Paddle, paddle, paddle your kayak

"Paddle, paddle, paddle your kayak,
Gently down the pacific,
Merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream."

The excursion club is great - for $35 for the year I get to go on some very low cost trips, student volunteers lead the trips and they own a lot of equipment so costs are exceptionally low. I came across the club and then found out that Oz was going as well so we got lost together on the way to the meeting (its a hard life...). We both joined the club and then signed up to a variety of their activities, although different ones. Today I went on my first excursion club trip (alone), I went sea kayaking for free. There were five of us there to go kayaking an Irish girl, one hot muscular American man and a geeky (but far nicer than the muscular one) and our instructor - an American girl. I was in a double kayak with the Irish girl and was very grateful to not be with muscular American guy who seemed like a complete idiot.

We headed south towards an oil rig in the hope of seeing some of the seals who like sitting on some big floats. When we got nearby we noticed that there was a oil tanker at the rig which made it unlikely that we would see the seals. The Irish girl and me we were very disappointed to hear this, but as we neared the floats we noticed some big fat seals. When we got closer the bull seals jumped into ocean and started yelling at us so we backed away fairly quickly, but I was so pleased to see some at long last.

On the way back we saw some massive kelp forests, there were huge plants that stretched down as far as the eye could see and were a huge varieties of colours (apparently that's why there are no great white sharks - they are very wary of getting stuck there, I am highly grateful of the kelp). We also saw a bird suddenly dive and emerge a bit later with fish. On good days it is possible to see the seabed with starfish and occasionally a dolphin.

It was so relaxing just floating along looking at the beautiful turquoise sea. It got me thinking about just how lucky I was to be here. A year ago I was just starting Uni and would have laughed if anyone would have suggested I'd be in California a year later, and yet I'm here now. I am very lucky.

This evening my room mate finally invited people around and she did it in style, about 15 people came around and got very drunk very quickly. All the American girls got particularly drink and their voices quickly become high pitched and grating. They were all going to a soccer match and I was invited, but the idea of spending lots of time with high pitched Americans was too much for me. Apparently they are coming here soon. In fact they are here now, so I better go.