I learned a very important lesson yesterday; don’t ask foreign people for directions. If they’re here on vacation or for whatever reason (probably for our delicious foods), then they will not likely know their way around (except maybe to the fast-food joints 😉 )

This was proven true yesterday when I was driving and frolicking about with my dear Italian exchange student, Chiara. Because I am a good person and try not to break the law (often), I was not texting/looking at my phone while driving. The directions to the Target where I had to buy my $100 calculator (Ugh. A story for another time) was supposed to be a mere 1.4 miles away. Guess how far I drove without realizing? 8 FREAKING MILES.

See, my Italian is particularly adept at deviating one’s attention from something of importance (such as driving) to herself. She *is* quite glamorous (even though she don’t realize it), but in this case it did not help the situation.

In this particular instance, she and I were having a debate on several topics: #1.) Why she did not like Taylor Swift (which really kind of hurt my feelings, because I feel a deep connection with Swifty. Not for the breakups, of course, but our mutual blondeness helps) and #2.) If I should or should not buy the aforementioned $100 calculator. My argument was that, for my AP Statistics class, it would be necessary to calculate the necessary calculations. She argued that they (Italians) were hardly ever allowed to use them in school, that it was more better for both the mind and the hand to learn how to figure out the problems by hand. While I sort-of agreed with her, do you think *I’m* the type of person to write out a huge calculation by hand?

Ha-ha. Ha. NO.

So anyways, we were having this debate while I multitasked both singing along to my favorite Swifty song and driving, and I realized that we had driven very far. I said, “SNAP! We’ve gone too far!” but the Italian said, “No no, I haven’t seen the street that we need to turn onto yet!” I said we should turn around. She said no. I did it anyway.

I pulled over and punched the address into the long-forgotten GPS in my car, and lo and behold we had passed it four miles back. So guess what? We had to drive four miles. What a complete waste of gas. The whole while I (justly) insulted her navigational skills, but she protested, saying that she was the best navigator in her family.

I hope she never has to drive them anywhere.