May 30, 2012

Republished from their personal blog with permission from the authors, we’re going to catch up with Gamecock volleyball student-athletes Cara Howley and Lindsey Craft during their trip to Spain as part of their international business program. Content may be edited from its original form. This was originally posted on May 19.

We had this weekend all planned out. We would take a bus and then a plane to the b-e-a-utiful island of Palma De Mallorca to layout and see the lovely beaches. Unfortunately, what we experienced was far from what we had envisioned! We arrived in Palma at around 10 pm and took a taxi to our lovely hostel. We got put in the suite underneath the stairs with a fantastic view of a grimy alleyway and two-and-a-half beds for three people. The room (if you could call it that) smelled like death and lavender air freshener, there were suspicious stains on the tile floor, and the bed covers looked as if they had never been cleaned. Needless to say, once we turned off the lights to try and go to bed, we had a mental breakdown and decided we couldn’t do it. Not only because sleeping under overly-starched towels on top of the bed (to avoid bedbugs of course) was too much for us, but also because it got so loud there was no way we could fall asleep. We ended up going next door at 1:30 in the morning and paying extra to stay in a real hotel.

The next morning, we got our room changed and went to layout on a part of the beach which resembled Myrtle Beach during spring break. Of course, it started to rain, so after eating “tex-mex,” (our nachos were just Doritos with ball park cheese), we proceeded to watch three episodes of Glee before taking a bus into the city of Palma. Palma was absolutely beautiful and delightful, which made us upset we didn’t just stay there in the first place!

Essentially, we learned a few things this weekend: 1. Don’t stay in hostels even if they were recommended to you 2. Burger King and McDonalds are delicacies (and have FREE WIFI!) 3. Lindsey and I cannot lead normal lives! For some reason we have to make everything interesting…

I guess what is important is that we are safe and on the way back to Salamanca. We didn’t get everything we had planned this weekend, but it is one we will remember forever undoubtedly. Only 10 more days left before we leave for Belgium and take a little break from school. We have two essays to write and a grammar test to study for tomorrow, wish us luck!