Normally I sleep through my alarm, but when it came to A.M. beer bongs, the pool and sun for Spring Break, there were days where I was up before sunrise. As many chose to Spring Break it with their sorority and frat bros, the girls from my floor last year and I mixed it up with some of our favorite men of Pi
Kappa Alpha and traveled together to South Padre, Texas. We relaxed in Saida Towers for the week, which housed more than 8,000 students giving us the full luxury of huge condos with full kitchens, living and dining areas, beachfront and an awesome location in relation to most major nightclubs.
The daily run down went like this: wake up (most likely still intoxicated), debate going for a run, skip out on the run to sit on the porch and eat a bowl of stale cereal, blast music and mix a drink to sip on by the pool (known as the afternoon pregame), and then head to the beach for some Louisville slugger, football and the infamous activity of burying your friend head deep in the sand. The island is also home of the Coca Cola stage where people took breaks from the water and participated in the many of the drunken contests. Naps were definitely frowned upon, but necessary to keep up with the daylong marathon.
At night, hundreds of groups stumbled condo to condo before hitting up the nightlife on Padre Boulevard. Most popular hot spots for the week: Louie’s backyard and Mooncussers where the dance floor was continuously filled to its capacity and the energy progressively heightened by the hour.
From the booty shaking contests to our Sigma Chi men staking their infamous double flag of the Illinois’ “I” and their fraternity crest, Illinois made sure to represent orange and blue on the beach side-by-side our new friends from Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri and more. Tan, peeling and returning back to the gloomy and cold Chambana I think most would agree when I say, “Take me back to Padre.”