Moving on from your classmates and school is a pretty big deal. A graduation should be celebrated to the fullest extent and what better way to do that than with a senior trip to San Andres Island.

On the 14th of February, 82 students will be gathering at Jose Maria Cordoba Airport to follow the yearly tradition in which they go to San Andres, without any involvement from the school.

This tradition has been held at TCS in which they go 3-5 days and share their final experiences before graduating, and moving on to an important stage of their life. They’ll get one last trip to commemorate their time at school, and it will guarantee them memories for the rest of their lives.

“First of all I would like to go because it is a tradition and all my friends are going; I think that it is extremely important and cool to have one last school experience with my classmate before graduating and moving on,” said Emilio Peláez, TCS High School Senior.

As the date comes closer expectations start becoming higher; students try to do all missing work. San Andres is a current trend, everyone is talking about it. Tradition has been held with San Andres trip, and most of them feel the need of going because they want to be with their friends and not miss a thing.

“We are very excited to go to San Andres, people are talking about in the hallways and we can’t get the idea out of our head,” said Laura Santamaría, High School Senior and Trip Contributor.

No reasoning is given when asking students why do they want to go San Andres. Whether it is because their friends are going or because they don’t want to miss a thing that happens during the trip. The planning of the trip was organized by parents and students at the same time, they had help from past seniors making the trip easier to plan.

“We planned the trip for 5 days, and it follows a different schedule for each day that was done with the travel agency. Most of the time it is kind of an excursion type of trip, and at night we have some casual parties,” said Santamaría.

Everyone has heard a lot of stuff about San Andres, but no one actually knows what happens or how the trip is planned. Some people are not aware that the school has no involvement at all and some students(with their parents) are involved. Parents are very comprehensive while giving permissions to the trip because they are fully aware of what they do, and they believe it is necessary to be with their friends.

“A basic day at San Andres consists in, drinking all day, meeting in San Andres during the day, partying at night and waking up late,” said Pelaez.

It seems to be the perfect trip for Class of 2018, everyone seems to be more focused on what will they be doing in San Andres instead of working in class. Students mentality in San Andres is different because as being their last trip and final gathering, most of them party like if there was no tomorrow.

“San Andres for us is a tradition that we would like to keep, since a long time the senior year goes to San Andres to have fun and have their final gathering,” said Pelaez.

When discussing the senior year trip, Roger Arbabi tried to convince them to go to a Safari in Africa instead of San Andres, but Seniors immediately reacted with a strong rejection. Not only is this the trip of their lifetimes, but probably the last time that they will be with their friends before they go to study somewhere else, or go on separate paths.

Santamaría’s finished her interview with a message to upcoming seniors “San Andres is irreplaceable, you HAVE to go; it is a once in a lifetime experience.”