SB2K9: Another Reason I Love William and Mary

Last week was Spring Break, and as a senior, this was my LAST OFFICIAL COLLEGE BREAK EVER. Wow. Weird. The next break from classes is called “Hello, you’ve graduated. Welcome to real life.” Yikes.

This year, my Spring Break plans were thrown together at the very last minute. Nine of us drove 12 hours to Orlando, and not a single one of us knew all other 8 people before we left. Sound like I should have been nervous? WRONG. This is William and Mary, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in four years, it’s that things work differently here. 🙂

Spring Break was absolutely, perfectly, amazingly, not-a-single-thing-went-wrong-ly, I-even-managed-to-get-a-substantial-tan-ly, SO MUCH FUN. Regarding the people that I was friends with before we left, I had an absolute blast spending a sunny week in Florida with them. And regarding the ones I’d never met before, I’m now obsessed with them. For a hodge-podge group of people all thrown together in one (really nice) condo just down the road from Disney, we got along SO well and had SO much fun with each other. We probably said it a hundred times during break: what we love about William and Mary is that stuff like this is the norm, not the exception. People here are just awesome. You rarely need to worry about meeting new WM-ers or spending 12 hours in a car with one you just met. Odds are, you’re going to think they’re awesome.

Throughout the week, we referred to any photos of our group as “family photos,” and we’ve already experienced so much withdrawal that we’ve planned a Spring Break group reunion for next week. Awwww, we’re so cute, right?

Counting down my last six weeks at the College is already awful enough, but it’s 50 times worse when you’ve just spent a week-long vacation with a group of people you wish you’d met 3 1/2 years sooner. :'(

And now some bulleted highlights of the fun that was Orlando!

-Our amazing condo! Free washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers never get old when you’re in college.

-Pools (with waterfalls, palm trees wrapped in blue holiday lights) open until 1 a.m.

-Volleyball (my new favorite sport, btw) courts in both the pool and on land. Free volleyball rental all day long!

-Team dinners! We split our group into “dinner teams” and took turns being in charge of feeding everyone. So cheap. So fun. Such good cooks we turned out to be.  Shout out to Natty and Richard, my incredible teammates. Mexican night was such a success!

-A day at Disney’s Blizzard Beach water park, getting there in time to beat all the lines, and loving the super-fast waterslides!

-Day trip to Cocoa Beach! (and the souvenir sunburn, ouch.)

-VIP passes to see the space shuttle launch (and even though it was postponed, we still got a free dinner) courtesy of Cailin’s aunt!