I Didn't Get Eaten by a Shark

I love sports that involve a board, and surfing is no exception. I had so much fun today- so far it's the highlight of the trip!

We took a very long (1 hour) drive to Rip Curl School of Surf for Mom and I to take a beginner class. After gearing up, we lugged the heavy boards down to the beach. The surf wasn't particulary rough to start, but it didn't matter because we sat on the beach and talked about theory quite a bit. We started out just getting used to pushing up on the board and coming back to the shore. It's really not that hard and the instructors were really helpful. Eventually, though, it was time to learn how to stand up, which isn't quite as easy. Mom stood up like once before she decided she wasn't strong enough to keep going. Despite going in early, she still gets +100 Awesome Mom Points for trying.

However, I managed to stand up properly on my second attempt and rode the little wave all the way back to shore. Then, of course, I had to lug the stupid thing back into the water, which is more tiring than anything else. I'm pretty certain I stood up more than usual because one of the instructors ended up dragging my out pretty far to catch some slightly bigger waves. Dancer balance is apparently very useful when trying to surf.

After surfing we went for lunch, but I think I was overheated because I felt pretty sick. I don't know if it's the food or something but I've been kind of off all week. Oh, well.

This evening we had Christmas dinner at the hotel, which was nice. Dad and I had a pretty traditional meal of turkey, ham, potatoes and corn, while Mom had ribs. Everything was very good. There was live traditional music being played during dinner. Then, there was dancing.

The first dance was a fire dance, which was interesting. Essentially, two men twirled sticks and did martial-art like movements as the sticks burned. They also were drinking some sort of fuel and spraying it out of their mouths, creating a burst of flame into the air. Very cool, but we have no idea what fuel they were using. Sure hope it wasn't something really nasty.
The second dance we saw was more Legong dancing, but by young-ish girls. They were probably 11-12 years old and very, very good. Their first dance was quite traditional, but the second one used different music and movements that clearly had Western influence. I was very impressed with those girls. It looked pretty difficult. It was really nice to see Legong dancing how it is traditionally done (by young girls).

So now, off to bed. Happy Christmas, everyone!