Bula
So you may be wondering what is going on in Fiji again but alas that is not what this post is about. This post is about looking at life from a different perspective and how it can be just as beautiful as the first perspective. This I have deduced from watching the other side of a sunset. Try it sometime. It is just as beautiful as looking into the sun but no one appreciates it. There are still beautiful colors it just looks different. It is soothing in a way. I think that this can be applied to the rest of life. Some days we take advantage of the beautiful things in life. Maybe we need to turn around and see something different but equally as beautiful. Maybe we just need to turn around and see something different. It doesnt have to be beautiful but it needs to be different. We as people get stuck into a routine and forget to enjoy the little things in life like a sunset or flowers or a childs laugh. We especially as westerners tend to get caught up in daily life and not remember what it is to truly live life. To pay attention to friends and family, to smell the flowers, to cook something great, to just live. Maybe this is the most important thing I have learned in Fiji so far. To just live, to remember that theres more to life than just work and meeting some sort of goal. It is truly the journey that is important. Well this is my wisdom for today moce for now!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Snorkeling vs. Diving
Bula!
Well its been a while since I last updated! Im not going to update on exactly what ive been doing because it would be a long list of mostly homework and some fun adventures along the way if you really want to know e-mail me and ill let you know! What I really wanted to talk about is snorkeling. I have come to absolutely love snorkeling since I have come to Fiji. The freeness of just lazying about the water or being terrified of touching the coral is just amazing. I had only snorkeled one time before coming to Fiji. That was in Puerto Rico. Now all I want to do is get my dive certification so I can get closer to things! I would like to say though snorkeling isnt just fun and games you need to be aware of your surroundings which many times for me becomes very difficult. I get quite caught up in looking at the beautiful coral and gorgeous fish that I have to remember to not get lost or stay out to long so I get stuck at low tide. But alas I survive my snorkeling experiences with only minor injuries and only a few moments of shear terror. Since I have only had minor mishaps with snorkeling I feel that diving would be the logical next step. I am hopefully going to get my dive certification in a few weeks at an island that I have snorkeled at before. I do not know if my moments of shear terror when I dont pay attention to everyone else and end up nearly alone will be more or less. Well soon I will find out if there are too many perils for diving for me to stand or if it is just like snorkeling but better! Well Moce for now!
Well its been a while since I last updated! Im not going to update on exactly what ive been doing because it would be a long list of mostly homework and some fun adventures along the way if you really want to know e-mail me and ill let you know! What I really wanted to talk about is snorkeling. I have come to absolutely love snorkeling since I have come to Fiji. The freeness of just lazying about the water or being terrified of touching the coral is just amazing. I had only snorkeled one time before coming to Fiji. That was in Puerto Rico. Now all I want to do is get my dive certification so I can get closer to things! I would like to say though snorkeling isnt just fun and games you need to be aware of your surroundings which many times for me becomes very difficult. I get quite caught up in looking at the beautiful coral and gorgeous fish that I have to remember to not get lost or stay out to long so I get stuck at low tide. But alas I survive my snorkeling experiences with only minor injuries and only a few moments of shear terror. Since I have only had minor mishaps with snorkeling I feel that diving would be the logical next step. I am hopefully going to get my dive certification in a few weeks at an island that I have snorkeled at before. I do not know if my moments of shear terror when I dont pay attention to everyone else and end up nearly alone will be more or less. Well soon I will find out if there are too many perils for diving for me to stand or if it is just like snorkeling but better! Well Moce for now!
Friday, April 16, 2010
A couple pictures to entice you to read the long post!
Heres a few pictures from my 2 trips that are explained in the next post!

The little girl keeping the flys off our food.

Mmmmm Fijian Food!
Birthday Celebration!

Danny’s Umbrella he found...

Impressive flooding just outside our hotel!
Bounty Island I think…

Mmmm Sunset…

More sunset

Cant get much more picturesque.

The little girl keeping the flys off our food.

Mmmmm Fijian Food!

Birthday Celebration!

Danny’s Umbrella he found...
Impressive flooding just outside our hotel!

