Isa Lei...

I'm writing this from LAX, where I landed from Nadi a few hours ago and have another few hours before I'm getting on a plane to Boston. I don't know if my medication is affecting this, but right now I feel seriously depressed. I'm shivering while wearing a fleece outside in LA, all of a sudden there are white people everyone that are all dressed up, and the FOOD there's hundreds of restaurants with anything you want. People everywhere, walking quickly, yelling at each other, not saying hello to strangers. I kind of wandered down the middle of the terminal in a daze staring at everything. This is ridiculous. I talked to Tyler on the phone and started bawling because I can't stop thinking about how dull and brown and dead and cold and sterile everything looks outside. Even the palm trees are like this. Everything's just been muted, like I was walking around outside all day and then put on a pair of thick sunglasses. Or if you had a vibrant photograph and kept sticking layers and layers of scotch tape over it until it only looked like fuzzy shadows of what it used to be . I'm crying because I'm scared that it's going to be like this back home too, and it probably will.

I'm sure that in a week or so once I get settled, seeing friends and family, going around familiar areas in Massachusetts, Fiji will be just another positive memory. But for now all I feel is real sadness about leaving that place. I hated it at first, grew to love it, and now it's painful to think about leaving it. I'm not in a good place here, sitting in terminal 48A.

Then again, this is probably just because all my drugs are refusing to wear off and these are the rantings of someone heavily dosed by Valium. To go on with the emotional mode that I'm in right now, here's the Fiji Farewell Song:

Isa, isa valagi lasa dina Isa, Isa you are my only treasure
Namu lako au na rarawa kina Must you leave me, so lonely and forsaken?
Cava beka ko a mai cakava As the roses will miss the sun at dawn,
Nomu lako au na sega ni lasa. Every moment my heart for you is yearning.

Isa Lei, na noqu rarawa Isa Lei, the purple shadow falling,
Ni so sa na vodo e na mataka Sad the morrow will dawn upon my sorrow,
Bau nanama, na nadatou lasa Oh forget not, when you're far away
Sonaisali nanuma tiko ga. Precious moments at Sonaisali.

Vanua rogo na nomuni vanua Isa, Isa my heart was filled with pleasure
Kena ca ni levu tu na ua From the moment I heard your tender heart greeting
Lomaqu voli me'u bau butuka Mid the sunshine, we spent the hours together,
Tovolea ke balavu na bula Now so swiftly those happy hours are fleeting.

Domoni dina na nomu yanuyanu Over the ocean your island home is calling
Kena kay wale na salsalu Happy country where roses bloom and splender,
Mocelolo, Bua, na Kukuwatu Oh if I could but journey there beside you
Lagakali, Maba na rosi damu. Then forever my heart would sing in rapture.

Peace out baby. I hope I can come again. Thanks to anyone who took time to read this blog (even if just for a minute) - I write it mostly for myself, but to hear that other people like reading it makes me very happy to know that someone's learning about some tiny aspect of the amazing life that I've had here.

And Moce Fiji.

Cliff, laying in the hammock on the beach in Nadi. He left to go to the airport about a half hour after that, to join up with everyone else from the US (their programs set up their flights) on their trip back home.

Today was surreal. When we first arrive in Nadi I had a whole debacle with losing my wallet and then battling with Indian cab drivers to get it back, which was ultimately successful but made me hate Nadi a bit more. My problems with Nadi are mostly that you get hassled to buy things, along with the leering towards all women, and it makes me sad that spending my last few days in Fiji in Nadi has made me want to leave Fiji. But, I know that that's just a consequence of being here before I leave, and won't sour the overall experience at all.

Last night everybody in our group spent our last few hours together, punctuated by drunk foreign backpackers bothering us. But we still had quality time together. Then, a taxi van came, everything got packed up, and boom, they were gone. Now it was just me, Joel, and Junior (a local boy from the Solomon Islands who's gotten to be good friends with us and came to say bye). We were all sad so we sat up on a porch drinking fiji bitter stubbies until we saw their plane go off over us, and I got too upset and went to bed.

