Zeep Zeep

Yesterday I opted to skip my afternoon classes not to nap like I usually do, but to go ziplining! We piled into a few cabs and drove out to Wainadoi, a little town about a half hour outside of Suva, where ZipFiji is based. Again, the Wisconsin program's coordinator had connections and got us a sweet discount. I was super excited the entire time until we actually got to the first platform when I suddenly remembered that ziplining generally involves being suspended over considerable heights. This wasn't exactly great for my height phobia, and although I shrieked and wiggled and whimpered for the first few lines I had progressed to just clinging to my harness quietly with wide eyes by the end.

Nichole, Claire, Chauncey, Eli, and Kirsten at the first platform. The staff here was super cool and let us go through the course a second time. There were 4 or 5 workers that went through the course with us and they were all pretty funny and liked horsing around a lot. I think being a zipline guide would be an alright job here.

Nichole, doing crazy stuff on the line. Most people went upside down or spun around or stuff like that but I was mostly concerned with staring fearfully at the ground below. Some of the staff enjoyed screaming and kicking their legs to make fun of me, which I definitely deserved for being such a sissy about things.

Me before I flew off the platform. I look happy because my feet are still on a solid structure.

The course consisted of about 8 lines strung between trees with platforms built around to make stations between each line. The lines went through the rainforest, and a couple went over rivers and gullies. I was pretty freaked out, but I still had a really good time. Fiji has been presenting me with a lot of opportunities to try to face my fear of heights (hiking over high bridges and paths, jumping off of waterfalls and cliffs, etc.), and it's healthy for me to have to deal with that in small portions. When I go again (since some of the people in our group didn't get to do it) I'll take a video or something to give an idea of how cool it was flying between trees.

I had a little mishap at the end of the course - while unhooking my harness from one of the pulleys, one of the workers dropped a big metal clip on my face so I got a bloody swollen scratch against my eye. They were very concerned with me being okay and were really sweet about it, but I was mostly bouncing around being excited at the prospect of having a black eye. Instead, I woke up this morning with a headache and an aching eye with no bruise, which was very disappointing. I had a lot of girls in Thursday morning lab ask me if everything was okay at home, so apparently I look like a battered woman. Not so sweet.

This week has been busy with a couple of big lab reports and term essays getting finished up, so this was a sweet mid-week break. Friday we have a small field trip to our Fijian professor's adopted village, and then this weekend we're having a big group finally head out to Cagalai (pronounced Thang-uh-lie), so there are some fun things coming up. This week has been great so far and is definitely compensating for all of the bad things that happened last week!