Bounty Island I think…

Mmmm Sunset…

More sunset
Cant get much more picturesque.
Update on my life!
Bula!
Wow im half way through my time in Fiji! To those of you who dont want to read a very long post scroll down to the bottom there will be a summary. I have been on 2 trips since the last time I posted. I meant to post between the two so that my post wouldnt be so long but I got busy! The first trip was a trip to Levuka on the island of Ovalau. This was a field trip for 2 classes that I wasnt actually in. I got invited by one of my professors to go with so I decided it would be fun to go. It was really fun. I met a lot of new people who are really awesome. The actual town of Levuka was kind of boring it was a sleepy old town. The reason that we went is because it was the original capitol of Fiji. So it was a history field trip and was quite unorganized. It was the true Fijian way. We did some of the stuff that we were supposed to but most of it they made up along the way. The first day that we got there we were about 4 hours late because of rain and that seemed to be the theme for the weekend. Rain. And a lot of it. Once we actually got to Levuka we had pizza after trudging through the rain and went to begin celebrating Claire’s birthday with everyone! The birthday celebration continued for the rest of the weekend. Once we told the other students that it was Claire’s birthday they planed on thoroughly celebrating it! The second day that we were on the great island of Ovalau we went to a village and had a great lunch made by the ladies in the village. The little girls also helped. They were so cute. They helped by keeping the flies off the food and carrying plates out. We also had a traditional Kava ceremony where we presented a sevusevu(an offering essentially to allow us onto the chiefs land) and drank some kava. The other students were entertained by the fact that the americans had drank kava and by the fact that we liked it for the most part. If I havnt explained kava it is the national drink of Fiji and it tastes and looks a bit like muddy water. The appeal of it is that it is a mild narcotic and that when you drink it you sit around with a bunch of friends or soon to be friends and talk and hang out all night. The taste generally grows on you. So after kava we walked around the village a little and most of us went back and took a nap because well the night before we stayed out way to late! That night we had a dinner of curry and a “quiz” the winners got some granola bars!(unfortunately we didnt win) After that it was back to birthday celebrations until late again! This brings us to Saturday the day began with rain again and most of us just slept until lunch. After lunch we went to one of the first schools in Fiji. It is now a boarding school for both boys and girls but in the past it has been many things including a nursing school, training area for missionaries, and a teaching school. At the same time we also saw the tomb of the first bishop of Fiji. The best part of going to the school was that we got to ride in the back of a carrier truck. These are all over Fiji and a re a legitimate form of transportation especially on Ovalau that only has one bus and most people do not have cars. I however had not been on one yet so it was a bunch of fun. Basically we smashed 30 people into an area not a whole lot bigger than the bed of a normal truck that was covered by a tarp like cover. We were also on some of the worst roads I have ever been on. They were not the worst roads in Fiji which is quite disturbing. Saturday night was fun we sat around after dinner and sang songs from all the countries that people were from. One of the American kids Danny decided that it would be a good idea to sing the the thirty point buck song. All the other kids in the class had a great laugh at it and I got a great video of it too! Saturday was an early night because we had church at 8 am the next morning. One of the guys on the trip is a Catholic Father so he did the easter mass. It was different to go to a Catholic mass for easter but it was nice. It wasnt as long as I expected it to be(thank God!) so that was good. It started off being a very nice day after church we climbed up to some waterfalls and went swimming for a while. After I laid around because my knees hurt and it started raining. So a bunch of us hung out in the girls house and drank tea and talked. I would like to point out that pacific islanders like to gossip a bit. It was so funny because all of them would go on about whatever and there never seemed to be a topic that was off limits it was great. The only problem was that by the time we were supposed to have dinner it had rained very hard and flooded. We had to walk through knee deep water in order to get to dinner and the river outside the hotel was very flooded. Right when we got to dinner the electricity went out and we ate by the light of cell phones, candles, and lightning. I was quite excited because I love thunderstorms and there hasnt been one in Fiji since I have been here which I was quite sad about. This did however put a damper on the night(I still thought it was a success). We went back to the girls house in our attempts to stay up all night since we were leaving at 4 am. We sat drank tea and gossiped until the electricity came on around 11:30. Most of us stayed up longer I decided that I did need to sleep for a little while and slept for just a few hours and got on the boat to a bus back to suva the next morning! Thats trip number one.