Having people leave in phases is helpful, I guess. But it leaves a awful empty feeling when you're one of the only ones left, in a place that isn't even really Fiji anymore. I'm not sure what to think. I'm next.

Moce Mango Bay...

A smaller group of us went to Mango Bay on Wednesday, and were joined by the rest of our group for dinner. During the day, we spent a lot of time laying on the beach, and got to go snorkeling right off the beach (I saw 3 white tipped reef sharks and lots of other colorful fish, but unfortunately the strong current threw us down the beach so we had to get out of the water and hike back). That night the girls surprised Eli with a birthday cake and got everyone to make a big embarassing spectacle of it. We had a long dinner and joked around a lot, but then I had to say goodbye to the group that wasn't going to Nadi with us (they were flying out of Suva rather than Nadi). That was painful. I think that studying abroad is so strange - you meet a group of complete strangers, in an entirely new place, and spend every minute of everyday living with them so you grow to love each other and then all of a sudden you split up and probably won't see each other again. I love the American and Australian friends that I've made here, but I doubt I'll see them again unless anyone comes up to Boston. I made a lot of local friends in class who were very helpful and sweet, and they don't have facebook or any way to keep in touch with them so I will leave without saying goodbye to them. It's a very strange way to meet and then have to say goodbye to people, I think.

Hammock in front of the sunset by Mango Bay. This was our last night on a legitimate beach in Fiji. I'm sure that I will never be able to go to most beaches and feel impressed in any way shape or form, since the last few months we've been completely spoiled by Fijian beaches.

Moce Suva...

Last day in Suva. I'm freaking out. Had errands to run with Nichole, and brought the camera along with to try and document some of the everyday things that I'm going to miss so much here.

Sacks of various lentils at the market. I have a newfound appreciation for the diversity (and deliciousness) of lentils.

Part of the seawall, where I go running every day. There's a great breeze coming off the ocean (as long as it's not low tide, which makes it stinky) and I usually go in the afternoon when all of the school buses are flying by blasting their reggae type music, and I never get to work out in a place like that ever again.

My last bus ride. Buses in Boston are going to suck very bad without the tons of crazy stickers and bells and beads decorating the driver's seat. And, worst of all, there won't be bus music.

I'm all packed up to go to Mango Bay tomorrow. But this is finally happening. I managed to fit all of my crap back into my suitcase (and a small gym bag that I bought here), and left a lot of things behind to give to our housekeeper Marama. We found out that she makes 60$F a week, and she works 10 hour days, so we figured we'd give her our old things and some extra cash/change we had laying around. Hopefully she can give herself a week off or something with everything we gave her. She also got a lot of my clothes, shoes, and my soccer ball, pump and cleats to bring back to her village. Tomorrow we head to Mango Bay, a place on the Coral Coast, to spend a few days there before going to Nadi.

The Best Celebration to Finishing Exams

Today I had my marine biology final in the afternoon, which means that I am officially finished with school at USP. It hasn't been reasonable, and it hasn't been easy to get simple things done, but I'm glad that I've experienced it so that now I can really appreciate how things work back at home.

A few of us went out to a last dinner at the Copper Chimney (our favorite Indian restaurant across the street from the university) to celebrate. A couple of the girls had a whole bunch of leftover lotions (sunscreen, cocoa butter, aloe vera, etc.) so we did the logical thing: we carpeted the floor of a living room in mattresses and had a lotion wrestling tournament for all of the girls.

All of us after we were finished. Cliff's in the front because it was his birthday. We made a bracket and went all the way to a championship round - we took this very seriously. It was one of the funniest things we've done as a "we're bored and don't feel like doing work" thing. Everyone was really energetic and had a great time, so it was a great success. Plus, no one got injured, which is an improvement over one of our last trips. I faced Natalie in the first round and got knocked out, in part because I had done a sprint workout before eating a ton of Indian food, but mostly because she was surprisingly scrappy. She was the eventual runner up so I'm proud to have lost to such a fine competitor.

