Wake Boarding (or at least trying)

Today Matt and I had the good fortune of being invited on a junk boat trip. It was excellent: lots of food, good weather and swimming. It was a day of personal triumph for me because I forced myself to jump off the top of the boat. Matt says the top of the boat is not very high, but my knees tell me that it is. You see, whenever I am standing and looking over the edge of something and my knees start shaking uncontrollably, I know that it is "high". But, since I didn't jump off the top of the boat on our last junk boat trip, this time I decided I had to do it. So, I climbed over the railing and then clung to it for dear life. The problem is, whenever you climb over a railing and look like you are going to jump but are too afraid to do it, people start cheering for you and stuff, and then you really just have to do it. So, I jumped off when my mind wasn't noticing. (That sounds strange, but yes, it is possible to distract yourself so that you can do something you don 't want to.) Of course, once I actually jumped, my mind noticed again and thought, "OH MY GOD! WHY DID YOU DO THAT!?" and I screamed a quite a scream.

After lunch the opportunity arose for Matt and I to go wake boarding. It was sort of the same situation as last time. We were on the last trip out on the little speed boat, it was getting dark and everyone on the big boat was watching us. Around that time is when people were sort of getting a little restless and so they turned their attention to things outside of the big boat, mainly Matt and I trying to wake board on the small boat. Matt went first and he did very well. After a few times he got it and was wake boarding around the little alcove we were docked in. Then another guy went, and then I was last. Last was not a good thing to be because then everybody is waiting for you to finish so they can get home and it is almost dark. Now, I had never gone wake boarding before and I was proud because I could get out of the water so that I was standing. The only problem was, once I was up I could not stay up. I tried a few times and then one of the expat guys took a kayak out and paddled next to me, explaining what to do. Our boat driver was trying to pantomime how to wakeboard and even the guy in the sailboat that was next to us was yelling instructions. It was pretty funny. I decided that I need to go again when there is more light and less people staring at me! I didn't have it as bad as Matt did on our last junk boat trip. That was his first time wake boarding and it was sort of the same situation: he was in the last round of wake boarders, it was almost dark, and everyone was waiting for him. It was worse though because he was drunk, and all of the other people on that boat were young single guys. Somehow that makes it worse. Guys are much more competitive with that stuff. Plus, we didn't know those people at all, we had just met them in a bar a few nights earlier.

I love going out on the junk boat trips. You take the boats out and dock them in a some little alcove in one of the islands that surround Hong Kong Island and play around for the day. The water is warm and there is a boat attendant guy to get the lunch ready while everyone is swimming. The alcove we were in today was particularly nice, with very steep hills and huge boulders all around and a pretty, clean, empty beach in the middle.