Trip number two started just 4 test filled days later. We embarked on Friday for Nadi on the other side of the main island after we finally finished our classes for the night. We went to a cool place called the drift in. I recommend for anyone in the Nadi area who is of approximately college age and wanting a really cheap place to stay to stay there. It is not a family place! But it is fun nonetheless. The next morning we embarked bright and early(why do all of my trips seem to happen at early hours in the morning? I need to sleep!) to the Yasawas. Our first stop was a quiet island with a random range of people. It was from retired people to kids our age. It was a good place with some awesome food and a good atmosphere. We also go to go snorkeling and feed sharks(well only one) which was scary and completely awesome at the same time! The best part of snorkeling was watching our guide dive down to spear fish to feed to the other fish and the sharks. He could dive so far down and then so gracefully come back with a fish. At one point he dove down around 25 feet into a cave where we could no longer see him and he came back 30 seconds later with a fish that he lazily brought to the surface. It was pretty impressive. That night they had some very touristy dancing that was supposed to be “culture” it was kind of entertaining. They also had some kava. Which if you read I enjoy. Except we joined the group of locals because at one point in time the other group of tourists began playing simon says and we were not having that while drinking kava. The locals were cool we talked to some people who we will probably meet up with at some time in Suva. The next day we climbed some rocks at one end of the island jumped in the water and swam back(kind of) we got in shallow water and saw some cool animals while cutting ourselves on dead coral. That morning we went to the next island where it was a lot of college aged kids. This place was definitely more of a party place at night but not as much as a place like bounty island. It was fun and had some great views I got some great pictures of the sunset and had some great beach lounging time. The next morning it was raining so we sat around inside until our boat came to take us to our last beach. By this point in time I wasnt feeling good so the rain didnt help. The last resort that we went to was not a place that sees college students very often. There were very few other people there and it was very quiet. They did have fun with us though. They played volleyball(I kept score) and had some fun. It was also a very touristy place with hermit crab races and dancing at night. But they also had a bonfire and kava so it was all good. The next morning we got up for breakfast and went to the cave where blue lagoon was filmed(I have not yet seen this movie so I dont know much). It was very beautiful when we got there. The first cave that you jump into has clear blue water that with a snorkel you can see all the way down. We were led to a place that seemed to be just more rock wall and told that we are going to swim under the wall into another cave. Which we did and it was pitch black and really scary and awesome. The guide that we had had a flash light but generally found it funny to turn off the light. We swam around in the dark for a while and swam back under the rocks into the light where people were climbing the walls and jumping off. I thought that this would be a great plan so I also did it. I climbed about halfway up one part and lost all hand holds that I had and decided that it would be a better plan to just fall back instead of probably hitting my head on the wall and then falling into the deep water. It was still fun to fall into the water but I wish I would have gotten further up it before and been able to jump off. After our excursion to the cave we had to hurry and get our stuff to get back on the boat for a 6 hour boat ride back to Nadi(we were on the last island of the Yasawas). Once we got to Nadi we had pizza and got in a minibus for our 3 1/2 hour ride home. We finally got home and I just went to bed because I was exhausted and not feeling well from the ride. Well those are my 2 recent adventures! Hope all is well where ever you are! I also hope you make it to Fiji!
Moce
Emily
For those of you who didnt want to read that whole thing heres the summary!
Easer weekend-Ovalau-Field trip. Met some awesome new people. There was a lot of rain. Cool cultural experiences. Flooding, Thunderstorm, and no electricity! Early morning.
Spring Break-Yasawas-being a tourist. Went to 3 different islands. Saw a shark. Climbed a bunch of stuff. Jumped of most of said stuff. Went to the cave from the blue lagoon. Spent a lot of time on beaches. Didnt get sun burnt!
