First Friends Trip: San Diego 2016

My first friends trip helped me learn a lot about myself as well as group dynamics.

Every blog has to start somewhere, so I've decided to start with the first trip I took in college. I'm writing this now as a junior in college, but I figured I might as well write the details of this trip while I still remember them well. Before college, I loved to travel and did so a lot with my family. However, college was the first time I traveled on my own and I absolutely fell in love with doing my own thing and creating my own itinerary. I still travel with my family fairly frequently, and I've grown to appreciate the pros and cons of both kinds of travel.

Now that we've gotten the awkward intro out of the way, I should probably give some backstory or the whole premise of this trip won't make sense. During my freshman year at BYU, I applied to be a member of the ROC Board, the organization in charge of BYU's student section at athletic events. I was rejected twice, but I did eventually make it on the board in mid-November. BYU's football team became bowl eligible and was invited to the San Diego Poinsettia Bowl. So as a group of about 15 college students, we decided to show our support for the team and head to San Diego for the first part of Christmas Break. It definitely helped that our school's athletic marketing department paid for our hotel in downtown San Diego as well as several meals and our front row tickets to the game. You gotta love an organization that pays its employees well. We only had to pay for our transportation and our activities there.

Day 1

Our first day, we flew out on various flights and met up at the hotel. We went out to eat at a random Mexican restaurant downtown and headed out to Mission Beach. Nothing really exciting happened because we took a while to get moving after flying out early in the morning and taking some naps. Either way, I had a great time just hanging out with my friends.

Day 2

We had the BEST burgers ever for breakfast (yes breakfast). In downtown San Diego, there's a place called Hodad's that serves absolutely massive burgers and fries. They also give out stickers for their organization. I still have mine with me, three years later. I would definitely eat there again. Everything people ordered was delicious and we sampled a lot of different dishes.

Following our burger breakfast, we headed out to Pacific Beach. We had the beach pretty much exclusively to ourselves because it happened to be a random Tuesday in December. Our group split up a little bit. Some people went boogie boarding; others chose to surf; some just played in the waves. My friend Christina even ended up getting stung by a stingray. Luckily, the lifeguards were able to help her right away. She ended up being just fine, but she did give us all a scare. After the stingray scare, we all got out of the water and ended up having the most entertaining Spikeball tournament on the beach. We ended our beach day by taking some pictures as a group.

After heading home to shower, we headed back out. We started at Ghiradelli (YUM!) and then went to a bar downtown. I talked my way into the bar as a barely legal 18-year-old. Seriously... my birthday was only a month before. I don't drink so it wasn't all that difficult to be honest, but I felt accomplished all the same. We watched some NBA on TV and then went back to our hotel to play some games. The games ended up being kind of a bust, but I had a good time with my ladies.

Day 3

We started the day off with some drama. Most the girls wanted to go up to Balboa Park and walk around/take pictures. The boys and I had absolutely no interest in this. We were planning to go to the beach. However, the girls still wanted to be able to go to the beach. Eventually, the girls ended up just going to the beach by themselves. The boys slept in to avoid the confrontation. Because I didn't want to be a part of any confrontation, I went and got donuts for everyone from the most amazing donuts place I have ever tasted: Donut Bar. Some donuts were as big as your head. They had the most incredible flavors. I would recommend it to anyone who even mildly likes donuts. BUT... they will sell out before 10am so you do have to get there early in the morning to be able to sample.

After a rather disappointing morning (group dynamics are hard, especially when dealing with a group of people between 18 and 23), we went to Old Town for lunch and had some incredible Mexican food. Because we had time to burn, we ended up going to the Sheriff's Museum in Old Town. This was quite an odd little museum, but we made it fun.

That afternoon, we headed out to the stadium. We were playing in the San Diego Chargers' stadium. The NFL team moved up to LA in 2018, and you could tell no one really cared about the upkeep of the stadium. It definitely wasn't the nicest stadium I've ever been to, but it was perfect for a bowl game between the BYU Cougars and the Wyoming Cowboys. During the whole game, it was POURING rain. We ended up being soaked and miserable. During the third quarter, we ended up getting some garbage bags to put over ourselves, but it was too little too late. We were all already soaked through. I've attached a picture one of my friends back home sent us to show just how freezing and unhappy we were to be out in the rain for so long. Please enjoy all the people on their phones and the various facial expressions.

Back at the hotel, we warmed up and played a group bonding game called Quarters. Essentially, everyone sits in a circle and one person whispers a question to the person to their left. The person must answer the question with the name of a person in the circle (ex: "Who are you most attracted to in the circle?" "George"). Then, a quarter is flipped. If the quarter lands heads up, the question is kept quiet. If the quarter lands on tails, the question is shared with everyone. Let's just say that it adds to some interesting group dynamics. We finished the night with the classic "Kiss, Marry, Kill."

Day 4

We flew home separately. I was honestly kind of grateful because at this point, I was kind of sick of people. I am extremely extroverted but definitely enjoy my alone time. I'm much like my mom, who takes an hour a day between 9 and 10pm where no one can talk to her. Both my flights ended up getting delayed for weather, and I felt very accomplished to have navigated three different airports on my own as it was my first time flying solo.

Overall, I'm really grateful for my San Diego friend trip. It let me get a small taste of traveling without a massive financial burden. As I pay for all my own travels, this was really nice.

Life Lessons

This is the trip where I learned that traveling brings out both the best and worst in people. It's okay to have friends that don't travel the same way as you, but you may just need to travel separately. Traveling with a large group can be really fun or really difficult and it may be an even mix of the two.