Roggensack: Florida Spring Break

I am writing you refreshed and relaxed from a week in Florida. Six girls and I drove down to a beach a little south of Orlando for the much-anticipated weeklong break. Most people had big tests or projects due the week before break, so we were all thankful to not have much work to do over spring break. After trudging through hectic and nerve-wracking mid-terms and laboring over lengthy papers, we could not pile into that minivan fast enough. One of the girls’ grandparents lives in a condo right on the beach, so we stayed at their place and loved every minute of it.

Our days consisted of waking up late, lounging around while making breakfast and watching the sun come up over the Atlantic Ocean, then heading down to the beach for a long day of doing nothing. It was such a nice change from the study-crazy environment we had just left. We listened to music, read, took walks, and had a blast splashing around in the waves. The weather was perfect: eighty degrees with a cool breeze. One night, we met up at a restaurant with another group of friends from Franciscan who were staying further south from us. That night, it was “Trivia Night” at the restaurant, and our group was easily defeated by the over-sixty crowd who knew just about every question: political, cultural, social, economic, you name it. Although we put our team name as the “Harvard Chess Team,” we still had about one-third of the points the other teams did, and I think they figured out that we weren’t actually from Harvard. It was all good fun though, and we talked with the locals afterwards. They seemed to be very pleasantly surprised that we were college kids on spring break and not drinking or partying.

We stopped at a friend’s house in Virginia on the way back to spend the night before leaving for school on Sunday. On St. Patrick’s Day, her brother’s band was playing at an Irish pub in Arlington, so we went out to see him play. It was a lot of fun: the decorations were so flamboyant and everyone was wearing green. We ended up seeing a lot of Franciscan alumni that work in the area, which was such a treat. I saw a few household sisters and other really close friends that graduated a couple years ago that I had no idea would be there. We all caught up and couldn’t get over how lucky we all were (on St. Patrick’s Day) to all be together so randomly.

Now, I’m back at school and ready to tackle these last seven weeks. I’ve got a whole lot to look forward to: household retreat next weekend, the nursing dedication, Easter, and finals. So stay tuned and I’ll be writing again soon.

Welcome to my blog! I’m Leann Roggensack and I’m a nursing major here at Franciscan University. I’m a member of the household Theotokos, play intramural basketball, and took part in SENT Ministries. For those of you who don’t know about it, SENT is an organization on campus that forms teams of students to organize retreats for local high school students. I absolutely loved it.

God Bless!