Wow im half way through my time in Fiji! To those of you who dont want to read a very long post scroll down to the bottom there will be a summary. I have been on 2 trips since the last time I posted. I meant to post between the two so that my post wouldnt be so long but I got busy! The first trip was a trip to Levuka on the island of Ovalau. This was a field trip for 2 classes that I wasnt actually in. I got invited by one of my professors to go with so I decided it would be fun to go. It was really fun. I met a lot of new people who are really awesome. The actual town of Levuka was kind of boring it was a sleepy old town. The reason that we went is because it was the original capitol of Fiji. So it was a history field trip and was quite unorganized. It was the true Fijian way. We did some of the stuff that we were supposed to but most of it they made up along the way. The first day that we got there we were about 4 hours late because of rain and that seemed to be the theme for the weekend. Rain. And a lot of it. Once we actually got to Levuka we had pizza after trudging through the rain and went to begin celebrating Claire’s birthday with everyone! The birthday celebration continued for the rest of the weekend. Once we told the other students that it was Claire’s birthday they planed on thoroughly celebrating it! The second day that we were on the great island of Ovalau we went to a village and had a great lunch made by the ladies in the village. The little girls also helped. They were so cute. They helped by keeping the flies off the food and carrying plates out. We also had a traditional Kava ceremony where we presented a sevusevu(an offering essentially to allow us onto the chiefs land) and drank some kava. The other students were entertained by the fact that the americans had drank kava and by the fact that we liked it for the most part. If I havnt explained kava it is the national drink of Fiji and it tastes and looks a bit like muddy water. The appeal of it is that it is a mild narcotic and that when you drink it you sit around with a bunch of friends or soon to be friends and talk and hang out all night. The taste generally grows on you. So after kava we walked around the village a little and most of us went back and took a nap because well the night before we stayed out way to late! That night we had a dinner of curry and a “quiz” the winners got some granola bars!(unfortunately we didnt win) After that it was back to birthday celebrations until late again! This brings us to Saturday the day began with rain again and most of us just slept until lunch. After lunch we went to one of the first schools in Fiji. It is now a boarding school for both boys and girls but in the past it has been many things including a nursing school, training area for missionaries, and a teaching school. At the same time we also saw the tomb of the first bishop of Fiji. The best part of going to the school was that we got to ride in the back of a carrier truck. These are all over Fiji and a re a legitimate form of transportation especially on Ovalau that only has one bus and most people do not have cars. I however had not been on one yet so it was a bunch of fun. Basically we smashed 30 people into an area not a whole lot bigger than the bed of a normal truck that was covered by a tarp like cover. We were also on some of the worst roads I have ever been on. They were not the worst roads in Fiji which is quite disturbing. Saturday night was fun we sat around after dinner and sang songs from all the countries that people were from. One of the American kids Danny decided that it would be a good idea to sing the the thirty point buck song. All the other kids in the class had a great laugh at it and I got a great video of it too! Saturday was an early night because we had church at 8 am the next morning. One of the guys on the trip is a Catholic Father so he did the easter mass. It was different to go to a Catholic mass for easter but it was nice. It wasnt as long as I expected it to be(thank God!) so that was good. It started off being a very nice day after church we climbed up to some waterfalls and went swimming for a while. After I laid around because my knees hurt and it started raining. So a bunch of us hung out in the girls house and drank tea and talked. I would like to point out that pacific islanders like to gossip a bit. It was so funny because all of them would go on about whatever and there never seemed to be a topic that was off limits it was great. The only problem was that by the time we were supposed to have dinner it had rained very hard and flooded. We had to walk through knee deep water in order to get to dinner and the river outside the hotel was very flooded. Right when we got to dinner the electricity went out and we ate by the light of cell phones, candles, and lightning. I was quite excited because I love thunderstorms and there hasnt been one in Fiji since I have been here which I was quite sad about. This did however put a damper on the night(I still thought it was a success). We went back to the girls house in our attempts to stay up all night since we were leaving at 4 am. We sat drank tea and gossiped until the electricity came on around 11:30. Most of us stayed up longer I decided that I did need to sleep for a little while and slept for just a few hours and got on the boat to a bus back to suva the next morning! Thats trip number one.
Trip number two started just 4 test filled days later. We embarked on Friday for Nadi on the other side of the main island after we finally finished our classes for the night. We went to a cool place called the drift in. I recommend for anyone in the Nadi area who is of approximately college age and wanting a really cheap place to stay to stay there. It is not a family place! But it is fun nonetheless. The next morning we embarked bright and early(why do all of my trips seem to happen at early hours in the morning? I need to sleep!) to the Yasawas. Our first stop was a quiet island with a random range of people. It was from retired people to kids our age. It was a good place with some awesome food and a good atmosphere. We also go to go snorkeling and feed sharks(well only one) which was scary and completely awesome at the same time! The best part of snorkeling