I went back and showered, then began packing for home. It still doesn't feel real - I kind of think that we're just packing up for another fun weekend trip, except this time we're going home. I'm having trouble with this. I ended up pulling my mattress out into the living room and falling asleep snuggling with Kirsten and Nichole while watching the Portugal vs North Korea game (I passed out after the first 5 goals). Tomorrow will be spent doing last minute souvenir shopping, finishing packing, and soaking up as much of my last day in Suva with my friends as possible.

Yasawas: Naviti

After my second exam on Friday, I rushed to pack up some things and then got a minibus with a couple of friends to spend the night at a backpackers in Nadi. Despite the Celtics losing and staying awake for the terrible joke that was the Germany game, I was still excited, because we were heading out the next morning to go to an island in the Yasawa island chain to the northwest of the mainland.

These islands are extremely touristy, and swarming with British gap-year students (who I've grown to be very annoyed with since they come all the way to Fiji and spend a few months lazing around and drinking rather than doing anything). They're a lot like the Mamanucas, with sort of a staged effort to try to make it seem like an authentic experience. I might have been okay with this and enjoyed it at the beginning of the semester, but at this point I just get annoyed. Enough negativity! The island was very beautiful and relaxing, and it was a great way t break up the weekend between exams.

We did a dive there that was really cool: there were tons of sea fans, feather starfish, a few sharks, big schools of colorful fish and even a couple of nudibranchs. The dive instructor got really excited when we told him we were from Suva, since he lives in a town nearby. He complained about how much he didn't like living on the islands, and how he was excited to head back to Suva next week and wanted to get in touch with us so we could meet up before we left. The dive was a little bit of a mess - there were 2 French kids with us who didn't speak much English and didn't really know what was going on, took forever to get down to the bottom, and we had to cut the dive short because one of them actually ran out of air (how are you not looking at your gauge for something important like that?). We still had fun though, and passed out early in the night to catch up on sleep that has been neglected during exams and traveling.

The next morning, we studied for an exam on Monday a decent amount while waiting for our boat transfer back to the mainland. This is the view from my study spot. I think it beats staring at the walls in Schow back home at Williams. We grabbed pizza at a great place in Nadi once we got back, then had another minibus ride all the way back to Suva, where we promptly passed out. It was a busy and travel-filled weekend, but I'm still glad that we got out to the Yasawas before I left. As touristy as it is, it's very beautiful, and I'm sad that I missed out on some of the cool things there (swim through caves, manta ray snorkeling, stuff like that). I've still gotten the opportunity to see and do a lot of great things since I've been in Fiji though, so I can't focus on the things that I didn't get around to...

F, I Never Actually Learned S....

Finals week is upon me! Nothing like Williams, but I've still been stuck inside spending a lot of time studying when all I want to do right now is soak up as much Fiji as possible before heading home (in a little over a week...oh my god). I had my first exam in Physiology this morning. Exams are administered in sports centers (stadiums, gymnasiums, etc.) so you're in a room with about 300 people (at least this was in one of the smaller venues) and you're next to people taking different exams than you. For such a relaxed school, they've got a lot of professors and proxies patrolling the aisles looking out for cheating. One great thing about here is that they've got the finals from the last 3 years for every course at the library, and you just have to pay about a dollar to get them all photocopied. One good thing about academics might save the whole semester? Physio went well, but tomorrow I've got invertebrate biology and Fijian...let's say I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. All of our Fijian tests have been conducted as open book up until this point, so I really haven't learned much other than useless phrases, and now that our final is closed book I'm a bit concerned. I might try to get away for the weekend, and then I've got marine biology on Monday, and then I'm free to go where I please for the last few days here.

