Lots of good news! Tuesday: We had an amazing beginning this week.

A surf clinic by the only Dutch pro surfer, Yannick de Jager! He gave the clinic to Prema, Wayan (2 boys following the work and learning program of soul surf project Bali and Anjas (a boy from the talent program). The clinic started in the surf shop, where the boys could ask some questions to Yannick. Then everyone went to the beach where Yannick first showed Prema some moves, and then he focused on Wayan and Anjas. Yannick was very enthusiastic with the boys and we would like to thank him for the amazing day the boys had! As you might have heard by now, Pika swam 1 short lap completely on her own! This week she improved that record by swimming multiple laps without any help of floating material. She proved to us and mostly to herself that she is capable of anything if she just sets her mind to it. Just as every other Friday, the street children went surfing. This week it were the children from Kuta. Normally it is complete chaos as soon as the children run out of the car, but this time there were less children thus it was a lot quieter. This of course also helped in the lesson, because almost every one was able to catch a wave and do a bottom turn. Saturday began with the staff of soul surf project Bali going to the temple in Denpasar to celebrate Saraswati. On this day everyone celebrates that knowledge is given by the gods through the beautiful goddess Saraswati. As we teach children about surfing and the environment we thought that it was very important to celebrate this day. Thus at 11:00 we arrived at the temple for the ceremony. We gave our offerings, prayed and got blessed in return. It was simple, but also very beautiful because of it. We also have more good news this week. On Saturday we arranged that a new orphanage, Sunya Giri, is going to follow the basic surf program on Sunday. We are very happy with this progress and we hope that we can learn the children about surfing and of course how to deal with the environment in Bali!