Sunday 6/12/2016

A journal entry:

"After eating breakfast, a bunch of us practiced drumming together, which was really fun.  Then, I went off to my favorite spot (a cliff overlooking the most vast part of the ocean) to practice guitar for a little.  At 12:00 noon, we left for Winnifred Beach!  It was an extremely bumpy 20 minute ride to the beach.

The beach was beautiful and had a great, very relaxed and chill atmosphere.  It's a public beach, so a lot of the locals were out enjoying their Sunday afternoon.  We hopped in the blue, calm, warm water right away and enjoy the music coming from speakers nearby and the wonderful view straight ahead.

When it was time for lunch, we went to a small hut to have our meal.  I had fish (it came as a full fish, complete with all the bones and the eye.  There was also festival bread, bread fruit (which tasted just like bread), grilled plantains, and other vegetables and rice.  It was delicious and I tried my best to finish the entire fish and not waste anything (it was a little difficult because of all the tiny bones).

Afterwards, we haggled a bit with the vendors lining the beach (I got a cup made of bamboo) and walked down the road a bit, taking everything in.  We got mango and carrot juice, which was very good, and then Sam, Laura, and I went in the water a little more.  Then, Aly and I decided to go snorkeling.  We rented snorkel gear from a guy in another het, then made our way over to the opposite side of the beach where we made some friends.  They were kids who go to school in Portland, so we said we might see them there!  They were touching our hair and swimming through our legs, hugging us, and touching us all over.  A lot of people here, especially kids, have never seen white people (or rarely see them), so we're always a spectacle wherever we go.

The kids decided to come snorkeling with us to 'keep us safe.'  We swam together for a little and then we saw a ray.  They got a little bit scared and said that we should definitely go back to shore, so we did.  We left our friends, but decided to keep snorkeling on the other side of the beach.

There weren't a whole lot of fish, but it was neat to see everything under the water.  We ended up taking really cool-looking pictures of each other underwater.  When it was time to go, we returned our snorkel gear and got back in the van to go home, where we relaxed until dinner, the drumming circle, and our music education training session.  We practiced teaching each other parts of tomorrow's lesson to get ready for our work in the schools this week."