Surf Camp

Hello!

As I'm sure you all know by reading my previous blog entry, I went to surf camp this past weekend. It was probably one of the best weekends I've ever had. I'll start from the very beginning.

On Friday, March 13 at approximately 5:15 pm, a group of us walked the 2 blocks down to where the Mojo Surf bus was waiting to pick us up. We arrive at our pick up spot, load the bus, and wait until all 50 participants are on board. As soon as everyone was set and ready to go, we departed for our six hour bus ride to Crescent Head.

I sadly did not get to sit next to Gabi. We were, by no surprise, one of the last people to arrive at the pick up spot and almost all the seats were taken. I ended up sitting next to a really nice guy named Mamu. He is from Saudi Arabia, is studying in Sydney for the next 5 years, and was really excited to meet an American, which I thought was so cute...he was seriously the most excited person when I told him I was American. He says he wants to visit American when he's done studying. I asked him where in America he wanted to go, and he said Ohio. I'm not really sure why. He also shared his cookies, chips, and pop with me, showed me pictures of his entire family on his iPhone, and we talked almost the entire way there.

This was not a typical "field trip" bus ride. The bus driver, whose name was Morgan, had a mohawk, and was one of the surf instructors, plugged his iPod into the radio and cranked the volume. Everyone was singing along to the songs, talking loudly, and dancing in their seats. Suddenly, the music stopped and Morgan's voice came over the speakers and told us that we were going to play the "name game," where everyone on the bus has to come up to the front, take the microphone, introduce themselves, and say what they like and dislike about life in general. It took two hours for everyone to have their turn at making their speech on the moving bus, and once the name game was complete, we stopped for dinner at McDonald's - so classy. I'm sure the tiny McDonald's loved having a coach bus full of 50 young, eager, surfers bombarding their "restaurant."

After everyone was full and happy from the delicious, healthy meal, we reloaded the bus and jammed out to some more great, loud music. After two more hours of conversing with neighbors, singing, dancing, and playing card games, we make another stop. This time we stop at a liquor store in a very, very small town. When the bus pulled up, people from inside the bar (which was located right next to the liquor store) ran out to greet everyone that came off the bus. It was as if they had never seen any sort of an outside world before, it was quite bizarre. Everyone ran to the bus with their arms waving above their heads, the guys flocked to the girls asking for hugs and kisses, and we just had to push our way through this crowd of craziness. All 50 of us purchased what we wanted, pushed our way back through the crowd of obsessed fans (what they were fans of...we will never know), and got back on the bus to drive the remaining 2 hours until we reached our final destination. Apparently there isn't a law against open bottles in a motorized vehicles in Australia (well obviously there is for the driver; they are really strict on drunk driving, as they should be) because a lot of the people on the bus started playing drinking games and got pretty drunk. What the purpose of getting drunk on a bus where you can't really move around or do anything? I'm not really sure. It seemed like a waste to me, so I just watched and made fun of people.

When we arrived to our campsite at 12:30 am, we all headed down to the beach. It was the most beautiful beach I've ever seen (seriously...in a very uncheesey sort of way). There wasn't a single building around, there were grassy hills surrounding the ocean, large boulders in one area for the waves to crash upon, and the reflection of the moon shining on the water. We all just hung out on the beach until 3 in the morning; it was very peaceful.

At 7:30 am, after getting approximately 4 hours of sleep, the surfers came into the bunk rooms to wake us all up. After eating our delicious breakfast, we all lined up to get our wet suits. Each wet suit had a name on it and that is how you were to remember which one was yours. The majority of the names were rather inappropriate but funny. Mine was far to inappropriate for me to post on the Internet for the whole world to see, so if you really want to know what it was, just ask me and I'll let you know.

After putting on our wet suits and getting all ready to go, we all walked down to the beach for our first surf lesson in the sand. We all made a circle around our surf instructor with our surf boards while he taught us the basic skills of surfing - paddling, standing up, how to keep your balance, etc. After about 20 minutes, the instructor told us it was time to try it in the water. My initial reaction was "oh no! I'm so not ready for the water yet!" But everyone else was already heading toward the ocean, so I nervously followed. It turns out I really wasn't all that bad. I'm not a professional surfer by any means, obviously. But if you give me a giant foam board and a cute surf instructor who will push me, I can stand up. There were a few times I was able to paddle, stand, and surf a wave all by myself, but usually when I tried I would fall off or I would just decide I didn't feel like standing so I would just sit on my board and ride the wave. I did always get a little nervous every time a wave would approach, but I just chose not to really look at it and I would just stand when I heard my instructor yell at me to stand up. I basically just took the lazy route to learning how to surf. When I was exhausted and tired of paddling, I would just walk to my surf instructor, he'd tell me to get on my board, and then he would push me when the wave came and all I would have to do was stand. It was pretty great.

The food at the surf camp was amazing; easily the best food I've had here so far. It was pretty surprising that a bunch of surfer guys could cook such great food for 50 people. At night, everyone would sit around the large campfire, hang out, and play some games (usually drinking games, since that's what Australian surfers are into, which usually got a little out of hand and resulted in at least one of the surf instructors to be running around naked. It was highly entertaining).

Overall, it was a great weekend at a beautiful private beach and I really want to go back. Surfing was a lot of fun and I was really excited that I got to learn. I don't really know if I'll pick it up or not. I'm a little terrified to try at a beach around Sydney since they're all pretty busy and I will most likely run into someone and kill them, but we'll see.

Until next time,
Whit