I've got a job working with a vet in Brookline this summer, so my procrastination from studying has involved scouring Craigslist for potential subletters whose roommates are least likely to turn my summer into a B-grade horror movie. It's not that fun. I've also been trying to catch as many world cup games as possible, which kind of sucks when you're in the middle of exams and the games are shown at either 11:30 at night, 2:30am or 6:30am. I've been dedicated to watching the US and Germany (uber alles!) as much as possible though, which is keeping me sane. For the really late games we've been restricted to watching grainy broadcasts on our TV that white out every time something interesting happens and during subsequent replays. I'll be back home for the later stages, but it really just won't have the same charm of trying to keep up with things in Fiji. Also since we leave in a week I've resolved to eat everything in my kitchen to leave behind as little as possible, which kind of sucks because all I've had this week are tuna sandwiches and packed noodles. Oh well.

This post sucks, so here's something truly fascinating that will blow your mind:

A fat toad. A cane toad, or boto (although that also means boat) to be exact. These have invaded everywhere in Fiji like they have in Australia and other countries, and the land is pretty much theirs at night when you can't take a step without one hopping away. There were massive ones on Vatulele, and I accidentally kicked one while running 120s a couple of weeks ago. Actually it was more of a punt, since the toad was in mid-air when my boot hit it and sent it flying...the animal loving part of me was very upset, but the biologist part figured I was doing Fiji a favor since these have crowded out a lot of native species. I guess I break even.

The Great Moped Debacle: Someone Definitely Stepped on a Prawn

Note: I added more pictures and some more text about the Vatulele trip, if you want to check it out.

Don't go on a moped tour in Fiji. Just don't. You're guaranteed to get messed up in one way or another.

We woke up early on Wednesday and headed out to Nadi via minibus. Everyone was excited and pumped for the trip since we've been talking about this for a long time now. We rented the bikes from a place in Nadi, and right away I did something that should have been a bad omen telling us to turn the hell around at that point. We were all lined up, and since only 4 of us brought our licenses (myself included) and we needed 4 bikes, I had to drive a bike around a corner where I could switch with Eli. Instead, since I've never driven a scooter before and all they did before sending me off was point out the brake and the accelerator, I figured I'd start driving and forget one of those two things. I jerked forward and drove 10 feet forward into a row of parked scooters. I had to try really hard not to laugh - nobody was hurt, and I was making jokes about woman drivers, etc. I traded places with Eli (who was riding on the back of my scooter) - after my little incident, the owners didn't seem so strict about driving without a license.

Me, excited to smash one moped into a bunch of parked vehicles.

Our whole group, ready for adventure.

After that, we headed out driving north from Nadi along Queen's road. Our goal was to make it to Volivoli at the northern part of the island. This part of the island is absolutely beautiful. We were passing by lots of mountains, the weather was gorgeous, and we were having a really fun time. We drove up by Ba, and a bunch of small villages.

A picture I took while riding on the back of Eli's bike. Nichole and Will are up ahead.

The sun was getting low when we were about 45 minutes out from Volivoli, and we had just passed a town called Tavua. Eli and I went around a corner, and looked behind us to see that Nicole and Will's bike was on the side of the road in a puff of dust, with both of them jumping around it. We turned around right away to see what happened, and Will's arm was bleeding very badly. Both of them were all hopped up on adrenaline and thinking that they were fine, but they were bleeding a lot. We later found out that since Will's visor didn't have a sunstrip across the top, he was blinded by the sun coming around the corner and didn't see the turn. A few cars stopped by to offer rides to the hospital, so I hopped in one with Nicole and Will while Eli stayed behind waiting for everyone else to come back to come back to the hospital in Tavua.

