Abbey Pirie, a junior at the University of Tennessee, experienced first hand how plans can change while abroad and a go with the flow attitude always makes the day better!
The stunning scenery and captivating culture of Greece can make it seem like a fairy tale, untouched by the small setbacks of “real” life. All of the behind the scenes planning makes each day a well thought out adventure that is executed according to plan. Today we were supposed to be going on another of these excursions: sailing for a few hours on a catamaran with stops to swim in the ocean, eat dinner, and watch the sunset. Full of anticipation, we walked down the road to wait for our bus. As one after another passed us by we discovered that our bus driver had managed to find the only other group of 21 American girls on Santorini and taken them instead. We could have received the news with discontented sighs, but instead we simply asked, “What should we do instead?” We realized this set back wasn’t an end to the story, it was merely a plot twist we had to deal with. After all, if Cinderella found a way to the ball when her stepmother refused to take her and Belle still managed to save the Beast when the townspeople came for him, why couldn’t we still continue to live our fairy tale? All 21 of us ended up laying out at the beach together reading, chatting, eating, and exploring that resulted in a photo shoot on some rocks in the water. It became overcast and more windy, so we decided to head in for the day thankful that we weren’t actually on the catamaran with the darkening weather. The unexpected turn of events made our day even better than we’d imagined and once again proved the merits of the saying “everything happens for a reason.”
