The Beach

Last Sunday I was supposed to call my sister.....I ditched her for a last minute invite to the beach. I am a TERRIBLE sister. I am glad she puts up with me because it is wonderful having confrontations with her. We may have a short tiff, but we will both walk away, and return with nothing more to say about it, so we will just get on with our day as if it never happened. Anyway, props to you girl for being a GREAT BIG SIS!

So....the BEACH! How was it you ask? Well, let's first have a mini geography lesson of Victoria, Australia. It's a bay. There ya go. That sums it up pretty well. Almost all of the coast of Victoria is a bay. I have never swam much in bay beaches. And I became the stupid American that asked, "why aren't there any waves?"

The water was a lovely temperature of just-cold-enough while the sun remained constantly hot. It was perfect. And of course, even with the protection of sunscreen, I got burnt that day. It's pretty inevitable. I don't think I have gone a day without at least looking at my upper chest and seeing red. Sunscreen must be applied every 15 minutes after being in the water just to work effectively in Australia. I have to say, that day, a little burn was worth the day away from campus. I hope to head to the city again tomorrow (Saturday 14th) for the Food festival. We'll see.

Most of the day went by without me even realizing it. However, we did get to the beach later than expected because there weren't enough people with cars to carpool the entire group, so Tali, David and I stayed behind. That was okay with me, in earnest, since Tali had knocked on my door at 11:15am while I was still sleeping off staying up late the night before. I ended up only having 15 minutes to get ready, so a little wait didn't hurt. It gave Tali some time to share with me the pride and joy that is Rhonda and the BIG AD! If you are in America, you know there are those advertisements that everyone, I mean EVERY-SINGLE-PERSON-YOU-TALK-TO-ON-THE-STREET knows about! Well, it's not that different over here. And Tali was exposing me to the commercial culture of Australia. And most of the....were for beer.

Later that week we had another fruitful conversation about how Australia cops with drought, flooding and bush fires.

Back to what happened when we got to the beach. This was only the third time I had carpooled in someone's car here, and it wouldn't be the last. It was Alex's car with Dexter riding shot gun. They had actually gotten lost coming back for us, because what was supposed be a 30min wait for them turned into an hour. We jammed to some oldies tunes on the radio. Supposedly there aren't many radio station options that are good.

When we arrived, we dropped off our stuff at the beach. Soon after we headed to the town's main strip to get some grub. I had fish and chips. Someone observed that wasn't the best choice to be having for lunch at the beach when everything else was already so salty. I had no regrets. Those were really good fish and chips. Before we got lunch, though, Tali gave me a true Australian christening. She doused me with lots and lots of sea water. My hair felt like I had grew dreadlocks overnight. I got back at her later.

I got in the water after a few bits of food. Almost my entire time in the water we played a game of monkey in the middle with a Frisbee. I realize now, Tali was never monkey in the middle. It was such a rush to not think about anything but the present.