Spontaneity can be a great, wonderful thing. There I was late last Sunday at the University of Georgia, dutifully reading my journalism ethics textbook for my class when the Norwegian girl down the hall busted into my room, literally bouncing off the walls.

Breathlessly, Solveig said, “Do you want to go to the Bahamas?”

I set down my book, glanced over at my friend Angela from Wyoming, and with a smile, I said something to the effect of “Ummmm yeah … did you just say the Bahamas?”

That day, a few people from my dorm happened to be paging through the Atlanta Journal-Constitution when they stumbled upon a local airline advertisement for special prices they were offering. One of those was for a round-trip ticket to Grand Bahama Island, but the catch was that it ended in two days.

The decision had to be made then and there and of course my answer was yes. A big fat $191.10 plane ticket was added to recent expenses on my credit card.

We set the date for fall break, which is at the end of October.

God bless the University of Georgia, the only college I know of that has such a football-crazy administration that they would not schedule classes a Thursday and Friday so students will have plenty of time to make it to and from the big Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville, Fla.

There’s only one small, minute problem about the trip that must be addressed.

You see, in the fall, there are funny little things called hurricanes that like to wreak havoc in the southeast part of the United States and Caribbean Sea.

We’re heading to the Bahamas at the very end of the rainy season, so you could say that we’re hoping that the rain gods will have tired of their silly games by the time we’re boarding that plane in Atlanta.

Despite that, the past week we’ve all been celebrating, never forgetting that we will be heading to a place (hopefully) similar to paradise when most college students are breaking out their sweaters.

I was so caught up in the excitement and thrill of actually having the chance to leave the country for the first time in my life that my roommate, who seems to have been a really, really good influence on me lately, was able to convince me that I shouldn’t stay in on a Thursday night reading up on the God-awful Homer’s The Odyssey and not go to bed early for my 8 a.m. class the next day.

She said I should be getting my groove on at a local bar featuring a salsa band and even better, it was Ladies Night.

Hmmmm, another tough decision.

The great thing about the guys that I live with is that they are so chivalrous. They’re always opening doors for you, polite and making sacrifices just so they can make you feel comfortable. They don’t even make fun of you when your salsa dancing is sketchy, at its best, because usually their dancing isn’t all up to par anyway.

Instead, we just improvised. The two guys that I danced with, one a Georgia-native and another from Saudi Arabia, twirled me around, with an occasional dip, while ignoring all the “professionals” around us.

But for the future, I’m working on countering my uncoordination with actual dance steps. I’m currently taking private salsa dancing lessons from Sandy, the Hawaiian girl next door, so next week I can try and dance with the Puerto Rican, Brazilian and Colombian girls and guys that make it look so easy.

After my late night at the bar, I managed to make it to all three of my classes Friday, despite only getting four hours of sleep.

It was a fact my mom was quite happy about, after talking to her on the phone the next day. Although, once I told her that I had gone out on the town, my slightly over-bearing mother only had one question for me.

“You didn’t go back to that gay bar, did you Amber?”

No Mom, no need to worry.

Amber Billings is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Sioux City.