A repeat of yesterday, with some slight changes. After breakfast we once again got suited up and headed to the beach.

All day yesterday Millie asked to go on a kayak and this morning Nick offered to take her. I blissfully sat on the beach and almost finished my book.

There is a bookshelf here of books that vacationers have left behind. I browsed it thinking I could trade out something for my next read, but 100% of them are German. It was the same in our last hotel too. It made me wonder: Are Germans prolific vacation readers? Do they have a culture of leaving books behind? This resort has quite a bit of diversity of tourists, so I can’t figure it out.

Anyway, they adventured out to a nearby island and came back with special coral and shells for me. Millie ran around catching tiny crabs on the beach, and then making friends with anyone who wanted to hold one.

She played soccer for a while and told us “one thing to know about me is that I’m really good at soccer”. I have no idea where she got the wording nor the confidence but it made me laugh.

We swam in the pool, went back to the beach, and so on. I took her back to the hotel to get out of the sun for about an hour at 2PM. When we went back to meet Nick on the beach, we convinced her to go on a family kayak ride so that we could watch the sun set over the water. She reluctantly agreed.

The water was like glass and very satisfying to paddle along. It felt more like a lake than an ocean.

We paddled over to the island they had gone to before. I spent the whole time watching a buff Russian guy try to open an old coconut. He kept bashing it against a rock and then trying to pry it open with his bare hands. He was trying soooo hard. When he finally cracked it he uncontrollably let out a roar. Testosterone is a hell of a drug.

We got back in and started kayaking around the island. Nick wanted to find a nice spot to get out and watch the sunset. I was nervous about getting out on the rocky area because the waves were stronger and there were sharp mussels everywhere. Millie just wanted to go back to the hotel. We still had 20 minutes until sunset. So even though these photos look idyllic, in the background there was some light anxiety, heavy whining, and a short lecture on doing things you don’t want to do for the sake of other people.

We sat bobbing at sea while waiting for the sun to get closed to the horizon. We tried entertaining Millie but she was miserable. Eventually I started playing the Moana soundtrack on my phone which kind of worked.

Eventually the sun turned bright red and we watched it inch down past the horizon. Nick clapped and Millie said “finally!! We can go back now!”

It was breathtaking and worth the familial tension. We turned around and headed back to the hotel. We showered — is there anything better than a shower at the end of a beach day — and got ready for dinner.

We walked along the beach to the nicer resort that is next to ours, and went to their restaurant. It had the exact same menu but everything was double the price, which has to some sort of lesson in economics.

We all finished every crumb of our dinner. Millie spent most of the time running around and finding babies to take care of.

She went up to the parents of one of these babies and asked “could you bring her back here tomorrow at the same time?” We keep laughing and being amazed at how much she speaks to strangers lately. She will talk to anyone. Nick and I spent dinner discussing how much we’ve failed at homeschooling, but that if she can confidently make friends anywhere, that will serve her well. Her kindergarten teacher can do the rest.