Weekend on the Coral Coast

Before I start this post, look at the last one - I updated it with pictures from my reef field trip for marine biology! I know you're pumped. Anyways...

This last weekend we went to the Beach House, a backpacker resort on the Coral Coast (the stretch of land to the west of Suva until around Sigatoka). It was really beautiful - at least, at high tide it was. There was a fringing reef right off of the island, so there was a few hundred yards of very flat reef extending out to the breakers. At low tide, this meant that all the sandy beach was exposed, and there was about a foot or two or water covering reef and seagrass from there on out. Some of us had the bright idea of going out through the reef to try to get to the deeper water to go swimming, but we just got stuck for an hour or so picking through the seagrass (where little crabs hid to clamp onto your feet and sea urchins were hidden by the grass), scattered rocks (where you usually kicked a rock or stubbed your toe on a rock or stepped on a rock or otherwise injured yourself on a rock), and crushed dead and live coral (where you cut your feet open on coral and had small stinging creatures sink into your feet). The whole place was pretty much a minefield of small things that didn't let getting stepped on and had painful defenses to prevent you from stepping on them. Our feet got chewed up, but I saw some really cool things - more starfish, some little fish, some really cool seashells, and nudibranchs! Very brightly colored tiny nudibranchs crawling around on the coral. I got very excited for this.

Picking our way around the coral. It was painful and sucked. I got a cut on the bottom of my foot that I didn't notice the day I got it (I was too busy dealing with the sting I got in my other foot that caused it to cramp up a few times so I was a little preoccupied with death concerns), but the next morning I definitely noticed it when I woke up and had a painful swollen cut that was filled with sand grains from the day before. I had to pick out the sand with a shoot of grass. That sucked too. All better now though thanks to antibacterial soap and tons of neosporin.

I stole this picture from my friend Emily - it's of four of us getting out of the water by a big swing that had been set up off of a palm tree. The first day we were there was beautiful and sunny and gave amazing colors to everything like in this picture, but of course I was too lazy to take any pictures until the next day when it was cloudy, so most of my pictures suck in comparison. The dog in the picture is Lucy, the coolest dog ever. Lucy would come out with us when we went out on the reef and would walk around looking at everything under the water. She would go on walks with us along the beach, and when I woke up Sunday morning she was laying outside of the door to our dorm, where she looked up at me, got up, and walked right inside the door to lay down and watch everyone until they woke up.

A boat that was beached a low tide but could be taken out at high tide. I want to ask my Fijian professor what this means!

View of the beach from my spot where I was napping in the trees. Beautiful white sand - I filled up a water bottle with it and brought it home, so now the hermit crabs got an upgrade in their housing from the dark volcanic sand they had before.

Me trying to pry out the coconut meat from a bu (green coconut, although that also means grandmother depending on the context) that one of the staff members already macheted open. I didn't like coconut too much at first, but now I'm started to love it. I think it's because I like working to claw out food from something like a little animal? Maybe? I don't know but I'm started to get obsessed with opening and consuming coconuts (not so much the juice though).

This week sucks. Lab reports, labs, and I need to study a lot so that I'm not screwed for all of the midterms I have next week. People are going a few different places for the long Easter weekend (we get this Friday and the next Monday off, so four day weekend woooo) and I would really like to get out of Suva and take a fun trip somewhere. A couple of us are thinking of going diving on the northern part of the island which would be really sweet. We'll see how work goes, but posts will most likely be pretty sparse over the next week or so.

Octopus and Creepers

Yesterday we went out to a reef on a small island off of Suva for my marine biology lab. We got thrown off of the boat and spent a few hours wading around, laying out a couple of lines and counting and measuring the live coral along each one. We were in knee deep water the whole time...so much for trying to not ruin my sneakers, but it was worth it. I spent the whole time splashing around looking at the many types of fish and animals and other cool things there.

Thanks to my friend that I made in lab that day, Lilly, I now have pictures!

You can't really see the color all that well, but there were a bunch of these deep blue starfish everywhere. I was very excited.

