Trying to catch the wave

One of my aim in Indonesia was to try surfing. I did not wanted to go to a very touristic place like Bali, I decided to try it in Aceh. I went to Lhoknga beach. This place was completely wide up by tsunami. Before 26 December 2004 there were 7000 people in the village. The next day only 600 were alive. In the neighboring village, which was situated on the sea cost in front of the mountain from 10000 inhabitants - no one survived the tsunami.
Now those places thanks to the international help are completely rebuild. The are rows of new and the same houses. Local people are smiling and greeting every single foreigner that they meet. Not to many surfers are coming here nowadays, but every single is warmly welcome by the local people.


I spent three days of paddling, observing the sea, observing other surfers and trying to catch the wave. Quite a few times I ended up in the white water being tumbled by the powerful wave. For few moments I did not know where is bottom and where is water surface, but I always luckily managed to find the surface. A few times I also managed to time my paddling properly and I managed to catch the wave. Then I felt a tremendous push of the water and my board got extremely stable. I also managed to stand up on the board for milliseconds. The feeling was great. Was like ridding the ocean!

Surfing is an really difficult sport to learn. One can not learn it in three days. All other surfers around had many years of experience. It is very crucial to choose proper spot for learning. The place that I have chosen was OK but was not perfect. It was a reef break and I was told that for beginnig a sand break is much better. Everyone around was complain that the wave is very small so thanks to this it was not too big for me. I hope to be able to try surfing at least once more during this trip.

In Lhoknga I stayed at the home-stay managed by beloved Eka a secondary biology teacher. She is passionate about biology and she had a possibility to do PhD in Australia from marine biology, but one year after Tsunami she decided to get married and set up family. Now she has two small children and she teaches biology in Banda Ache. In two weeks she was supposed to give a three hour lecture about biotechnology to her students, so I gave her few hints about this. She also told me a bit about her life philosophy were despite the fact she is Muslim she believe in Buddhist Karma. She also told me that in her job the most important is to get student interest in the subject as well as to learn them to think. Her motto that she wants to pass to her pupils is: "Think global, act local". Wow. I think that she is great teacherat she did no and maybe it is better tht started PhD and concentrated on teaching.