Surfin' in Siargao by Michael





January 25, 2020 at 8:44:17 AM GMT+8

Surfin’ It, Shreddin’ It!

I was so nervous! I was about to go surfing for the first time in my life! My instructor walked around a corner holding the longboard I would be using. He was young, and had a bit of dyed blonde hair on top of his curls. He set the board down on the beach and showed me how to stand up on it from laying down. Once I did it two or three times, we started out on the water.


“Okay this one!” he said and turned my board around (with me on it) and faced me towards the beach. Suddenly he gave me a shove and I felt myself speed up as the wave pushed me forward. “Up! Up!” I heard him call out. I pushed myself up with my hands and stepped forward with my left foot and then with my right. I was surfing! I heard my instructor whooping and clapping far behind me. I laughed and exited the wave by sitting down on my board. I glanced over and saw Dad plummet into the water and his board fly out of the wave behind him. HA!  After about ten more waves we paddled back to shore and got ready to go. Dad asked if I wanted to go again and I was like, “HECK YEAH!”.  So we signed up to go again the next day.



To my surprise, when we returned the following day, my instructor came with a real surfboard!
It was about half as wide and long, and the kind that professionals use. He said I was so good last time that he thought we should use a real surfboard! WHOA! So we went out and found a wave. “Up! Up!” he called. I pushed up with my hands, moved my left foot forward, wobbled a little, then-- SPLASH! Argh- the surfboard was WAY harder to use than the longboard! After a few tries, I got the hang of it and found out that it was way more maneuverable than the longboard.

I liked it so much, I asked Dad if I could do another hour, and he said yes. But this time I had a different instructor. I went out again, and found very quickly that the instructor I had was not good. He would say, “Paddle, paddle!” And while I paddled, he would hold my board until the wave came. I only got onto, like, five waves because of that technique. I also was tired from the first hour of surfing, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. But in the end, I wanted to come again the next day (if I had the good instructor). I might actually have found my new hobby!



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