Me being overly excited and a little deranged-looking over a big clam shell that another girl in my group (Muni, she's the one crouched down actually doing work next to me) found. There were also red sea urchins everywhere, and although most of what we were walking on was dead coral, there were some really cool live ones (including a big fanned out sponge that was super sticky when you touched it). There were pockets of tiny brightly colored (mostly blue) fish around the few live corals that we found.

A banded octopus! I saw something moving around and watched it slink over the rocks for a while, changing colors to blend in with everything, and when I stepped closer to it it flashed its banded pattern, so I gave it some room. So cool!

Me, Lilly, and Lilly's friend Mere on the boat ride back from the reef to campus. This was my first trip to a reef in Fiji so I was really happy.

Today we had Fijian, where we spent the first hour pestering our professor with many questions because we didn't really feel like doing actual work. We found out that he speaks all dialects of Fijian (there are over 300), Samoan, Tongan, some languages spoken in the Solomon Islands, French, Russian, and German. So he's pretty much a boss. We also found out that Fijians have a different sense of eating...as in they say that you drink mangos, pineapples, and other juicy fruits. So, if I told someone that I ate a mango, that would be wrong. Also, Fijian ideas on family are very different. You consider all of your cousins your brothers and sisters, and male and female cousins that are related as parallel cousins (if they are related through their mother's sister, or through their father's father), interaction between these two cousins is forbidden. As in, they're not supposed to speak to each other or even be in the same room. Fijian fathers are not typically the ones that raise their own children; instead, discipline is handled by the mother's brother, who serves as the main authority figure in the family. It's very, very different. Our professor made it sound like this was pretty common, especially outside of the cities. Another not so fun thing I learned in class is that we have 2 midterms (a written and an oral exam) the week between Easter and spring break. This doesn't bode well for me, since I already have 3 midterms that week, so now I have 5 exams in 4 days. I guess this is payback for me never really having to do work here? It won't be anything like exam periods at Williams but I still think it's going to suck pretty bad.

Last night I got an email from the international office saying that I got a package in the mail! I knew my mom was sending me some stuff but I didn't think it would be here for a while so I was super excited. I went downtown after class this afternoon and went and picked up my two boxes. I had to open them up in front of customs people so they could see that I wasn't being shipped drugs or guns, and the workers were very interested in what I was doing in Suva alone as a small white girl. My mom sent me many wonderful things, including enough sunscreen to last me a lifetime and cocoa butter and aloe for all the sunburns that I still inevitably get, socks, and American magazines. I was very very happy to get things from home and cried a tiny bit thinking about how these boxes had been in Ashby not too long ago...thanks a lot mom.

Now, with two fairly sized boxes, I had to decide whether to take a taxi (convenient) or a bus (cheap with loud music) home. I figured I'd man up and go with the bus, which was a poor decision this particular afternoon. I had an older Indian man sit behind me, who immediately started asking me where I was from, where I was living in Suva, what I was doing here, etc. I could have dealt with this, but he then started demanding if I was Christian, and upon hearing my answer started trying to recruit me to the 7th Day Adventist church in town, being so helpful as to draw me out a map of where it was, asking me to come with him to services because he was looking for a WIFE, and explaining how my soul will be damned if I don't seek God soon. Of course this was the day that we got stuck in a lane of traffic where a bus right in front of us broke down, so the trip home took an extra 15 minutes as our driver tried to back up our bus into another lane of traffic. I was very pissed because he was ruining my usual happy trip of sitting on a bus with no windows in sunny weather with island hip hop blaring through the speakers. But, I got home in one piece with my wonderful boxes, so I can't be too upset.

We're going away to a beach on the Coral Coast for the weekend, hooray! We'll get back sometime on Sunday and I'll probably have pictures then to split up the obnoxious amounts of text I've been posting lately..

