What have I been watching?: Master of None
Every time I finally get around to writing a post, I realize how pathetically infrequent my posts are. Last time I posted, I was still in school. Fast forward to now: I've been done with my junior year of college for not quite a month, moved out of student housing and into the lower level of a house 15 minutes away from the University, am working full time, and recently returned from a trip to South Carolina.
I finished last semester strong and maintained my 4.0. I was super pleased. Next semester I'm enrolled in only 4 courses instead of my usual 5. I'm in a good place credit-wise so perhaps I'll try to work a bit more next semester and get some money saved. I've moved to a different location for the summer. Instead of returning home and living with my parents, I decided I'd rather keep working in this area and find a place here. I'm renting part of the lower level of a lovely home kind of out in the country. It's a beautiful drive through farmland and nice country homes. I've got a super spacious room, en suite bathroom, and walk in closet. I'm definitely spoiled beyond repair if I ever have to return to student housing. So far, living here pretty much by myself, I pretty much just occupy myself with working, occasional errands, cooking, and for fun I of course go and see movies. I really don't mind working full time. With few exceptions, I really like the people I work with, and that is key to staying positive at your job.
Some weeks ago, my mom proposed that we take a somewhat spontaneous trip to a destination of our choosing. I've had surf on the brain since Fiji, so I suggested the East Coast. My mother, sister, and I ended up spending about a week at Folly Beach, South Carolina. We drove (roughly 20 hours each way) there and stayed at the Tides Folly Beach. It's the only hotel in Folly Beach that's right on the water. The little city of Folly Beach was super cool. A little downtown of about 4 square blocks consisted of lots of beach shops, cool restaurants, cafes, bars, frozen yogurt and coffee shops, surf shops, and rental places. Live music was happening somewhere almost every night, and overall the area had a lively atmosphere. I would definitely return.
Folly Beach and Fishing Pier
The forecast had predicted rain for every day of our trip, but we didn't end up getting rain at the beach at all. My mom and sister spent a lot of time sunbathing and relaxing by the pool or on the beach. My main motivation was to surf. I rented a soft top (foam board) from one of the surf shops for three days. It was definitely the most ratchet, worn board on the beach. The first day there, I was really discouraged and frustrated in my attempt to surf. The waves were biggest that day. There were a lot of surfers out in that section to the right of the pier, doing fancy shit and killin' it. I went farther down the beach because I wasn't about to try to be a part of that experienced cluster, I'd hurt someone or get hurt myself. In my first attempts, I couldn't even paddle out over the waves to get out to a calmer point to chill. I returned to the shore, quite defeated, because I'd been imagining surfing again for the last year and a half and now it seemed I couldn't do it. I'd been able to surf in Fiji but I'd never had to paddle out through such strong waves. I called it a day and decided I'd try again tomorrow. That next morning, I believe, I made another attempt. I eventually realized it was far more efficient to walk the board out as far as possible, jumping against the waves, than trying to paddle through them. Then once I couldn't reach the bottom anymore, I'd hop on and paddle the rest of the way out. This method proved effective and from that point on I was finally able to actually try to surf. But just because I conquered that first challenge didn't mean it all went great after that. I fell, a LOT. Sometimes I wouldn't have enough speed by the time the wave was right behind me, or my board wasn't facing quite the right direction, or I wasn't positioned quite right on the board, and I'd get flipped before I even had a chance to pop up. And half the time when I did attempt to stand, my arms were so tired from paddling like hell to catch the wave that I could barely get myself up. My best surf day was the last day with the board. I went out mid-morning and stayed out for around 3 hours maybe. There were only a couple surfers out. The morning was very sunny and by the afternoon, the sky in the distance was darkening and lightning flashed behind the hotel. No rain made it to the beach, though. On that day, I felt more fluid in my movements. My paddling out was better and more effective, and I felt strong enough to paddle like hell to catch waves. I had several great ups where I actually rode waves nearly to shore. I was really happy with that day of surf. Unfortunately, and I don't even know how it happened, on one of my last attempts, I somehow kind of hurt myself in my fall. I think maybe I got twisted around at an odd position or something, because I don't recall my board hitting me or anything, but I thought I hurt a rib. Now I think it's perhaps a strained abdominal muscle which has been giving me pain in my side/chest/armpit/back area for nearly a week. I had to call it a day after that happened because I knew pretty much immediately that something was wrong. So that was an unfortunate occurrence, and is still giving me trouble, but it happened at an ideal time (if it had to happen at all) because I had to return the board that day and we were leaving the following morning. So at least I'd gotten my money's worth of surfing in.
Surfing kicked my ass. I was sore the entire trip from it. My neck felt very strained from craning around looking at imminent swells, my back muscles were sore (but that felt like a good sore, like the equivalent of a super productive workout of lateral pull downs). My scalp (at the part of my hair) burned, the tops of my thighs got a bit burned from sitting on the board waiting for waves. I got a few small spots of board rash, but that gave me the excuse to buy a super pretty Rip Curl long sleeve rash guard. I got pretty bruised and scraped up after the three days of surf, but I regret no part of it. I feel like I progressed a bit within the few days that I was out there and I'm glad I had the chance to surf at all! Also at one point there were several dolphins about 20 feet away from where I was surfing. I saw dark gray fins and was like no fucking way, am I seeing a shark right now? But upon further inspection, I was delighted to realize they were dolphins. As far as I can recall, I'd never seen dolphins until that point.
Besides surfing, I also enjoyed eating at various local cafes and restaurants (I recommend the Black Magic Cafe), strolling through the downtown area, looking through shops (especially the surf shops), and I watched a lot of Survivor on my phone in the down time haha. One night at dusk we walked up and down the fishing pier and I got some astonishingly good photos (usually my camera doesn't do great in low light). The ocean looked most beautiful at this time. We also visited a massive old oak tree which is called the Angel Oak. On our last full day, we took a boat tour which lasted about two hours, during which we saw probably a dozen dolphins and various birds. Our guide was great and explained the history of the area, facts about the different species, and other interesting stuff about Folly Beach and the ocean.
At the Angel Oak tree
There's definitely more I could talk about from the last month of my life but I'm gonna eat some spaghetti now. Btw, all these photos are my property :)
Ciao
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