Alex, Will, and I in the hospital in a wonderful mood. Both of them were bugging out a bit on adrenaline and not wanting to be examined, but eventually they calmed down enough to get cleaned up somewhat. This was a public hospital, and was kind of terrifying. Nothing was sterilized, and they didn't even see them until 15 minutes after we walked in despite the fact that no one else was in the hospital. Cleaning out their road rash consisted of dabbing at everything with saline-soaked cotton swabs, then packing on gauze (not nonstick, so all the wounds healed up over it) and wrapping it on with glorified scotch tape. Nicole just had a lot of scrapes that were painful, but Will had a bunch of scrapes and several deep cuts in his forearm that wouldn't stop bleeding. We were staying in a hotel across the street (it was Alex's 21st birthday, so we tried to have some festivities), and I went with Will several times to the hospital to get his dressings changed. The doctor there refused to give him stitches because she didn't think that he was bleeding anymore, which was probably a good thing since it was still so dirty. I showed up later at night and the nurse on duty pretty much gave me free reign over the supply room, which only had gauze. We still stocked up though, and the next morning Eli and I took a scooter downtown to clean out the local pharmacy of all of their elastic and crepe bandages. We washed and bandaged both of them up, and they took a bus back to Nadi.

Nichole's hand. She had scraped up her whole arm, and a lot of her leg and both knees.

Will and Nichole trying to be in high spirits after getting "treated" at the Tavua hospital. Nichole's happy because her painkillers finally started kicking in.

Will's forearm the morning after. It swelled up real bad. Those cuts are the ones that bled for 3 days after, yet apparently didn't need stitches? Oh, public healthcare in Fiji...

Eli and I took the moped that crashed and drove it back to Nadi, while Joel, Alex, Cliff, and Sam continued on to Volivoli. We grabbed pizza in Nadi, where we met an older American couple who were very sweet and helpful: the wife was an orthopedic surgeon, and suggested that Nichole get her ring cut off before her hand swelled too much. The husband was a physical chemist who gave me his card and told me to get in touch with him about an ACS meeting in Boston, so that was sweet. We got on a minibus, and after a bumpy and painful ride back to Suva, we took them to Suva Private Hospital, where they got things sorted out. The hospital there still isn't great, but it was leaps and bounds better than the one at Tavua. They had to open up all of the wounds again to clean them out properly, and the doctor said that Will's cuts should have been stitched up, but now it was too late since there was dirt in there and it had started healing already. The last few days have been spent with a sort of sick ward in our house, while everybody helps out with food and cleaning and changing dressings. Both of them are healing up well though, and hopefully they'll be up and about in another few days.

We found out on the way back that Cliff crashed his moped into a car, and Joel wiped out around the same corner that Will and Nicole crashed on. We had a security deposit on the bikes to pay for the damages, but I'm mostly just glad that everybody's okay. We've got to study for exams now, so the next few days should be much quieter than this last week.

Vatulele

For the first part of study week, we spent a few days camping on Vatulele. Vatulele is a small, skinny island south of the Coral Coast of Viti Levu. This is the one island that I read about before coming to Fiji and decided that I absolutely had to go to, so I was very happy. It has 4 small villages, and one luxury resort, has a ton of really cool stuff, and is next to impossible to get to. We've spent the last month trying to figure out a way to get there, since the loaded people that head to the resort land there via a private airstrip and there are no commercial boats that head there from the mainland. We've contacted the resort staff, the villages along the coast of Viti Levu, fishermen on the island, and the only lead that we had was a fisherman that offered to take us $500 one way. Our Fijian professor tried talking to some locals that he knew, and we were losing hope when my friend Will ran into a guy working at the zipline place who said he was from Vatulele and also turned out to be the nicest man alive. His name is Joe, and he did everything in his power to make sure that we had a great time getting out to Vatulele and seeing everything on the island. He talked to a bunch of his friends from his village and got a fisherman to do the boat transfers, in addition to drive us around for the three days that we were there to make sure that we could see everything we wanted. He was amazing. He and his son hung out with us for most of the time that we were there.

