Location: Cocos Keeling
We had a fantastic wake-up this morning, courtesy of Zoe. It’s always thrilling being woken up at 6:30 a.m. to the fire alarm and having to frantically grab your type 1 PFD and Gumby suits. Those on the sunrise scuba dive unfortunately did not get to experience this. Since you haven’t heard from us due to our lack of wifi, today we had our highly anticipated leadership challenge course. If you don’t know, this is basically us being thrown into an episode of Survivor. I had my bandana and everything. After we were split into our teams (mine was me, Zoe, Audrey, Ruby, Ayden, and Nico), the first challenge was the baby turtle race. One person at a time had to crawl down the beach through everyone else’s legs and somehow collect water (*holding water in mouths prohibited) to crawl back then and squeeze/dump into the container in front of their team. Ruby was on my team, and thank goodness for that. She carried us to victory on this one by wearing her dive boots, and we all took turns filling them with water and carrying her boots back in our mouths.
What a success. Smash gave us the clue to our next mission, and Audrey found just what we needed. We then inspected the map of the banana-shaped island we were on and took off running to find Allie waiting by the rip current side of the island with our next task. Audrey also won this one for us by knowing what a rip current flag looked like before Allie even had it halfway out of the bag. In order for a 2-minute time deduction at the end, we needed to create the funniest informational video about plants, wildlife, and rip currents. My team was up to the task. Unfortunately, I can’t attach videos, but it’s definitely something special. Ruby and I drown Ayden in the rip current, then save him, obviously. Nico is in a tree with the coconuts, and I impulsively decide to not only put a hermit crab in my mouth but also a lizard. My parents will not be surprised by this. We then had to run to the opposite side of the island to Jake, where we had to balance on a tree with our eyes closed and put ourselves in birthday order, and then our count-off number order, which, lucky for us, was exactly the same order. So swag. We then had to find Smash hiding from us on the beach so we could accomplish our final test. We needed to do the bonding activity where you all stand on a towel and then have to flip it over without anyone stepping off. To finish it off, we had a timed sprint to the dock, and every group member had to demonstrate their best cannonball into the crystal blue waters of coco keeling.
After the challenging course craziness, we all had the rest of the day to ourselves. A couple of the boys gathered some coconuts to crack open, and we all ate them (yum). Then we all split up; some snorkeled, some played footy on the beach, but most went off and had a nice beach day by themselves and journaled, read, explored, napped, or, in Finn’s case, ran all the way around the island three times. Everyone was sad to leave our beautiful banana-shaped piece of heaven when we had to come back to Vela for dinner, but ocean showers and doing much-needed deck laundry always left people feeling better. We all miss talking to friends and family, and I know I’m super nervous about this long passage coming up, but I’m excited I get to do it with the people I’m with here. Everyone is amazing in their own way, and not a single person has failed to make me smile every day we’ve been here, staff and students.
To my parents: I miss you guys more than anything, but I’m doing great and am so excited every day for what’s to come. I love you and can’t wait to tell you guys everything. Fam debrief in Mauritius for sure.
To L (Mom and Dad, show her this because I know she doesn’t read these): I’ll be on passage when it comes, so happy 18th!! Finally legal! I’m so proud of you and can’t wait to keep watching you experience life and hopefully buy your own clothes so you don’t keep taking mine. I love youHappy 18th birthday to my not so little anymore sister.
Stay tuned! 😉