Women's Basketball Blog from Puerto Rico - Update No. 3
The Swarthmore women's basketball team is in Puerto Rico over winter break, playing a pair of games and enjoying the tropical weather. During the trip, the Garnet seniors will be keeping a blog, detailing every aspect of their journey.
Hi Everyone!
We're back at Swarthmore, and it's definitely a far cry from San Juan. However, it is nice to be back at school and back to working towards our goals for the season. In fact, we had our first practice on our home court on Thursday, and it felt great to be playing again here at school. Our last two days in Puerto Rico we're extremely eventful, filled with basketball, kayaking, and traveling home.
On Tuesday, we lost to University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon. They were a quick, scrappy team with good outsider shooters that got the best of us. Although it was a tough lost, we really are using this game as a jumping point to winning games for the rest of the season. Pictures of the athletic facility that we played in at the University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon are included.
After the game on Tuesday, we went on an amazing kayaking tour of a Bioluminescent Lagoon in Fajardo. Fajardo was about an hour bus drive away from our hotel, but it was definitely worth the ride. There are multiple different kayak tours that happen from this location, so there are many street vendors, outdoor restaurants, and people just having fun listening to music congregated in this area. A picture of this awesome scene is included. We went off in the lagoon after sunset, in kayaks of two. The lagoon is bioluminescent, meaning that the water glows when it is disturbed (by a hand or a kayak paddle for example). The glowing is caused by dinoflagellates, which are microorganisms that emit the bluish light. When we stuck our hands in the lagoon, it looked like crystals or diamonds shining out of the pitch-black water. Unfortunately, we do not have pictures of this because the tour would not allow cameras or other valuables on the kayaks for risk of them being damaged or lost.
On Wednesday, we soaked up the last few rays of San Juan sunshine in the morning by the pool. Then, by 1 pm we we're headed for the airport for our travels home. We again flew from San Juan to Orlando and then from Orlando to Philadelphia, and we were back on campus late on Wednesday night. All in all, going to San Juan, Puerto Rico was truly an amazing experience. It brought us closer as a team while simultaneously exposing us to another place and its culture. It was definitely the highlight of our senior year, and we are so fortunate and thankful for the opportunity to have gone.
