so. i went on this "WorldStrides tour" where a group from my school and a group from another school in Missouri were given a tour by a trained guide. he took us to all these cool places and it was great!! but some of the people were erm. not. the Missouri group was composed entirely of 8th graders, and there were mostly 8th graders in my school group as well. most 8th grade boys, mind you.
so i did 30+ miles of walking with these people, and in the duration of my trip a lot of bad stuff happened, mostly from a mixture of my own group and the Missouri group.

SO LET'S SEE HERE, I WAS:

-Harassed due to my weight. almost //every// time I ate something, anything, a select few members of my own group would say things like "you're so thin/skinny/small!!" "you're like a stick/twig/pole/etc" "you need to gain more weight" "you're too thin/skinny" "wow you weigh like nothing" "you need to eat more", for example. it was really hard to just eat in peace because i would almost always get bombarded with comments like these, often based off of how much or how little i chose to eat for that particular meal. if i ate a lot, i'd be told to eat more or given cynical comments. if i didn't eat very much, i'd ALSO be told to eat more. it got to the point where SEVERAL ADULTS tried to force feed me mULTIPLE TIMES, because of how skinny they think i am. yES I'M SERIOUS

+Told I was ugly. i had specific body parts listed that apparently aren't attractive enough :') a lot of times my choices in clothing would be criticized/laughed at by groups of 8th graders. i was even told that the birthmark on my hand is gross/weird. just dandy.

+Harassed at security stations. For most of the museums I went to, it was required you go through security. my sneakers have metal in the heels, something neither me nor my family knew when buying them. now, i know the security people /are/ just trying to do their job, and they probably didnt mean to do this, but getting stopped at 8-10ish places over and over (for my metal-ish shoes) is pretty bad. i was physically searched and groped a lot. it was bad

+Physically harassed. In the 4-5 days of my trip, I've been roughly pulled by the arms and hair, pulled by my neck via the lanyard that was mandatory for me to wear, had my fingers and arms twisted backwards, pushed into streets, picked up suddenly from behind, pinched, poked, slapped, kicked, and even grabbed by the throat. just wonderful

+Harassed in other weird ways. I don't even know what to call this. I've had people mock my voice/stutter/laugh/etc, told to go die/stop talking/etc, threatened, scolded, and even had people take pictures of me without consent. there was an attempt made by an 8th grader to take pictures of me from behind without me knowing. they attempted to take my phone and ipod from my hands, and read my text messages. I've also had people try to steal accessories oFF OF MY FACE.


sighs so yeah, that's all i can remember so far
fun times