The alarm clock sounds off. I sit up in bed and look around.
Where am I again? Oh yeah, in Punta Cana at the beach. I hate when that happens, when you wake up and just forget where you are for a second.
“Jonnie, wake up bro,” I say to senior Jonnie Voyta, my roommate for the weekend.
“What? What time is it?” Jonnie responds.
“It’s 9 a.m. Let’s get up and go to the beach,” I say.
Jonnie rolls out of bed and we get ready to go. We grab something to eat at a restaurant and walk over to the beach.
“Where is everyone?” I ask Jonnie.
“I don’t know. Let’s just walk down to the beach and walk around until we find everyone,” Jonnie responds.
We’re walking up the beach and spot our friends with a bunch of chairs and towels together. We make our way over to them and lay our towels down next to everyone.
“Anyone want to go in the ocean?” senior Alec Yassin asks.
Without any response everyone gets up and runs into the ocean.
Everyone makes it in with no problem, except for Jonnie. While running in, Jonnie gets smashed with a wave sending him tumbling under the water.
“No, no, no,” Jonnie says. “I lost my Ray Bans in the ocean. They fell off my face.” As sad as it is, everyone laughs. Not because it is funny, but because it is something that would only happen to Jonnie. Jonnie and a couple of our friends start to search the floor of the water, attempting to find his glasses. No luck. After about five minutes of searching we all know they are gone forever. Some fish got lucky enough to get a free pair of Club Masters. I make my way out of the ocean and go lay on my towel.
Am I going to fall asleep here? Should I put more sunscreen on? No, I’m fine. I already put some sunscreen on, I won’t fall asleep and I’ll put some on in like 30 minutes.
I fall asleep. An hour and a half later, I wake up with my back and shoulders red as could be.
Blown. This one is going to hurt for a couple days.
“Danny your shoulders are so red,” senior Annie Clampitt says.
“Is it really that bad?” I ask, knowing that yes, it is that bad, but wanting to hear that it isn’t.
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Annie says.
I’m not going to let a sunburn slow me down though. I get up and point to a big pink inflatable flamingo.
“Hey, Justin and Ben, you guys wanna go on that out in the ocean?”
“Let’s do it,” senior Justin Fishman responds.
We drag the flamingo out to the water and Justin hops on.
“Push me and the flamingo out into the water, and then you guys jump on, too,” Justin says.
We should have known it wasn’t going to work. Twenty seconds later, Justin had drifted 100 feet away from us. Ben and I get out of the water and run all the way down the beach to save our friend. We run back into the water and the rescue mission is complete. I am hungry, I am tired and I am burnt. That is enough for me.
“Justin, you pushed me over the edge there. I think I’m going to have to call it a day,” I say.
“Yeah, me too, that was some tiring work right there,” Justin responds.
We share a laugh and head back to our hotel.
