We are still with Bratty while she terrorizes the Dutch in Amsterdam.    

The study abroad program had advised that all students would receive a rental bicycle to use for transportation during their semester in Amsterdam.  Bratty never learned to ride a bicycle.  SO says he tried to teach her as a kid but she never got off training wheels and he didn’t force her to learn.  Now, Bratty was aware that bicycle riding would be required while in Amsterdam and SO offered to help her learn the winter break prior to her departure.  Bratty said no, she would learn when she got there. 

The program director (a middle-aged woman, which will be an important detail later) was not too pleased when Bratty showed up there demanding they show her how to ride.  Nonetheless, she had someone on her staff go out with Bratty for the afternoon to teach her.  Bratty finally got her balance but was very nervous and wobbly – and terrified to ride on the streets.  So the program director finally told Bratty to not ride the bike for safety reasons and gave her a limited purpose transit pass that would get her back and forth from her room to the school.  But for reasons that are still not clear to me, they told her to keep the rental bike until the end of the semester but she was specifically forbidden from riding it. 

Of course, Bratty does not like hearing the word no and unilaterally decided to keep trying the bike on her own.  She told one of her classmates, who ratted her out to the program director.  Bratty was called to the director’s office and told she had violated the rule they gave her, and also was failing one of her courses (which is not typical of Bratty – she likes getting good grades and then bragging about them).  The director told Bratty she was officially on academic probation with the program.  Now, Bratty left the office and later said she did not understand what probation meant.  This becomes important later, but before that Bratty travelled to a whole new country with her class – Morocco.

The program included a trip for all of the student to Morocco for a week.  Upon arrival there, Bratty kept complaining to the director that she did not feel well and had ‘female cramps’.  Bratty’s mother had endometriosis and Bratty has self-diagnosed herself with the same thing, even though no medical doctor has.  They ended up taking Bratty to a local doctor for an ultrasound, which did show a lesion that could have been causing pain.  Bratty had previously had an IUD inserted to help control heavy flow and the lesion was a likely side effect of the IUD.  They said it was nothing serious and would resolve on its own, and gave Bratty to take ibuprofen for any pain.  I should pause and mention here that Bratty is a full-blown hypochondriac who loves going to doctors and complaining about various ailments (we’ll hear about more of them over time but the ‘female cramps’ is a common one).  Prior to this she had gone to foot doctor complaining of ‘disabling’ foot pain – the doctor said it was foot fungus and she needed to focus on wearing clean socks each day.  Another time Bratty claimed she couldn’t leave the house since she had sunburn and couldn’t wear pants.  Bratty loves using medical ailments as excuses for not doing something.

In this case, the ultrasound was her new weapon against the evil program director.  It proved Bratty was right!  She even posted the ultrasound on Facebook with a snotty caption to go with it.  It was almost like a victory lap.  Bratty then demanded all kinds of special accommodations and extra time to complete assignments given her health challenges.  The program director agreed and gave her extra time to catch up on her coursework.

After returning to Amsterdam from Morocco, the final 2 weeks of the program were structured as ‘independent study’ to allow the students to finish their final papers but also do some independent travel around Europe.  All the students were on limited student visas that required good academic standing prior to traveling out of the Netherlands.  Bratty decided she wanted to go to Germany and Switzerland, and the day she was heading off to the train station she stopped by the director’s office to get her authorization papers signed.  The director told her it wasn’t going to happen – she was still on academic probation as she was still failing one class and had several (though I only heard about the bicycle incident) rule violations.  Therefore she would not sign Bratty’s forms and Bratty was devastated. 

Bratty called SO crying about how unfair it was, and that the director had a vendetta against Bratty.  Bratty said she couldn’t argue her side because the program director was a middle-aged woman and all middle-aged women reminded her of her mother (who Bratty doesn’t get along with).  And then of course - why didn’t SO force her to learn to ride a bike?  The whole thing was really his fault anyway.  So once again, our poor Bratty is left with shattered dreams and must stay in Amsterdam to pull up her grades instead of travelling across Europe.

While Bratty was terrorizing new countries overseas, you may be wondering what SO and I were up to State-side.  I had closed on a brand new townhouse at the end of 2016, and SO officially moved in with me at the start of 2017.  Have your heard the stories about buyer’s remorse with large purchases like homes?  Where you regret making the purchase exactly one minute after you are handed the keys, and begin to dream of all kinds of terrible things that are about to befall you?  Well, it took longer than a minute but sure enough…

In Chapter 8, we’ll look at my misfortunes, which are aggravated when Bratty returns from Amsterdam – looking very different.  Hint:  It’s Britney, b*tch!