share more!