Dafeng Beach

Every year, my school offers a day at the end of the year, called Discovery Day, where students can choose from a variety of activities. This year, my friends and I chose sailing.

Sailing

Before Discovery Day, I’d only ever been sailing once before, and the guide did most of the work. One of my friends goes sailing in Hong Kong regularly and really enjoys it, so I decided to sign up.

Unfortunately, on the day, there was no wind, and we couldn’t really sail very well. Someone attached our sailboat to a motorboat for a little while, but other than that, we didn’t move at all. Instead, my friends and I jumped out of the boat and attempted to push it through the water. We were unsuccessful, so we climbed back into the boat and intentionally capsized. Then, we swam around for a while before going back to shore. The water was nice, not too warm and not too cold. There was some kind of little animal that kept stinging us, but we couldn’t see it. When we got back on the boat, we all had lots of tiny cuts on our arms and legs.

Paddle-boarding

Next, we did another activity that I’ve done only once before: paddle-boarding. We used big boards that could fit two people at a time. Another girl and I took our board into the water and the whole group played basketball in the water while sitting or standing on paddle-boards. We weren’t very good at it.

Then, we all stood up and tried to make the other person fall off. I wasn’t very good at that, either.

Finally, we lined the boards up in the water and took turns running across. I was okay at that.

Kayaking

The last activity of the day was kayaking. Again, these were two to a kayak. After some practice, we played tag in the water. The instructors chased us in their kayaks. My friend and I were pretty fast.

Lunch

Before we boarded the buses home, we ate lunch at the sailing club. I had chicken legs stuffed with rice (not great), watermelon (yum!), green beans with beef (yum!), clams with cheese (really good), and rice. After lunch, we went to a small McDonald’s truck outside for ice cream and looked out at the mountains of HK and the beautiful blue water. A perfect end to a perfect day!