Some people spent their spring break somewhere exotic, somewhere far from campus. Somewhere they felt like they were having an adventure. I am from Delaware, so most of the school year, I am only about 20 minutes from home at any point. I was so excited to plan a day trip to Philadelphia so I could get away and have a day where I could forget Delaware.

I was fortunate enough that my best friend, Peter, was able to stay with my uncles in Wilmington. Pete is from Miami, so I was convinced that I needed to find something to occupy his time. It’s just Delaware to me. I didn’t know what to take him to do because there, frankly, isn’t always a whole lot you can do.

Our trip to Philly was exciting and memorable and I laughed a lot and was so excited to do a bit of schoolwork at the Philadelphia Art Museum that, despite living only about 45 minutes away, I had never been to. We played a lot of games at Dave and Buster’s. Pete lost his phone, but he did not want that to spoil our evening. Our friend Kevin drove and cackled his way through Philly rush hour traffic and we got home in one piece. I loved that day.

But the rest seemed even more awesome.

We spent a majority of break walking around the city of Wilmington or taking a short ride over to The Riverfront. I showed Pete every part of the parks surrounding my uncles and the small but mighty Brandywine Zoo, where, despite us trying, still managed to happen on the coldest day of the week while it was snowing with the otters mating instead of swimming in their pool. It was a memorable experience.

I logged 10 miles on my Fitbit that day, something that certainly warrants some mentioning because it did not feel like we were doing a whole lot at all.

We were walking up and down paths in the cold and I was toting my younger brother around (and despite him saying it was FINE we walked around, I felt like he would have rather been home playing his video games).

I showed Pete somewhere I had been loads of times, but also managed to walk around a certain way that we ended up going down a trail of the DuPont Educational Facility I had never been to, a “Mario Kart” like track of wooden planks that everyone found super exciting.

We watched an entire season of RuPaul’s Drag Race on my uncle’s TV because he has cable I keep forgetting we have on campus (or maybe we just don’t watch because we’re always studying and running around campus). We ate Chinese food and lazed about and ate a pan of brownies (almost entirely) out of the pan. We had a sleepover and he didn’t care that I wanted to watch The Golden Girls at 1 am.

We sat on my uncle’s porch and listened to him giving voice lessons inside, enjoying the sunshine and the calm and the normalcy.

It might not have been the most fascinating break, but it helped me de-stress a little. It made me remember that despite all the crazy, it is okay to sit back and do something normal.

My normal was Pete’s adventure. I might plan on going to Miami next spring break, but he seemed pretty content in sleepy little Delaware.