I found out tonight that we are a “beta test” month long family surf camp experience. I am guessing that might explain the “I don’t know” answers for the last month or so. We still “don’t know,” because our experience will be a work in progress for all involved.

We settled in at midnight last night, but were up and going this morning. We kind of muddled our way through the morning, coming off of a very scheduled, minute to minute mentality. The kids, from the moment they opened their eyes, were asking, “what next, where are we going, what are we eating, where is the ocean, where are the monkeys, can we jump in the pool?” We responded, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” The one thing we did know is that we had “water safety at the pool” scheduled at 9:30 AM. We had breakfast next to the pool, (yay, we know where to go next), came back, unloaded our 9!!!!! suitcases, (left one at the airport), and headed back to the pool to meet Frank, our go-to guy for the next month.

He taught us all how to fall off  surfboards and protect our heads, in the pool. We headed up to the Spanish Institute, (our new home base), signed some papers, got our rash guards and surf boards and walked to the beach. Ah, first view of the ocean. Amazing. Yesterday was a long day, this morning was full of unknowns, but as we walked down the beach, I kept looking back to see the kids’ smiles getting bigger and bigger.

We walked about five minutes down the beach, set our surf boards down, did some yoga with Valerie, and got our first lesson with Kurt. Each sentence here deserves a whole explanation of its own, – our breakfast, the Spanish school, our six instructors, our sun salutations on the beach, but that is for another day.

We all went to into the ocean, Ben with Omar, the pro surfer, Abby with Frank, Jacob with Lucas, Matt and I with Kurt, Taylor helping all of us, and Hugh watching and making sure it was all smooth. We all stood up on our boards and spent two hours surfing, (or at least, trying our hardest).

While we walked back along the beach, after our first morning of surfing, our first morning in Costa Rica, Ben grabbed my hand, looked up at me and said, “mom, I think I’m going to like it here.”