Good Start to the Day

I woke up this morning thinking I was being shot at with a gun by 4 Fijian men arguing in my room. Turns out the outdoor bathroom outside of my room (it's all concrete and creepy so I don't mess around with it) had water leaking under the floor, so a maintenance crew was out here at 7am using a jackhammer (and presumably bickering over how to use the jackhammer) literally right outside of my door. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that no one had running water yesterday, a fact that made me flat out panic after I returned drenched in sweat after my run (luckily the boys' apartment had a trickle of water coming out of their shower so I worked with that). Anyways, they've been hanging out all day in the shade and cracking coconuts open, occasionally chiseling away at the concrete. I brought out a pitcher of cold water as a peace offering, so hopefully they'll leave soon without much more earsplitting noise. Our entire back hill has also been getting mowed for the last two days, because they don't have lawnmowers here (at least, I haven't seen one yet) so the entire thing is done with weedwhackers. These aren't too quiet either. It isn't that annoying though since I'm not hanging out in my room all that much, and I do appreciate people trying to prevent the looming jungle from overtaking our yard.

Nothing too special going on so far this week - lab reports, labs (I think I'm going to a reef tomorrow for marine biology, which would be sweet), classes, etc. I tried changing my blog preferences to Fijian, but unfortunately blogger does not include Fijian in their list of about 50 options. Shocking. I went downtown today and bought a soccer ball, pump, and a pair of cheap cleats, so I'll start playing soon (probably by myself since I don't really see women exercising here, and especially not playing soccer). Maybe I'll weasel my way into some of the pickup games that I see guys playing most afternoons. Anyways getting cleats was kind of funny, the salesman and I spent a lot of time basically trying to figure out which shoe had the smallest size (they only had men's cleats, surprising). So now I have a pair in 4 1/2 mens. The guy selling me everything was looking at me pretty strangely so I'm guessing they don't have too many small white girls popping in and buying a bunch of soccer gear all that often. We're thinking of going to a hostel on the Coral Coast this weekend if the weather holds out. It got back to the regular searing hot sun and humidity yesterday, so hopefully that'll keep up - I was getting sick of torrential downpours all last week.

The Best Form of Procrastination

Last night we had our weekly potluck dinner. It was delicious as always.

Some of our food.

The boys messing around.

Today I woke up early to study more for my Fijian test (for some reason last night studying while having some kava didn't do wonders for my knowledge of the language); it ended up being an open book test so it really wasn't bad at all. Since my invertebrate bio class was cancelled for the day, I had to find a way to spend the afternoon. I sure as hell wasn't going to spend it doing work (why would I do homework in Fiji?) so I decided that today would be the day that I would get myself a pet (or two, or three...) so I went downtown to run errands, one of them buying a plastic cookie jar. Once I got back I went for a run to make sure it was low tide, then went back later with Cliff and Eli to pick up some....I know the suspense is unbearable.

Taa-daa! Hermit crabs! Okay so they're not the coolest things in the world. And they don't do much other than scrabble around trying to climb things and waving their antennae around. But I love hermit crabs and they're everywhere and I had a bunch when I was little and they're low maintenance and I miss having pets. I went down to Suva Point (if you call low tide mudflats with trash washed up everywhere I guess this would qualify as a beach), filled up my cookie jar with sand and shells and coral and picked up 5 hermit crabs. The boys got me a couple, including a teeny tiny one about the size of a grain of rice (I'm calling him Mr. Claw). The other 4 are Pinchy, Scuttlefuzz, Jerry, and Ted, although those names may be subject to change. I would point out which ones are which but that's boring for anyone reading this.

I painted their container. It reads "Hermit Estates", a prestigious community for any hermit crab to live in. There's also a palm tree and an ocean painted to the right of this. My artistic skills are clearly very advanced and I'm also losing my mind a little, I think...I miss having pets. I hope I can keep these guys alive long enough and that they don't try to have hermit crab wars between each other. They've had a tiring day of running around bumping into each other and trying to climb the seaglass and coconut shell bits that I stuck in there, so hopefully they'll be too tired to fight for at least another day.

Pacific Harbour and Bad Weather

On Friday, a couple of the boys and I had planned on going to visit our housekeeper (Marama, but she insists we call her "Mom") in her village about 3 hours north of here. I got super excited! But then we got up Saturday morning and found out that Mom's sister was visiting in Nadi so she had to go there and we would have to wait to go see her village until another weekend.

