Location: Palau
Today was filled with balls.
For breakfast, in honor of our late 40A friend Joshua, William made us all tea and crumpets. It was strange being short four people, but all of that would soon change. Shortly after, we had Oceanography and Marine Biology.
Then, William blessed us with the first round of balls: meatballs. At one point during the crafting process, I went down into the salon to find it filling with smoke. Normally, the smoke detector above the stove would be covered with a latex glove to keep it from going off during the cooking process. However, the smoke pervaded the surrounding detectors, and I could tell something bad was about to happen. Suddenly, one of the detectors turned red, signaling it was about to go off. In a desperate attempt to stop this, Kelsey, Beck, William, and I started waving our hands and blowing at the device. Although we didn’t expect anything to happen, the detector actually turned back to green! Situation averted.
The hounds were then released to shore, where some of us went shopping, and others went to visit our other 40A friend Maverick, who is currently staying at a nice resort. I went to the resort in search of a jacuzzi. I was very successful. However, after our small group plopped ourselves in and struck a conversation with a developer for the US Navy who currently lives in Palau, an attendant came to us informing that we had to pay for our time at the pool. Oops.
I then went with Spencer to get some snacks and say our official goodbyes to Emily and Maverick, who had formed a little family with the two of us over our 21-day passage.
Everybody soon meandered back to Argo, where our new 40B friends Kylie, Reagan, and Anabelle were waiting to meet us. We all introduced ourselves and took our ocean showers together (while Sidney scraped incessantly at the bottoms of her feet with a grater) before joining in the cockpit for A LOT more balls.
William really outdid himself with this one. He made chicken balls, rice balls, Brussel sprout balls, tofu balls, and, for dessert, Tomer’s world-famous THUNDERBALL. My squeeze question was, “If you had to give up one kind of ball from your life, what would you choose?” Most answers included things like whiffle balls, soccer balls, and basketballs. Kelsey said, wrecking balls. Gabe said balls, like the dancing kind. Spencer said the Sun, although I don’t think the absence of that ball would do us very much good.
And now we come to this moment, after our celebration of balls, that I sit here writing this blog while everybody else does their cleanup job. Tomorrow is an exciting day because not only do we have nearly the entire day free, but most of us decided to book our own dives. Lots to look forward to! And for the parents of Kylie, Reagan, and Anabelle, your children are safe and happy in their new home.
That’s it from me! See you again in 20 days!
P.S. EAT MORE BALLS