My First Blog as a Pro Surfer

Unfortunately there is no wireless internet where I am, so this blog will be picture-less. And I only have 30 minutes of free time on the computer so I will be rushing through my 5 day Surf Camp from last week.
Yes, that's right. I attempted to surf. I was with a group of 17 people, and we had 7 lessons over 5 days. We stayed at 2 different locations--both of them pretty secluded, no one else ever on the beaches or in the water while we surfed.
The trip I signed up for was the "Learn to Surf," but I probably should have looked for one called, "Remedial Surfing for People Who Should Never Attempt to Surf."
In all seriousness, surfing seems pretty hard. There are times when I would catch a wave, stand up, ride it in--you know, look like I knew what I was doing. But I'd estimate that was only 12% of the time. The other 88% could be referred to as "watching Ross nosedive into sand over & over," or "Ross stands on his board for 1.2 seconds before he loses his balance and wipes out." It's actually a lot like golf in that sense. In both sports anybody who has a basic understanding of what to do can feel like a pro once in a while (hitting a great golf shot or riding a wave in with no problems), but then the majority of the time you struggle, and it's extremely frustrating that you can't be that pro all the time. The only difference is that I can't throw a surf board quite as far as I can throw my golf clubs.
Surfing takes quite the physical toll on the body as well. By the start of Day 3 (session 4), I was spent. My muscles didn't want me to be surfing anymore, and my knees & feet were slowly getting more & more cut up by the board. Also for some reason I was the only person in our group who could not zip up his own wet suit, not even once.
The non-surfing parts of the week felt slightly summer campish, but in a good way. The staff cooked all our meals, we had decent cabins to stay in, and every night was filled with drinking by the camp fires. At our first location, we were forced to play a game each night to see what team had to do the dishes. On night 2 we played Jenga, and guess who caused the pieces to topple over... The reactions from my teammates were a mix of, "Jesus, America, why the hell would you put that piece on the side and not the middle," and "Good luck doing those dishes on your own, America." (I was the only American in our group so people didn't really bother to learn my name...just called me America)
I finally broke the streak of not buying a bottle of liquor on my entire trip, ad the results were apparently quite funny. Let me just say that on Thursday morning I woke up, rolled over in my bed, and to my astonishment there was an empty bottle of Jim Beam lying next to me. In my 10+ years of drinking, I have NEVER, EVER brought any type of alcohol to bed with me, and I refuse to believe it happened on Wednesday night. I know someone planted that bottle as a joke, but the crew I spent most of my time with wouldn't budge on owning up to it. Instead they would only tell me about some of the amazing things I was doing the night before, most of which I can't remember such as: trying to lick the Finnish guy's ear, standing up on a table with my shirt over my head, telling everyone I was going to bed only to return 10 minutes later unable to find our cabin...the usual shenanigans. At least I wasn't the guy sleeping on the hammock all night because he knew he'd be throwing up. That was my new Finnish friend, Aapo.

I spent the last 2 nights in Byron Bay and absolutely loved the place, wish I could have stayed longer, but I had advanced book 3 days on Fraser Island. I can't wait to report back on these next 3 days because it looks incredible: in a 4WD vehicle with 9 strangers, riding up & down the sand dunes & beaches of the island, camping for 2 nights, swimming in different lakes & pools, and watching out for Dingoes. You could read more about it here: http://www.fraserisland4wd.com.au/

Finally, with only 18 days left on my trip I can confidently say that German girls are my favorite. I'm not saying they are specifically the hottest, just the best girls from an "overall package" standpoint.
That's all I'm gonna say about that.