An Afternoon Off

Good news! I've spoke with all of my professors about the leaving early for my job and they sounded like it would be fine for me to take my exams early, which is very encouraging. Also, my mom emailed me and she's getting a ticket to come and visit! I was bummed out when I first got here because I found out that everyone had relatives visiting them, but now I've got one too. I'm excited to run around and figure out stuff for her to do when she gets here, where to go, what to see, etc. Yay!

On another note, the game that I was supposed to play in yesterday got cancelled - big surprise. I just went and played pickup soccer with a bunch of indian guys again. Our bathroom faucet stopped working, and we realized that our fridge no longer makes things cold, so we kind of need some home repairs coming up. This weekend for 3 nights there are a series of socials at USP - last night was the Fijian social, so some of my friends bought traditional Fijian clothing and went. Tonight there's an unthemed social with everyone at the Vodafone arena, and Saturday is an Indian social, so there's a lot going on.

Nichole, Eli, Kirsten, and Cliff at the social. The guys are just in bula shirts and sulus, while the girls are wearing sulus and jabas. I showed up late in a nighty (it's a complicated story - I wasn't planning on going out right at that moment) and we all ended up going out to the bars wearing this ridiculous clothing. We got whooped at a lot, definitely for looking like idiots, but it was a lot of fun.

All week the country has been freaking out because this weekend is the Coke Games - a national championship for track and field for high school students. Students from all over Fiji have been pouring into Suva and are training at the National Stadium right down the road. The bars have been absolutely nuts the last couple of nights with this many people being in the city, and at night the streets are just crawling with people and barbecue stands and all sorts of stuff. It's kind of crazy but a lot of fun.

Earlier today some of my friends and I skipped out on afternoon classes and went to Colo-i-Suva again, the national park with nice hiking and lots of rockpools linked by waterfalls that you can go swimming and diving in. It was a wicked hot day (this week the sun came back out and we're all much happier for it) so it was great to get to go splash around in cool mountain water. Tonight should be fun again with everyone in town.

Pizza Hut Challenge

This week I've spent playing a lot of soccer with my new friend, Adi. Today we spent the afternoon running around to what seemed like everywhere in downtown Suva - to the national soccer office so I could pick up some registration papers, to a hotel to meet her mother who works as a maid there, to one store to get passport photos for soccer, another store to pick up bandaids for the many wounds that have appeared on my feet in the last few weeks (the crappy Fijian bandaids don't really stick on, but I found some foam Band-Aid brand ones that I will be using sparingly since they're so damn expensive), and finally to go play soccer again down on the school fields. I also tried running our fitness test...hoo baby that was rough. Spring testing times may be just a wee bit unimpressive - Mich and Lacey you've been warned. Adi says there's a game on Thursday, which is very exciting. I'm guessing it'll probably get cancelled or postponed or something though, given how Fiji generally works.

After running around all day, skipping lunch and exercising a bunch, I was very excited to come home and hear that tonight the boys had decided to do a pizza eating contest. This is something that had been discussed for a while - last night we even went to have dinner at a new pizza place in town just to scope out the place (pizza was decent but it was too expensive for an eating contest). So we decided on pizza hut, since they have a special for a large pepperoni pizza for $12. Cheese is more expensive...don't ask why. So we all grabbed a bus and went downtown - Cliff, Eli, Edgar, Joel, Danny and I were all participating in the contest, while some of the other people in the Australearn program came along to have dinner and laugh at us. We all got a our own large pepperoni pizza and didn't race for time, just quantity. My strategy involved stacking two slices together to form a pizza sandwich - I figured psychologically it would help me, along with eating the largest pieces first and working my way down. Danny ripped through his pizza while running around talking to people and being goofy, and I fought through my pizza, eventually finishing it even though the last baby pieces were a true struggle. Eli finished his, but then immediately got up and puked so that kind of sours things. No one else finished! I wasn't too full, but my throat just didn't want any more pizza hut pizza and refused to keep swallowing near the end which made things a bit more difficult. I don't really like pizza hut or pepperoni on pizza, so it was bad. I drank a large fanta and came home and had some ice cream to try and soothe my throat.

The champions! Danny looking like he could eat another pizza while I sit and think long and hard about what I've done.

I'm realising that I just wrote a detailed post about me being a fatass and doing the least Fijian thing possible. Ah well. I'll do something more legitimate later this week.

"I am in love with today..."

-As said by my lovely roommate Nichole. That was on Sunday, when it was rainy all day and everyone just spent the day curled up inside watching movies and cuddling. Saturday was very similar. Overall it was a good weekend to just relax and take care of little things after running off on adventures for the last few weeks. Sunday night we had a pot luck that inadvertently consisted of comfort foods - I spent the afternoon making chicken pot pies that are now stocking out fridge for the rest of the week. On a healthier note, I also acquired the communal blender for a little while, so I've been making smoothies at every opportunity.

A lot of people have been sick over the last week or so. It's probably everybody's body punishing them for not sleeping enough and being in sketchy places over spring break and easter break and everything. I had my little 24 hour fever last Wednesday, but now I've been coughing and sneezing since then, which will hopefully go away soon. It's been interfering with my sleep - I woke up this morning at 4:30, so I'm creepily writing this in the dark in my living room. I've also got what started out as a tiny blister on my foot but has grown into a big infected thing, which is pretty unfortunate. It's about the size of a penny now and despite my efforts to drain it a few times and pack it with neosporin and wash it several times a day with protex, is not looking any better. A lot of people are having similar problems that all start out the same way, with tiny little cuts on the feet that progress into terrible things. Hopefully this will all go away soon.