When we first got there on Sunday, we were exhausted from getting up at 5:30 in the morning to catch a bus out to Korolevu, where we met our fishing boat that took us to the island. Joe told us that the island was about 18 miles away, and luckily we had beautiful weather the entire time that we were there so that the boat trip from the mainland only took about an hour. The boat captain said there was one time when the weather was rough and a boat got off course and ran out of fuel, eventually drifting all the way to New Caledonia where they were very confused when we landed. We arrived at the island and were amazed by how beautiful the place was right away - it's a low lying coral an volcanic island with the clearest water that we've seen in Fiji so far (there were parts where we were in water about 40 feet deep and could still see exactly what was on the sea floor). We were led to a campsite in the forest right off of the beach, under a giant tree in an area that had been cleared out by some of the villagers. These people were incredibly generous and nice the entire time that we were there. Once we set up our tents, they gave us a giant tarp to lay our woven mat on, brought out the village's only generator to give us a lightbulb to find our way around at night, and brought a box filled with bugspray, papaya, and a handful of books that had been left there by some other travelers (a few cheesy looking political thrillers and a Nicholas Sparks novel that I somehow ripped through about 70 pages of). Once we were settled we made a bunch of tuna fish sandwiches, then napped while we waited to be summoned to go to the village to present our sevusevu. During this time I discovered the hundreds of massive black and white spiders that hung from giant webs all over the canopy (I saw a couple of webs that were about 3 feet in diameter), which I wish I had somehow not noticed. Anyways, a sevusevu is a sort of offering that is given to a local village whenever you visit or use their land; typically it's kava, which we bought a few bundles of (in the dried root form) before leaving Suva. After napping we went to the village, which was pretty nice in terms of Fijian villages since most of the buildings were built from concrete instead of metal sheeting. There were lots of puppies and pigs running all around, and people greeting us all over the place. The chief of the village was busy at the time, so we gave our gifts to Joe's brother to present to the chief so that we could go back and cook dinner before it got dark. We made a feast of hot dogs, baked beans, and corn, which was one of the best meals I've had in Fiji. We spent the night hanging out around our fire and having a few drinks before curling up in our tents and trying to get a few hours of sleep despite the mosquitos.

All of us after we climbed up into the giant tree in the center of our campsite.

We woke up at daybreak since a couple of the villagers were screaming at us to WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP, and we're not quite sure why. We had a breakfast of breakfast crackers with peanut butter, jelly, and cheese, and waited around for a couple of hours for the boat to show up to take us around. Joe told us that we had a lot of stuff to do today. We first drove around the tip of the island to see the resort, which was absolutely ridiculous. This is one view off of the boat.

Baby sea turtles that were being raised outside of the dive shop at the resort. The staff said that they picked them up a few months back, and would release them in December, when the baby turtles typically hatch and head out to sea. Sea turtles are protected in Fiji, but a couple of the boys talked to Joe who said that the village still went out and hunted turtles for special occasions where they were needed for a feast.

A rocky ledge by the beach. Like I said before, the water was clearer than anywhere I've seen before in Fiji.

One of the villas from the resort. This was on a cliff, overlooking the ocean and the beach.

Joe used to work at the resort before moving to the mainland, so he got to give us a brief tour of the resort. The place only has room for a maximum of 40 guests, and has a ratio of 4 staff to every guest. They were in a bit of a lull in the tourism season, and we only saw 2 other guests that were lounging on the beach - Cliff said that he thought it was Brian Westbrook and his girlfriend but I don't believe him.

The sand here was super white, and pretty blinding to look at after coming out of the woods.

The side of the island that we were camping on was low lying and sandy, but past the resort it turned into sheer cliffs. Joe said that it was because the island tilted, sending one side up and spilling all of the dirt onto the other side of the island. This is a picture of me and Will after we scrambled up onto a ledge in the cliff.

These are petroglyphs, ancient rock paintings on the face of the cliffs. They aren't restricted or anything - you can walk right up to them. They're dated at about 3,000 years old. The logo for the resort looks like these faces.

From the beach, we hiked up to a rock pool. This pool is an anchialine habitat, which occurs when a freshwater lens is still influenced by the tides to form brackish water a while away from the coast. It's very clear, still, and framed in by the cliffs.

