After our minilesson, we walked into the water with our boards. I am a slow getter-inner when it comes to first walking in the water. Kyle, our teacher, was not happy with my slow descent into the water. Apparently the most dangerous area that we would be in was right where I was s..l..o..w..l..y walking with my board. Luckily the water was warm so I started to move quickly.
I learned that we would only be in waist-deep water. Whew. I could totally deal with that. Lindy was the first one sent on a wave - she was able to stand right away. Whoa! I was pleasantly surprised that all of us were able to stand on our boards. We were all surfing!
So surfing was going really well and was fun. Then came the turtles. Someone mentioned that a turtle was nearby so I went over to it. I was shocked to see a huge turtle (shell was two feet in diameter) three feet away from me. Huge turtle. I have never seen anything like it. Throughout the rest of our surfing, I saw turtle heads popping up periodically. Big heads, not little Medford Lakes turtle heads. Some people surfed over turtles, and I even saw a turtle in a wave. I would think that the turtles would want nothing to do with a large group of novice surfers and that they would stay as far away as possible. But nothing was further from the truth. It was like they were out to play. Surfing (with turtles) was amazing!
Headed out to the ocean
Jake and I -
blue surfing buddies!
Still on the boards 
Luke doing his thing!
Jake and Scott
Scott won the best surfer award from our instructor!