We hung out on the boat in the AM - reading. It's a good thing we all enjoy reading, or we'd be a very unhappy group of people.
I made banana bread from the last of the bananas that the Horiuchi's (from Bouj) gave us. I used one of Paul's Mom's recipes from the McGrew Family Cookbook. I did have to be a little creative since I lacked the yogurt that the recipe called for (I made do with rice milk).
Around 3, Paul went in to round up passengers for our afternoon sail. I am sure the adults enjoyed the actual sail, & the kids did as well - for about 15 minutes, then they were bored. They kept asking if they could go swim & use the kayaks or the paddle board. I told them they'd have to wait till we were at anchor. A few of the kids did help put up the sails & steer the boat, which put smiles on their faces & kept them engaged (for as long as they were doing their task).
The little one, Teline, kept walking along the outer edge of the boat, and was constantly getting reprimanded by the older kids, the women, and me. Haha. Poor girl. She is such a cutie, though!
After we got back, some of the adults and kids headed back to shore. The rest stayed behind to play in the water - jumping off the boat or paddling around in one of the kayaks or on the board. We took a lot of pictures. Plus, it was fun to watch the kids gain more confidence & be willing to jump further & further from the ladder.
TC taught Malina how to dive. She was so brave. She started off kneeling, then pretty soon, she was standing and jumping to dive.
One of the adult women, Rosetina, asked if she could try the stand up paddleboard. She almost wiped out jumping down to get on it (she jumped too far onto the rear of it), but she hung in there, crawled to the front, & didn't actually ever fall off. She started paddling from a seated position, but she got brave enough to stand up later.
One little guy, Gabriel, who'd come out after our sail via a ride on a kayak that had gone all the way into shore, was very patient. You could see that he wanted to jump, but that he didn't trust himself to be able to swim. Pretty soon, I got him to jump off the back of the boat, right near the ladder. Later, TC & him held hands as they jumped off the front of the boat, then Gabriel scrambled to get on TC's back and they swam to the ladder together. It was an adorable scene.
Finally, as the sun was setting (around 7 PM), we decided that the kids had to go. Poor Gabriel was shivering, & I was getting cold too. Paul got out some peanut butter crackers and cheese crackers to give them as treats to take away. He said that on the ride back, he asked Jason (who speaks the most English) what was his favorite part of the day - he said, "The cookies."
It was a great day. It fills us with joy to watch others have so much fun and to share in that fun too!
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