This is why the pool is so important: it contains sacred red prawns, or uradamudamu. They are bright red, looking like they've been cooked. The island legend says that a long time ago, a beautiful princess (Yalewa-Ni-Cagi-Bula) from one of the villages on Vatulele was being courted by a young chief from Viti Levu. He brought her a gift of cooked prawns, which she scorned and in return threw him and his prawns off of a cliff. The prawns landed in the pool at the base of the cliff, where they came alive and still live today. The villagers are afraid to kill or harm them, and believe that if anyone tries to take the prawns away from their pool then they will be killed in a shipwreck.

None of us could get over how clear and beautiful the water was - it looks like pool water.

After checking out the prawns, we hiked a little further inland to go swimming in a deep cave that was connected to the prawn pool. We were instructed not to step on any of the rocks in the cave, for fear of stepping and crushing any of the prawns. The water was very cold, and very clear.

We hiked back around to the resort, where Joe took us in a shortcut through the forest to another cave where some of the boys and Sam leapt off of a rock into a pool of water. We then piled back into the boat, and went out to another island called Nookinooki, which is used for a picnic spot for people at the resort. It's a tiny set of white sand and spiky volcanic rock, and we took a break to eat our pack of biscuits, watch the hundreds of white butterflies and hermit crabs, and go swimming in this little cove.

Nichole and I, getting ready to go swimming. We got back to our campsite, took a quick shower that consisted of dumping a bucket of rainwater over our heads, and cooked a whole bunch of instant noodles since everybody was starving. A lot of us napped.

Later that night, a couple of the boys went spearfishing with the locals. Girls aren't really allowed to do anything cool like that. They caught long skinny trumpetfish (the most delicious), as well as red snapper and parrotfish. These were gutted and tossed straight onto the coals of our fire, then taken out and picked at by everybody. Some of our group went to drink kava with the locals, but I was exhausted and passed out in the tent very early.

I woke up at dawn that morning and took some pictures of the sunrise on the beach by our campsite. As you can see our beach was covered with seagrass, but it was still beautiful. We went to the village in the morning to buy tapa cloth, which is only made on Vatulele. It's made by peeling off the bark from a paper mulberry tree, beating it until it's soft, and painting it with dyes made from mangrove trees. I got a whole bunch for decorating the apartment next year (I think we'll have an interesting apartment - Ty's bringing classy things from Sicily, while I've got a bunch of crazy tribal Fijian things) and for gifts. These are probably my most favorite souvenirs since they're so special.

On our boat transfer back, we lazed around and took in the island for the last time. Joe's son brought back a puppy from the island, which was pretty scared during the transfer so we took turns cuddling it. Here he is napping on my chest while I'm taking a nap. This was definitely my favorite place in Fiji so far - the combination of the strange things there, how ridiculously beautiful the beach and water was, and how very few people get to visit here. When we got back to Suva we were all relieved to take a cold shower, get into some clean clothes, and go eat a big meal. Right now we're all getting ready for our moped trip tomorrow morning, so we'll be gone from home for another couple of days.

Done with Classes!

We finished up classes this week! For me this just meant doing a lot of end of term projects and lab reports, but some of my friends haven't fared so well. One of my friends found out Thursday evening that he had a field trip leaving at 5:30 the next morning (he had a test or something the next day, and the professor told him tough luck), in addition to a large essay and another group project due in a few days. Group projects are like having 3 regular assignments since it's impossible to try to get local students to work on stuff - some don't check their email, and others just don't want to do any work. Another friend found out that since their professor didn't show up to any of the lab sessions all semester, she has to carry out 5 labs on Monday and turn in reports for all of these. So I'm very grateful that I haven't had to put up with anything too terrible like that. I'm going to love Williams when I get back.

In celebration of finishing, here's a bunch of Fijian sentences that I've learned throughout the semester. Every class we go down a vocabulary list making sentences with the words going down the list, and I think my professor thinks I'm a bit off since I usually make strange sentences. Oh well. Remember: c = th, g = ng (soft), q = ng (hard), b = mb, d = nd, v = wv, j = ch, and r's are rolled.

O yau o gonevuli. I am a student.

