Summer Before Junior Year

The summer before my junior year was the first year I started working for the town. I worked as a swim instructor at a beach during the day and then at the town pool in the evening. It was tons of fun working there, I was one of the younger ones most of the rest were in college. We would hang out in the parking lot and talk for hours after the pool closed, we would toss each other in the pool if we noticed someone looking a little dry, we would go out to dinner and take up half the restaurant, and we would have our kids race against each other or make the older kids sing funny songs. I was also able to drive to and from work, that is how I got into my very first accident. Nothing major, no injuries but a bunch of damage to my car. And the driver in the other car was the father of a girl I had been on and off friends with throughout school. We both had stop signs but he didn't stop at his, luckily we were in a residential neighborhood so neither of us were going that fast, but fast enough to deploy my airbags. The guy got out of his car screaming at me, saying I did everything wrong, what the hell was I thinking blah blah blah. I told him I was going from one job to the next, which was true but he convinced me that I was still the one going to get in trouble. I wasn't even thinking of the police, wasn't as afraid of them as I was of my mother, I knew she was gonna scream at me. So we didn't call the police and I was so nervous that every time I beeped my mother I put in the wrong number. I wound up driving home, which wasn't very far, and went right past a cop who didn't do anything. My windshield was completely cracked and both airbags deployed and my front end was damaged. I got home and told my mother, she screamed at me and of course it somehow turned into me not appreciating her. Since the police weren't called and the way the cars hit corner to corner they said it was 50% both of our faults. During all the paperwork my mother found out the guy had been fired from the school district, he was a bus driver, because he was caught drinking on the job. The light bulb went off, he wreaked of beer when he was yelling at me and that would explain why he was so adamant on not calling the police. I was so intimidated by him and terrified of my mother's reaction I wasn't putting it together. My mother took her usual stance to everyone else I did nothing wrong, he was this trashy drunk that caused the accident. But when she was yelling at me for about anything else for the next year, I was the one that did wrong he probably wasn't drunk and I definitely must have been doing something wrong and I don't appreciate her. By the way, I wasn't texting, it wasn't a big thing and I don't even think I could do that on the phone I had at that time, all I could play was snake.
A couple weeks after the accident I went as a student ambassador to Australia, I spent two and a half weeks traveling around with a group of students. We were recommended for the program by a teacher and then we had to interview and get picked to go, after we were picked we spent almost a year meeting up once a month to learn about what we would be doing, how we needed to act, about the culture there, and getting to know each other. I also spent a good part of the year raising the money to go, it wasn't cheap. It was an absolutely wonderful experience. We started in Sydney, then went to the outback, walked around Ayers Rock, sleep in the outback in a swag, rode camels and horses, went in a hot air balloon, went to the rainforest, went to brisbane, stayed with a family for two nights in Townsville, went to Cairns, went to Long Island, swam in the Great Barrier Reef, learned about Aboriginals, and then back to Sydney. I took 35 rolls of film (digital wasn't as big back then) and would still love to go back.
After getting back from my trip I returned to working at the pool but as a lifeguard for the remainder of the summer.