Sand and Students

On Thursday morning in the driving rain, 70+ students and teachers headed out for The Beach Trip. Packed all our stuff and just headed out. We left at 8AM and arrived at the beach, our own beach at about 10:30 AM. What a beach, what an adventure in so many ways. If you have never camped at a beach as I have never, one is not prepared for the insidious nature of sand. BUT I digress a bit, the Senior boys had gone ahead to prepare the land. Cutting out of the jungle places to sleep, go to the bathroom and cook. Obviously not all at the same place. When we arrived, we set up our camp which means, putting up your mosquito net under the tarp with your bed stuff. After all that is accomplished, you adventure out to see whats up. Huge tarp over the cooking area and a hole in the ground with a nice orange tarp to do your business ( This place became crucial when later on we all developed cramps from some bad juju and needed to use the facility on more then one occasion). On seeing the facility, I was temped not to eat or drink for the remainder of the week so as not to have to use the facility.

The weather was still over cast but hey...its warm no matter what the weather is doing so snorkeling and swimming, conversation and walking was the activity at hand. To be honest, I was ready to go home at the end of the day but..that is because I am a big weenie when it comes to dis-comfort. Sand...do you understand how irritating sand is when you have to eat it, sleep with it, walk in it, sit in it, dress with it..I am sure you get the picture. The pictures of beautiful sand beaches in the tropics don't tell the whole story. Again I digress...

Our school director was our speaker and he did a wonderful job bringing us back to the basics of our faith. The first night...have I told you about the sand. Morning finally came after a night of rain, I don't think anything I owned was dry. This day was my designated snorkeling day and it was magnificent. It is just amazing!!! What I discovered about myself other then my propensity for weenieness is that I get motion sickness when I am in the water. Not while I am above the water or even in car on a bouncing car on winding roads... I get seasick when I am in the sea. SO ... I can be out there for about 30 minutes before I get sick, I recoup for about and hour then go out again. I did several cycles of this and then spent the rest of the time having wonderful conversation with students and staff. When there is no schedule conversations can wander at will and relationships can be built. This was the best of the time there...building relationships.

Something was eaten that day that made everyone sick. This was not the fun part of the trip at all. Having the runs is bad enough when you are home and have a bathroom in the next room , it is downright wrong to be on a beach with a hole in the ground. Needless to say, even with stories of snakes in the area and the jungle as your walls, you do what you have to do.

And it was the second night. Since the sun sets at 5:30...the stars are out early and since there is no light, they are out of this world !! The moon was full so the tides were high...I didn't even mention that the boat trip out shook my whole idea of sailing around the world. The waves were about 4-6 feet and with a outrigger we were bouncing over the waves. I screamed, it lets out tension, the students laughed at me but hey, I am a weenie. Our driver kept looking at me to see if I would stop. Again, screaming lets out tension and it is not good to keep it all bottled up. Back to the sleeping part, the sounds of the surf is quite soothing, its the hard ground, sand and damp clothes that makes sleeping a bit more difficult. I was never so glad to hear the cacophony of birds in the morning. We packed up in the rain, and left in the sun. I had been so good about sunscreen all three days until the last trip home. It would have been fine if our driver had not run out of gas in the middle of the cove. I have never enjoyed a shower, clean DRY clothes, sheets and my wonderful family.

But for news here... we have a kitty cat, Yoda. Scott has taken it upon himself to learn how to make yogurt and the Mijo and Nick are maybe a bit thankful they could not come with me these past three days.