Thanks for your help, Heather…

The trip to The Modern Art Museum at SF was great. I had a fantastic time. We reached the museum at about 10:00 in the morning and started at the ‘tech place’ for half an hour. After that, we went on to seeing the museum. Our leader was my French teacher’s sister-in-law, Heather and our guide, Bejamin, was an old guy, who has been working as a guide at the museum for over 10 years. Impressive!

We went on the fifth floor first, in the elevator and I started to feel sick. My heart was sinking in the elevator. But when we got out of the elevator, I just ignored the sick feeling and went on to looking at the amazing modern art of the twentieth century. There were so many abstract paintings and pieces of art, I enjoyed them emmensely. Anyway, after looking at a few of the paintings, we proceeded back on to the second floor, in the elevator, again. It stopped at the fourth floor first and I started to get that sick feeling again. Then it stopped at the third floor and after that, the second. The feeling was strong by now and my heart was sinking more. I tried to put everything aside and enjoy the art but I was still getting extremely uneasy. When we came to the end of the tour, I leaned against the wall and felt very dizzy. I almost couldn’t see anything by then and I slouched, my hands on my knees.

Right then, Heather noticed my strange behavior and took me to sit on a bench. My friends gave me water and a tylenol and I rested on the bench for about five minutes. I was getting better and I told Heather that I can go on to looking at the paintings since I felt better. But she told me to rest some more so that I was completely okay and not just fine. I agreed and stayed seated. Heather said that she will be right back. She went to a guard and asked her if there was a place where there was a more comfortable sofa or seat for me to sit on, so that I could put my legs up and rest more. The guard sent us to ‘The Lounge.’ It was a very pleasant place. Heather advised me to sit on the big sofa and put my feet up. I didn’t want to because I thought the sofa would get dirty because of my shoes. Heather laid down her jacket on the sofa and told me to put my feet up on her jacket. I thought that was very sweet of her! She sat on the sofa next to me and told me that I can rest for as long as I wanted to and that she was going to wait for me there.

After about five minutes, I told Heather that I was fine and I could go and look at the art work. She insisted that I stayed there a little more but I told her that I was better. Heather said that she was going to sit in The Lounge and if I needed something or felt sick again, I could go back there. I thanked her and went back to the gallery.

Later on, when we all met at the gift shop, Heather asked me again if I felt okay. I appreciated her concern.

Fast forwarding, I told Gaurav to go to Target (a store) with me to buy a ‘Thank you’ card for Heather since she was so nice to me and helped me a lot. I got some other stuff too. The total was $6.44 and I gave the cashier $ 6.54, a five dollar bill, a one dollar bill, two quarters and four pennies. The cashier looked confused. Considering himself intelligent, he retuned four pennies and deducted the amount from $6.50 and gave me 6 cents back. I gave him $6.54 so he could just give me a dime and get rid of some of my change. But no, the cashier was…dumb!

Well, that was about all of my day…it was nice.

Au revoir…
~Aaina.