Voseti au niu bera, tou sa tekivu. Sorry I'm late, let's start now.

Au yabaki ruasagavolukadua. I am 21 years old.

Sa uda na kaloko. It's 1 o'clock.

Na motoka i Catarina e ca. Katie's car isn't working.

Au a lako mai viti lai vaqara en dua na wati. I came to Fiji to find a husband. (I pulled out this gem for our oral exam which made my professor think I'm more than a little crazy, I think).

E na kania e ciwasagavulu na maqo. He will eat 90 mangoes.

Drau taleitaka na dalo tavuteke. You (addressing 2 people) like fried taro.

Na dausoko sa gunuva na mequ bia. The sailor drank my beer.

O a gunu vica na memu bia? How many beers have you drank?

Na noitou qasenivuli e cata na gonetagane lia lia. Our teacher hates the stupid boy.

Au a gunu loli vakasivia au sa tauvimate. I ate too much candy and now I'm sick.

Na luve ni manumanuvuka a lutu mai na nona sova. The baby bird fell from its nest.

Ni o sobu mai na basi, nanuma nomu ivola. When you get off the bus, remember your books.

Ke katakata na draki nimataka, keirau na lai sili i na uciwai. If the weather is hot tomorrow, we (two people, excluding you) will go swimming in the river.

O Ana e tukuna ni rui balavu na yavamu. Ana said your legs are too long.

Na kalavo levu vuko e a cici i na cakau, qai e a luvu i waitui. The big wise rat ran to the reef, then drowned in the sea.

Luvedaruyalewa e sivia nonavosa. Our daughter talks too much.

Au cata na noqu loya, e tamata lasu lasu. I hate my lawyer, he's a liar.

So na gauna e kata na siwa, so na gauna e sega. Sometimes the fish bites, sometimes it doesn't.

As you can see, I've learned many useful things that will help me if I'm ever stuck in a village. My exam should be interesting. Tomorrow we leave to camp on a beach on Vatulele for a few days - I'm extremely excited, since Vatulele is next to near impossible to get to and is a super interesting place. After that we're renting mopeds so that we can circumnavigate Viti Levu in a few days, then we've got a few days before exams start. My exams don't start until the end of the first week of exams - maybe I'll try to go off on a little adventure at the beginning of the week? I'm super excited, and still can't believe that I'm leaving kind of (sort of not really) soon.

Fiji Museum

I had a lot of stuff to do this week, but when one of my friends had to go to the Fiji Museum to take notes for a class I figured I'd come with to check things out. The museum itself is kind of funny - it's in this grand building, but the cards explaining everything are just printed out on normal paper with kind of off-English and little punctuation. They have a ton of interesting things there though. They had a special exhibit on body jewelry, where they had collections from the Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, and Rotuma (a little island that's part of Fiji but is geographically and pretty culturally isolated from the rest of the country). Here are some pictures!

A giant restored double-hulled canoe. These would house a number of sailors who would manage the giant oar that you see sticking up to the right of the canoe. The last big war canoe in Fiji was called the Ra Marama, and was used in the mid-1800s by Cakobau (who used it in wars to eventually crown himself the king of Fiji) before being beached and deserted upon his death.

This is interesting: the soles of shoes that belonged to the reverend Thomas Baker. Baker was on a trip trying to convert a particular tribe of Fijians to Christianity, when he was ambushed by the Colo hill people of Viti Levu and eaten. The soles of his shoes were the only thing that were inedible on his body, so they remained.

A killing stone. When a tribe won a battle (or wanted to eat missionaries), they would take the captives (uncooked humans referred to as bokola) and subject them to some ceremonies. Men would perform a war dance (cibi), girls would perform a dance (called wate) around the bokola, and young children were encouraged to torture the captives with sharpened sticks. Sometimes their tongue would be cut out. Eventually, their head would be placed in the groove on the stone, and then would be smashed in with a large wooden club. Cannibalism was pretty common, and Fijians believed that by eating their enemies, they would consume their mana or energy. Nasty business.