Paul, Don, Victor, Me, Jack, Ashley, Hao, Shevaun and Ryan
At first I thought I'd be more rejected than the first slice of bread because I didn't really know anyone there, except maybe my family friend Victor, but everyone was extremely nice, and talented too! Most of them were really smart; one from North Sydney Girls HS, another from Baulkham Hills HS, one's a pharmacist, one with an ATAR score of 98.something... dammit, what is self esteem? There was this one time when I was having a small talk with Victor's mum. She asked me what grade I was up to in piano, and after I told her that I was in Grade 8, she seemed really surprised and impressed. I felt pretty good, but then nek minnut, turns out her other son Ryan is musical genius who can play music by ear and is doing his AMus at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
I've never met anyone so passionate about music before though. He's not even in Year 8 at school and he's already writing Romantic compositions of his own. He somewhat motivated me yet at the same time made me feel bad considering that I don't even remember the name of the pieces I play.
Life felt good there though! The food tasted great there, and pretty fancy considering that we were basically camping; one of the families who went with us owned a restaurant. All I needed to do was play card games, go to the beach, eat food, read and nap.
It was raining on the day that I arrived, but we went to the beach anyway. It was actually warmer in the sea than in the rain. There was just water in every direction and we had the whole beach to ourselves too. I just felt like I was in the middle of a big big cloud.
On the second day we went to a different beach. There weren't as many waves, so I assumed that it'll be boring, but it was actually more fun. There were rocks beneath and you could sometimes see some fish and jellyfish. I don't normally swim far off the coast, but because there weren't any large waves and I was surrounded mostly by really strong swimmers, I got to swim out to areas where my feet couldn't even touch the ground. We had a bit of a splash here and there, but the water fight soon quickly turned into a seaweed fight, and the next thing I know that happened was me being picked up at least 25 times that day and being thrashed into the water. They even thrashed me into this giant mess of seaweed and it felt disgusting! For gods sake, I couldn't even lie down on the beach for 30 secs without being dragged by Victor by the leg and having someone else stick seaweed down my boardies, HAHA :(
We played a pretty foul trick on this 6 year old named Tintin though. You wouldn't exactly call him a bright kid, so we buried a dead pigeon and told him to dig in that area because there was a 'treasure' underneath it to see if he would actually believe us. It was disgusting! Even when you could see the bird, he continued to dig in that area. Either he didn't care or he actually didn't realise that it was a bird. We had to tell him to stop at least three times before he stopped digging.
When we weren't at the beach, we would play card games. Everyone who lost in a game of Thirteen had to drink a cup of milk. I had to stop after losing two rounds. I didn't want to need to go to the toilet in the middle of the night, especially since you had to go on a 5 minute trek down the bush just to reach the toilets. Most of the time we played Mafia though. You really get to figure out how people react in that game. Some people's faces are like an opened book! I can't really lie too well, but I can keep a straight face.
The only problem i have with playing Mafia is that when you close your eyes, it's very easy for people to shove popcorn down your shirt.
Anyways, the highlight of my trip would've been walking on the sand dunes. To get there, we had to walk through this bush and we saw a family of dingoes, which was pretty scary because Tintin kept screaming 'DINGOOOO!' and waving his umbrella around. At one point we had to walk through these arches of trees. It was very maze-like and reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.
I felt like I was walking in a National Geographic issue. I didn't get to take a good picture though, because my camera ran out of batteries (talk about good timing.) It felt amazing just running down the foredune and onto the beach. Everything was so pictureque. The sand was so smooth that I literally felt guilty for walking on it and ruining it with my footsteps! It was at dusk, and the beach looked really delicate and misty in the distance. It made me feel a mix of wonder, fear and peace which sounds pretty crazy.The beach very much reminded me of 'La cathedrale engloutie.' I can see why environmentalists want to keep beaches untouched.
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