was watching our guide dive down to spear fish to feed to the other fish and the sharks. He could dive so far down and then so gracefully come back with a fish. At one point he dove down around 25 feet into a cave where we could no longer see him and he came back 30 seconds later with a fish that he lazily brought to the surface. It was pretty impressive. That night they had some very touristy dancing that was supposed to be “culture” it was kind of entertaining. They also had some kava. Which if you read I enjoy. Except we joined the group of locals because at one point in time the other group of tourists began playing simon says and we were not having that while drinking kava. The locals were cool we talked to some people who we will probably meet up with at some time in Suva. The next day we climbed some rocks at one end of the island jumped in the water and swam back(kind of) we got in shallow water and saw some cool animals while cutting ourselves on dead coral. That morning we went to the next island where it was a lot of college aged kids. This place was definitely more of a party place at night but not as much as a place like bounty island. It was fun and had some great views I got some great pictures of the sunset and had some great beach lounging time. The next morning it was raining so we sat around inside until our boat came to take us to our last beach. By this point in time I wasnt feeling good so the rain didnt help. The last resort that we went to was not a place that sees college students very often. There were very few other people there and it was very quiet. They did have fun with us though. They played volleyball(I kept score) and had some fun. It was also a very touristy place with hermit crab races and dancing at night. But they also had a bonfire and kava so it was all good. The next morning we got up for breakfast and went to the cave where blue lagoon was filmed(I have not yet seen this movie so I dont know much). It was very beautiful when we got there. The first cave that you jump into has clear blue water that with a snorkel you can see all the way down. We were led to a place that seemed to be just more rock wall and told that we are going to swim under the wall into another cave. Which we did and it was pitch black and really scary and awesome. The guide that we had had a flash light but generally found it funny to turn off the light. We swam around in the dark for a while and swam back under the rocks into the light where people were climbing the walls and jumping off. I thought that this would be a great plan so I also did it. I climbed about halfway up one part and lost all hand holds that I had and decided that it would be a better plan to just fall back instead of probably hitting my head on the wall and then falling into the deep water. It was still fun to fall into the water but I wish I would have gotten further up it before and been able to jump off. After our excursion to the cave we had to hurry and get our stuff to get back on the boat for a 6 hour boat ride back to Nadi(we were on the last island of the Yasawas). Once we got to Nadi we had pizza and got in a minibus for our 3 1/2 hour ride home. We finally got home and I just went to bed because I was exhausted and not feeling well from the ride. Well those are my 2 recent adventures! Hope all is well where ever you are! I also hope you make it to Fiji!
Moce
Emily
For those of you who didnt want to read that whole thing heres the summary!
Easer weekend-Ovalau-Field trip. Met some awesome new people. There was a lot of rain. Cool cultural experiences. Flooding, Thunderstorm, and no electricity! Early morning.
Spring Break-Yasawas-being a tourist. Went to 3 different islands. Saw a shark. Climbed a bunch of stuff. Jumped of most of said stuff. Went to the cave from the blue lagoon. Spent a lot of time on beaches. Didnt get sun burnt!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Beauty all around
Bula!
So I havnt posted in a while! Sorry to those who want to know what my life is like! I have realized that I will never get over the fact that Fiji is probably the most beautiful place I have ever been to. This weekend we went to a resort and just stayed one night but I couldnt get over how beautiful everything is. I laid on a hammock and had gorgeous views of the ocean and palm trees. The thing is is that this resort is not even the most beautiful place I have been. Everywhere I look there is beauty I look out my flat window and see palm trees, banana trees, mango trees, and all other sorts of beauty. I trek through gardens to get to class. I dont think that I could have picked a better place to study. I havnt really done to much since my last post. Relaxed on some beaches, done some work(I am STUDYING abroad) but that is about all. This weekend im going to one of the other islands though. Its called Ovalau im going to a town called Levuka. So that adventure should be interesting. Well to those of you who are reading see ya soon!
Moce!
So I havnt posted in a while! Sorry to those who want to know what my life is like! I have realized that I will never get over the fact that Fiji is probably the most beautiful place I have ever been to. This weekend we went to a resort and just stayed one night but I couldnt get over how beautiful everything is. I laid on a hammock and had gorgeous views of the ocean and palm trees. The thing is is that this resort is not even the most beautiful place I have been. Everywhere I look there is beauty I look out my flat window and see palm trees, banana trees, mango trees, and all other sorts of beauty. I trek through gardens to get to class. I dont think that I could have picked a better place to study. I havnt really done to much since my last post. Relaxed on some beaches, done some work(I am STUDYING abroad) but that is about all. This weekend im going to one of the other islands though. Its called Ovalau im going to a town called Levuka. So that adventure should be interesting. Well to those of you who are reading see ya soon!