At this point in the day I was freaking out, because I needed to get out of Suva really bad. The weather report for the day didn't look good, but we decided to pile into a minibus anyways and go out to a resort on the coral coast (Pacific Harbour) where everyone in the program stayed during their pre-orientation trip. Since everybody got to know the staff and stuff there at that point, they were cool with us coming in and hanging out by the pool and the beach for the afternoon. It was a nice beach, nothing special, but still pretty. And it was low tide so sand dollars were scattered all over the beach.

Some of the many shells I picked up at the beach. My shell collection is going to have a really big section for Fiji by the time I get back! We probably grabbed about a hundred sand dollars - I'm keeping a bunch for myself, but the boys want to take some and paint them so that we have chips for playing poker, haha. The large conch shell on the left still had something dead in there I think, because this morning our porch smelled like low tide. Ew. I had checked it thoroughly beforehand - I found a couple other conches on the beach, but they had animals still inside them so I poked them to make sure they were still alive and threw them back in the ocean.

It started raining when we had a couple hours left at the beach, which was a shame. We had the minibus driver come back, pick us up, and take us home, where everybody showered and then we immediately went out to our favorite indian restaurant (Copper Chimney) and had a huge dinner together. I got a tandoori chicken pizza that tasted a whole lot like barbeque chicken pizza back home...so good. We came back to our house and watched movies, while I fingerpainted some decorations for my door:

The little squares say "Annelise's Room". Because people here don't call me Iggy. It's weird. But now I've got a lizard and a bunch of bugs guarding my room. I think it makes it look like an 8 year old boy lives there, but it's much better than my old plain green door.

It rained all night last night, and all morning this morning, so today looks like it'll be spent inside. I've got to do some schoolwork (for the first time in a month)...Fijian test tomorrow and a couple of lab reports this week, so we'll see how all of that goes.

Photo Catch Up

Since I've been lazy with this blog lately, here's some pictures from our time trapped indoors for the hurricane...

Picture of the sky on the night before Tomas was supposed to hit. My little camera didn't quite capture how purple the sky was, it was actually pretty creepy.

One afternoon when we were all feeling stir crazy, a couple of the boys went out and got coconuts and taught me how to open one. My technique consisted of me hacking at the thing for 10 minutes with a machete, but I was eventually successful. Coconut is delicious, which should be a good motivator for me to learn how to get better at doing this.

A fat pot of indian turmeric rice that Arti showed us how to make another afternoon. This stuff is addictive, and I'm making it a lot once I get home.

We moved a bunch of mattresses downstairs in my house to hole up for the week. The space in the middle is where mine used to be (I moved it out on the last day because I needed some space) - our housekeeper came in and made all of these beds, but skipped over mine in my room. She does this a lot, I can't tell if she doesn't like me or something, but it's funny.

Chilis that I bought at the market. I've resolved to use these in anything I cook this week. I came home late after St. Patrick's Day festivities (we hit up the one Irish bar in Suva - O'Reillys - it was an interesting way to spend the holiday) and idiot me tried making noodles with these things, which resulted in me getting pepper juice in my nose and mouth and eyes and having to dunk my face into a bowl of milk to extinguish the fire on my face. Hopefully next time I try cooking with these I'll be a little bit more successful.

Not quite sure what the plans are for the weekend - we wanted to get out and go to a beach, but the weather is looking crummy so that might have to be postponed for another weekend. We'll see. I need to get out of the city though!

Waste of a Week (But at Least We're Alive)

The cyclone ended up jumping east right before reaching Viti Levu, so we didn't get much of anything. All of the islands east of us got totally messed up, sadly, but Suva is fine. We all went stir crazy from being cooped up inside (there was a curfew in effect for a few days so nothing was open and we couldn't leave our apartments) for so long, there were a bunch of branches down, but all we got was a pretty windy and rainy weekend. Classes were cancelled until Thursday, which is messing up a lot of peoples schedules. We've spent the last four days just sitting around, watching movies, playing games, cooking, and talking about how boring it is to be stuck indoors. I pretty much have done nothing for a week now, and I don't feel good about it. I need to catch up on school work and working out tomorrow so I feel better. Hopefully we'll do some fun stuff this weekend if the weather gets back to its normal sunny self, and I'll have more to write about than being bored, although I'm grateful that we didn't get hit as hard as other parts of the country.