We spent almost entire morning at the beach behind her house. First, she showed me how to make sand balls. You have to make a hole in the sand near the water's edge and wait for the water to come fill it. You fill the (already-water-filled) hole with more sand and make the gloppy mess into a sphere. Then, you bury the sphere in dry sand, pat it down, and unearth it, solid as a rock.
Here's our handiwork.
Then, we made a stove out of sticks and pieces of coral.
L cooked the sand balls on the stove, and we made dining tables out of sand and used sticks as forks so we could have them for lunch. They were pork and beef-flavored.
Then, to go along with our dining rooms, we each made a bathroom and a bedroom. There were some leaves just shooting up right next to our workspace, so we made that the garden, complete with a gate and a fence.
Then we had another fancy meal. L made up some names for all the posh and tasty dishes we were eating.
We went back to the beach in the afternoon and went swimming in the water. We had a contest to see who could throw stones the farthest. Then we scoured the sand looking for interesting and odd shells and pieces of coral to take home. L insisted that I keep most of the good ones. I live right here, I can come back anytime, she said.
The mosquitoes were just starting to come out when we left. L started chanting, over and over, "Faut pas que je me gratte. Faut pas que je me gratte." I musn't scratch. I musn't scratch.
It turned into a song, which we sung together all the way home.
I spend all day with children here but I haven't played like one in a long time. It's nice to know my inner child is still in there somewhere, buried beneath all the adult-ish crap I've been stressing out over for the past few years.