Moce!
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The aftermath
Bula!
Well the cyclone is over and I finally got back to classes today. The cyclone ended up hitting the northern and easter divisions(im in the central division) really hard but mostly missed the western division and had minimal impact on the central division. The storm forced all of us to stay inside from Saturday to Wednesday. We were finally able to leave the gate of our flats on Wednesday and most of us spent the day in town just meandering around because no one wanted to go back to the flats. In our massive amount of spare time that we had while locked in our dungeons of houses we did get to watch several movies. I was happy to see avatar which I had not seen before. I do wish I would have seen it in 3D but it was still good. The time that we spent trying to find something to do was impressive. I have never spent so much time in one place than I did during the cyclone. On the plus side it did make me appreciate how much I love to spend time outside! Well classes are going well and I have a paper to finish so I suppose this is my update for now! Please pray/think about/help if you can the people in northern and eastern Fiji! Here is a story about how to help! http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=142396 Vinaka!
Moce!
Well the cyclone is over and I finally got back to classes today. The cyclone ended up hitting the northern and easter divisions(im in the central division) really hard but mostly missed the western division and had minimal impact on the central division. The storm forced all of us to stay inside from Saturday to Wednesday. We were finally able to leave the gate of our flats on Wednesday and most of us spent the day in town just meandering around because no one wanted to go back to the flats. In our massive amount of spare time that we had while locked in our dungeons of houses we did get to watch several movies. I was happy to see avatar which I had not seen before. I do wish I would have seen it in 3D but it was still good. The time that we spent trying to find something to do was impressive. I have never spent so much time in one place than I did during the cyclone. On the plus side it did make me appreciate how much I love to spend time outside! Well classes are going well and I have a paper to finish so I suppose this is my update for now! Please pray/think about/help if you can the people in northern and eastern Fiji! Here is a story about how to help! http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=142396 Vinaka!
Moce!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Cyclone Tomas
Bula!
So on Friday which was 2 days ago here we were informed that there was a tropical depression that was on its way to Fiji. It is now Sunday and that tropical depression has formed into a category 3 cyclone and has been named Tomas. It still hasnt hit Fiji yet but they are saying that tonight and tomorrow it will be here. The original reports were that it would be here yesterday but it is moving much slower than expected and getting stronger along the way. Now I live in Minnesota and South Dakota so I have no idea how to prepare for a cyclone. Today there was some wind and rain that was pulling our windows open(they wernt locked) and that was before the actual storm has gotten here. I have no idea what it is going to be like. We have been warned that we probably wont have power or water and to prepare by getting water(which we have done). But beyond that I just dont really know what to do. Well I guess thats my update for now. I wanted to post something before I couldnt for a while. Please be praying for the people of Fiji. I will probably be fine in my flat here but others are not as fortunate to have a house made of concrete.
Moce for now
So on Friday which was 2 days ago here we were informed that there was a tropical depression that was on its way to Fiji. It is now Sunday and that tropical depression has formed into a category 3 cyclone and has been named Tomas. It still hasnt hit Fiji yet but they are saying that tonight and tomorrow it will be here. The original reports were that it would be here yesterday but it is moving much slower than expected and getting stronger along the way. Now I live in Minnesota and South Dakota so I have no idea how to prepare for a cyclone. Today there was some wind and rain that was pulling our windows open(they wernt locked) and that was before the actual storm has gotten here. I have no idea what it is going to be like. We have been warned that we probably wont have power or water and to prepare by getting water(which we have done). But beyond that I just dont really know what to do. Well I guess thats my update for now. I wanted to post something before I couldnt for a while. Please be praying for the people of Fiji. I will probably be fine in my flat here but others are not as fortunate to have a house made of concrete.
Moce for now
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