Let’s enjoying swimming!

Do you like the title?  It’s Engrish at its finest! 

So in the last blog, I left off with Friday.  On Saturday, I skyped Lucy.  I’m alone over here, and she was alone for the weekend since David was in Nashville with the rest of the boys for the bachelor party.  We had a great girl chat!    After that, I was very productive and tidied up several things around the house.  I’m not even kidding…..without Ian around the house, I’m a cleaning machine!

That night I went over to Justine’s for a little Vampire Diaries marathon.  She started watching the series a few weeks ago, and I told her that we should have a marathon one night.  Krista and Melissa came over to join us.  We had pizza, fried Oreos, and chips and salsa……’twas a good night all around!

On Sunday, we planned to go swimming at the pretty bridge place.  With rainy season wrapping up, it’s beginning to be sunny and perfect weather for swimming.  The rivers are still a little high, but it’s safe now for swimming.  I talked to my sister, Amanda, that morning for a good long while, and we both said how excited we are for me to be coming home!    After our conversation, I did a few more things around the house to prep up for leaving.  I hacked down the last bit of grass around the side of the house, cut down some flowery vine thing that was growing on my hot water heater (while avoiding wasps on the flowers! ), sprayed for bugs, put boric acid around the perimeter of my house to prevent bugs, planted my tomatoes, and pulled the few weeds in my flowers.  I was so productive!

Krista, Shara, and Justine met at my house around 1:30, I drove to the train station, and we walked from there.  They were really amazed by the beauty of the place.  I love the pretty bridge place for that reason!  The water has this beautiful blue-green-clear color, and the surrounding bamboo and trees shade the area to make it a hidden haven (pictures below).

 

There were a few boys hanging around, but we ran them off.  Unfortunately, once our shirts and shorts came off, the boys came back.    We didn’t care, though.  We played, laughed, and had the best time at the river!  Out of the four of us, Krista is the best swimmer, so we made her go in the water first to tell us how swift the current was and if the water was deep.  The river is very narrow—maybe twenty feet wide—but was surprisingly deep.  There’s a rope swing tied onto the upper branches, and if you look hard enough in the upper right picture, you can see Krista preparing to swing from it.  She’s on the right side in the middle of the picture.  Although the current is very swift there and we were a bit afraid of being swept farther downstream, the river creates an eddy at the jump point.  Instead of floating downstream, the eddy actually pushes you back up.  Perfect!

 

We also walked upstream a bit and them hopped in and floated down.  That was a lot of fun!!  We didn’t want to float too far downstream and not be able to get back, so we didn’t go past the eddy.  The water was pretty chilly, but it didn’t take too long to get used to the temperature.  It was actually quite pleasant.    After a while I finally summoned the courage to jump from the rope swing.  Even though it doesn’t look that high, I assure you that once you’re standing on that rock, you most certainly begin to have second thoughts.    I had to give myself a 3,2,1 countdown, and I did it!  It was actually really cool, but hitting the water kind of stunned me because I wasn’t expecting to go down so far.  Then once we were in the river, we had to cross it, which consisted of swimming up the eddy current and then fighting your way across the current, inevitably getting pulled downstream with it. 

Justine decided to explore a little.  She floated farther downstream beyond the bridge and discovered that it was relatively shallow.  She said that there was a waterfall (which I really wanted to explore, but I didn’t want to get stuck downstream), and poor Justine had to scale the steep side of a hill to get out of the river and back to us. 

After we had had our fill of swimming, we went to Tokomaru, the delicious restaurant in town, for dinner.  Since we’d been swimming all day, most of us were a bit sleepy.  I had Justine drop me off at Rachel’s on her way home so that I could pick up Rachel’s bike.  She’s letting me borrow it when Mommy comes so that we’ll have a spare bike for Mommy to pedal around.  Even though I was sleepy while at the restaurant, after I pedaled the bike home, my blood was pumping, and I was on the prowl for something to do……so I started packing!  I got out my big suitcase and filled it with as much stuff as I could.  Ian and I are trying to take home as much stuff as possible so that we won’t have to worry about it shipping it home next year.  I packed up all of the souvenirs we’ve bought in the past year, shoes we rarely wear, a heavy winter sweater, and whatever else I could get to fit.  I honestly feel like I could downsize my luggage because I don’t quite have the suitcase full.    I still have to pack the things that I use everyday, like contact solution and toothpaste.  I’m so excited to be coming home!!!!    

This seems like a good stopping place, so I think I’ll do just that: stop.  I’ll probably post one more blog before coming home.  Hurray!