Our parents dropped us off at the San Luis Obispo airport, and with tears in their eyes, they warned us once again, “don’t talk to strangers,” “don’t accept drinks from boys,” etc.

Lela, my best friend from high school, and I boarded our flight to Los Angeles, and our journey began.

It was our first solo trip to Europe—Italy, Greece and France—and we couldn’t have been more excited, or so we thought.

Despite all the hours of planning, I was not prepared for the stress I would experience over the upcoming days.

Lela’s dad is a pilot and so we had the “privilege” of using less-expensive standby passes. Which basically means we don’t have tickets for any of our flights and we pray, to a god we don’t believe in, that we will secure a seat to our destination.

Our situation became sticky once we landed at LAX. Flight after flight we were smack in the middle of the standby list, and flight after flight we were denied seats.

When the last flight to our destination began to board we weren’t high enough priority on the list of people pleading for a seat home. As the minutes passed, we begrudgingly settled into the reality that we would be spending the night in LAX.

We searched the terminal for the most optimal set of black plastic chairs to stretch out on within range of power outlets to charge our dying phones.

I’ve always heard how awful it is to sleep in an airport, but I don’t think it’s emphasized enough. I would have rather spent the night watching “The Artist” on a loop than to ever sleep on those rock hard benches again. At least “The Artist” puts me to sleep.

Despite the fact that there was no one in the airport, every single fluorescent light was shining as bright as the sun. And every five minutes a composed woman’s voice rang out overhead reminding us again not to leave our bags unattended.

The next morning I woke up dazed and foggy, a total of 3 hours of sleep under my belt. I shook Lela awake and we took turns shuffling to the overcrowded bathroom to change and brush our teeth and greasy hair. My eyes stung from tiredness, but it was time to try and fly again.

As we ran from one end of the airport to the other, scrambling to get flights, we were forced to make the decision we were dreading—time to split up.

At long last one seat to Pittsburg opened up. Lela shoved me down the rickety and claustrophobic walkway and told me she would meet me in Washington… I could only think, “What if I don’t get to Washington?”

Tears welled up in my eyes, out of exhaustion or fear, I’ll never know. I was terrified.

I sat down next to a stranger, trying to hide my tears and texted my mom that I had boarded a plane, but without Lela. Fortunately the plane lifted off of the ground so I didn’t have to hear my mother’s nervous voice over the phone telling me it would be all right. That would have just made things worse.

After day three of flying, Lela and I landed in Italy. Despite all of the hassle, we made it to our final destination. As we exited the airport, men on mopeds drove by and five pizzerias came into sight. It was a dream come true.

We spent two weeks trekking through Europe and doing all of the things our parents had warned against. We knew everything we needed to know—we had been high school graduates for a full 11 days after all!

On our way back to America, we had an equally hard time getting the flights that we needed, but at that point, we knew how to handle the situation.

We arrived back at the dreaded LAX terminal, where our families picked us up and drove us home. It was all over—and it was all worth it.