Team Northrup: The Pop Up - a surfing term

I stubbed my ring toe. I heard a crack. It is already purple. I limp now.

If you look closely, you can see our oasis between the trees.
Across the gully.

The sun was hot before 9 am. We were already out by the pool. We are all getting along well, but I am not sure we are the best versions of ourselves. I miss my wife and my life back home. Quinn bounces between 18 and 8 - I have no idea who I will get any second of the day. Aubrey is 14 and has a constant scowl on her face and emits annoyance - today she came out to the pool and said, in the most grouchy voice you can imagine, all of these words, "Did anyone get my towel? oh thank you." Even the oh thank you was grouchy. If she wasn't a likable, mysterious person, she would be very unlikable right now.

And then their is Shelby. She is basically Timmy Lupus from Bad News Bears. Everything she touches breaks or spills. Example. Today at breakfast she asked me to help open the new milk carton with one of those plastic pull plugs. I did. She poured herself some Cherrios and as I was coming around to the kitchen to get my own bowl, I grabbed the box.

"Shelby, when you put cereal away you have to scrunch up the bag inside. Do you know why?"
"So bugs don't get in it?"
"Yes. And do you know why we even have to do it, every time, at home in Edina?"
"So it doesn't get stale?"
"Yes. I want you to always do that 100% of the time from now until the day you die. Okay."
"Okay."

She kind of swallowed her okay, like she was ashamed. Just then, I noticed milk on the counter, exactly where I had seen ants the night before (we are sleeping in a bungalow near the equator). "Shelby, you can't leave milk out on the counter like this." With her serious face on, and desperately wanting to get out of the spotlight, she grabbed a dish towel - not a sponge, rag, or wet paper towel, mind you, but a perfectly clean towel that we needed to dry the dishes with (we are not staying at a Four Seasons here) and in one of the most spastic movements in the history of the Special Olympics, knocked my bowl of cheerios all over the floor. Ilse's words echoed in my head "don't leave little crumbs out cause the bugs will come out - we live in a jungle, remember." Shelby was not cleaning the milk (with a clean dish towel) in anger. No, she spilled my cheerios trying to do right but failing miserably. I didn't get mad, I just helped her pick them up. She went outside and ate her cherrios, after offering them to me, and cried.

We sat in the sun for about 3 hours before lunch. Then had PB&Js. And then we went surfing.

I watched a tutorial online as I thought it would be fun to do this activity together, as opposed to farming this off to a trained professional. Plus I am running out of cash and I can't imagine a surf instructor accepting Visa. Anyway, they have boards you can use for free here. Only a few have fins on them, of course.

We were out there for about 2.5 hours. Aubrey was awesome at it. Quinn, Shelby and I - not do much. In fact two of us cried. I have since watched two more YouTube videos and believe that tomorrow will go much better. It's all about the pop up technique.

Not much since then. Sun. Showers. Dinner at the Green Papaya (they only took cash, which I am running out of. Did I mention that?). On the way to dinner we saw 8 Howler Monkeys in the trees. They are super loud at 4:30am.

BTW. This morning was low tide. Notice all the rocks that are covered by the ocean. Don't surf there! High tide was in the afternoon. The ocean crests the beach and completely fills up our crocodile runoff gully.