The bus back from Assisi

I was still full of that peaceful and serene feeling as I sat waiting for my bus back to Perugia...that is, until the bus arrived and 40 rowdy highschoolers showed up out of nowhere and started pushing their way on to the bus. There were more of them than there were seats so I fought my way through for a seat for myself and an 80 year old lady. A couple of poor Chinese tourists got to brave the aisle with all the leftover students for the hour-long trip home.
I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but bus drivers in Umbria don't seem to realize that they aren't driving sports cars...so they drive down these tiny, one-lane, curvy roads at nearly death-defying speeds...They take ess-curves at break-neck speeds and I swear sometimes it feels like we're going to tip right over the side of the mountain (of course, we never do). Anyway, as the bus careened down the winding road to the bottom of the moutain, the kids fought and teased and wrestled in the aisles and over my head. I was determined not to let it ruin my buzz (I mean, I know I was annoying as a teenager, but was I really this annoying?), so I put on my earphones and stared out the window.
Then two girls started arguing in the seats in front of me, one pretty blonde girl and one tough looking brunette. The blonde looked very sorry and the brunette looked very angry. I was amusing myself with trying to decipher what the girls were fighting about (I could only imagine it was about some guy) when the brunette swung back and slapped the blonde in the face! After that is a little unclear, the blonde stood up to fight back, but got pulled by her hair into the aisle and then slammed against the bus door. The bus driver, who obviousely wasn't paying attention to the back of the bus, was still careening down the mountain at breakneck speeds. He took another high speed turn at a sharp s-curve and the girls were thrown, scratching and slapping back into the seats.
The other kids were shouting and laughing, the local adults weren't about to do anything about it, and the tourists really couldn't do anything about it. I was only thankful that I had a window seat...the poor Chinese tourists were bearing the brunt of it for me.
Finally, the little old Italian lady stood up from her seat and started shouting at them, which seemed to calm things down a bit. The girls sat back down in their seats, and with the exception of shouting at each other from across the bus, it was all over. It lasted only about 5 minutes, but it was a crazy 5 minutes.
I missed the sunset over the mountains, and the feeling of peace was replaced with heart-thumping anxiety, but I guess this was more exciting anyway, and really something good to write home about too ;)