Surf's Up!

As I mentioned last time, the main reason Anna and I went to Kuta was so I could take surfing lessons.  I’ve always wanted to try surfing but never really had the chance, so I had to take this opportunity to do it – and what better place than in Bali?  After checking out a few of the surf schools in Kuta, I decided on Odysseys Surf School, which was by far the cheapest and had great reviews.  I initially thought I’d just do one lesson, maybe one more if the first one went well – I ended up surfing three days in a row and wishing I could stay in Kuta longer to do more.

I signed up for a group class, but it ended up being more like private lessons, which was great.  On the first day, my group had six students – two couples, a Dutch guy, and me – and three Balinese instructors.  We began the lesson on the beach, learning the “theory” – mainly proper stance and how to go from lying on the board to standing up.  Then we headed for the waves.

I remember the beginning of my first day of snowboarding was pretty rough, as most people’s are, and I was expecting surfing to be about the same.  It was.  The first thirty minutes or so consisted almost exclusively of me getting slammed by waves, inhaling tons of saltwater, generally having no idea what was going on, and frankly kind of wanting to get out.  Fortunately, one of the instructors took me under his wing, and things started to get better.  That instructor was also working with the only other person doing the class alone – who then got hit in the face by his surfboard and had to get out.  So I ended up getting individual help, which I definitely needed.  I slowly started to get the idea of how things were supposed to work, and it got a lot more fun.  Then, very unexpectedly, I finally stood up on the board, at which point I decided surfing was completely awesome.  The feeling of actually standing up – and of not immediately falling off – absolutely shocked me.  By the end of class, I was having a blast and didn’t want to get out.

My arms and shoulders were pretty sore the next day, but I knew I wanted to try surfing again, and the second day ended up being even better.  I got to where I could stand up pretty consistently and generally had a really great time.

Not only was surfing itself great, though, but so were the people at the surf school.  They could actually tell the white people apart, and remembered me as “Jennifer,” not just as some muzungu.  On the second day, I couldn’t believe how many of the staff, even those I had barely talked to, greeted me by name when I walked in.  As I’ve complained about many times before, Rwandans called me “muzungu” every single day, even those who knew me and knew my name.  Having people, even people I barely knew, call me by name and treat me like an individual person was extraordinarily refreshing.

At the end of the second day, when I still wanted to keep going and Anna didn’t want to leave the beach anyway, we decided to stay an extra night in Kuta.  I surfed again the following day and, while the learning curve started to flatten out a bit of course, I made some more progress and had a great time.

In the end, I was sad to not know when I’ll be able to surf again, and also to leave the people at the surf school – people who treated me like an old friend and not like a zoo animal.  They reminded me that not every place is like Rwanda, which re-confirmed that I do still really love traveling, meeting new people, and learning about other cultures - something I had begun to doubt somewhat while living in Rwanda.