Beach fun...and not so fun

January 21-22
This past weekend we went to the beach of León and stayed and REALLY nice house right on the beach! Because it was only overnight we could afford to stay there. It was our video professor Jeff DeKock along with the other 2 students, Dan and Dilaun. Two of our Nicaraguan friends Jason and Edimes (or Homer) joined us as well as Kate, a friend of Dilaun. We left Managua at about 11 AM and headed off to the beach. We went in Jason’s pickup truck so there were 4 of us in the back and 3 in the truck cab. It took about an hour and forty minutes to get there but the house and the view of the ocean were beautiful! I got my own room thankfully and Jeff went and got us 3 surf boards. Now I’ve never surfed before and didn’t really know what I was doing so I had Jason tell me the basics (he knows English because he was born in the USA and served in the Marines). So off I went to try my hand…or rather feet at surfing. I paddled out to deeper water through the oncoming waves and battled my way out to where I would catch my waves, dudes! So the first couple times were just me riding the board in on my stomach to get the feeling of it and then I tried to stand up. My first several attempts all failed but THEN I TOTALLY…almost stood up, but I didn’t and fell off. After a few more tries and was pretty tired and just rode a wave in on my stomach. I only tried to surf on Saturday because I got pretty badly burnt on my legs on the way to the beach. Me…not thinking AT ALL, put sunscreen on my face, neck, arms and ears but not my legs which in the back of the truck were totally exposed. Now I will say that I didn’t think I would need the sunscreen because I don’t usually get burnt on my legs but then they aren’t usually horizontal either. They are now very red and quite painful and it will take probably 5-7 days before they stop hurting. However I did have fun taking many pictures as well as filming for my Video Poem project due this upcoming Thursday. We played and card game of golf and then went out to eat for dinner…which took FOREVER to be made. After supper, several people had said I needed to go out to the beach and look at the stars and how there was no way to describe it to me. So after supper, Dilaun, Kate and I went out to the beach with Jeff’s camera to try to get some pictures of Orion using the long exposure setting on his camera. It was BEAUTIFUL out there and we could see the Big Dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia, the 7 sisters the Milky Way as well as several shooting stars. I only saw one shooting star and only after getting excited about what ended up being a bat reflecting the light behind us. We went to bed at about 11 and got up at 9:30 for a breakfast of scrambled eggs. For some reason I was still pretty tired and since I didn’t want to go in the sun because of my legs, I took about an hour nap after breakfast. It was hard to get comfortable during the night and my nap because of my sunburn but managed to doze off eventually. We also had a pool there at the house which was nice and cool and felt great to my legs. After a great lunch made by Homer and a few games of Rummy with Dan, I packed up my stuff and went back to Managua at 2 with Dilaun and Kate since there was no point in me staying later if I wasn’t going to do anything there in the sun. The ride home was…not the best, but a good experience nonetheless. The bus from the beach into León wasn’t bad as I had a whole seat to myself (I need one with my long legs). The bust to Managua was not nearly as good. I had to stand up for the whole hour and a half trip except for the last 10 minutes or so. Please pray for my sunburn…it’s really painful and hurts to walk a little bit too. Now I have to finish some reading for homework and head to bed to start another school week. God help me.