On a lighter note, I found people to play soccer with! Yesterday I went out to kick the ball around with Eli and Kirsten (usually I just go and be a loser by myself and juggle before doing a sprint workout) and had a skinny Fijian girl run up to us and ask if we were playing with any teams here. She was pretty interesting - her name is Andy, and she played with guys her whole life, playing for the Fijian national team until she graduated from USP and moved to Australia where she's working as an engineer (or something like that). We talked for a while and she said we should meet up this week so I can fill out some paperwork so I can play with a team, very exciting. We then played a little pickup game with a bunch of Fijian guys that was pretty much a mud bath that went until way after dark - it was really fun though. I'm really happy - it only took me a couple months, but I've got something figured out now. For now though, I'm going to try to get a couple hours of sleep in before lab...we're going out to collect marine invertebrates in a mangrove swamp, so I should probably rest up so I've got enough energy to chase after clams and snails.

First Illness, and Some Good News

Tuesday night I went to bed shivering uncontrollably, and despite my best efforts, woke up early Wednesday morning in a cold sweat feeling not so hot. I tried going to lab, but when my professor saw me curled up in my lab coat in the corner trying to stay awake he said I looked terrible and sent me home. So I came down with the first fever (or illness of any kind for that matter) since I got here. I made it two months before it happened, so I figure that's a victory. A bunch of people got sick for a couple days after returning from break - I'm guessing the traveling and lack of sleep was catching up to everyone. But, things balanced themselves out when I got home and found out that I had gotten one of my internships! After receiving rejection email after rejection email for the last few weeks I was starting to lose faith, but it all worked out. I've got a position of a research intern at the Southwest National Primate Research Center, where I'd be working under Dr. Patrice Frost, who is a specialist in primate medicine. I am so excited! All I have to do now is try to sweet talk my professors/the administration here to letting me go home two weeks early (the last three weeks of our stay here is dedicated to studying and exams, so this shouldn't be too hard) and I'll be sending my summer in San Antonio. We'll see how this goes!

In other news, I chopped four or five inches off of my hair. Well I didn't, but Nichole did. My hair was getting way too long and raggy to deal with in the heat, and now that it's short it's much easier to deal with. People that haven't seen me since I got here probably won't notice since it looks about the same as it did around when I left, but every time I pull it back in a ponytail I wonder where all of my hair went.

I'm all better now, and looking forward to spending a weekend with everyone in Suva. It feels like it's been forever since we just hung out with everyone and had the weekend to laze around and take care of the many things that get procrastinated around here. We're having people over our house tonight for a cocktail party before heading out which should be fun.

Heading Back

Sunday morning, we woke up and hung around for a couple hours listening to the loud singing from a church down the street before getting on the boat to head back to Suva.

The ride back was pretty much the same as the first, except it was raining most of the time instead of gorgeous and sunny. Our terrible movie selections included 2012: Doomsday and some other crap concerning volcanoes. At night I snuck up to first class with a couple friends since first class consists of padded benches where you can actually lay down and sleep, which was a total luxury after trying to get comfortable in our seats. We got back in to Suva around 6am, at which point I studied for a few hours for a Fijian oral exam that was then moved to Friday...of course.

I wish we got to spend more time on Taveuni. I didn't even have time to go diving, which was one of the main attractions of coming here, but there was a lot of cool stuff here to check out just for the three days that we were there. The group of Americans with the Wisconsin program went to an island called Qamea where they saw banded iguanas, so I absolutely have to come back to check that out. Despite the 0 amount of sleep that I got and the heat and humidity without fans or mosquito coils, I think that this was my favorite place in Fiji. It's not touristy at all, it's beautiful, and everything is genuine. I really loved getting to come here for a few days, but I'm definitely coming back later in my stay here.

Taveuni Day Three: International Date Line

By the time we got back to Wairiki from Lavena, everyone was just about dead from getting no sleep the night before, so a monster nap time was in order. When we woke up we went to go see what I think is a totally sweet attraction in Taveuni: the international date line. The date line actually kinks out to keep all of Fiji within the same time zone (back when it was colonized by Britain, plantation owners would try to argue about the time zone differences so that their Fijian workers wouldn't get a Sunday off of work), but this is the site of the 180 degree meridian which the date line follows except when it moves around little islands, like Fiji. The guide book said to just head out along the road and we would find a sign under a metal roof, so we went for a walk. We weren't finding any signs, so we shouted out to a family sitting on the stoop of their house by the shore, asking them if they knew where it was.

A little girl scampered out and dusted off some leaves and dirt to reveal...this thing. Just a little 2 inch in diameter metal circle stamped into the ground. So, it was 24 hours later on one side than the other. I tried to get a bunch of pictures of us doing cheesy touristy stuff around it, but the family just couldn't figure out how to use my camera by holding the button down for long enough, so no fun pictures there.

The next day, another group of American students that had been other places on the island went up a little side road and found this:

The actual date line sign. It had been knocked over by the cyclone, but it was certainly there. It reads "Taveuni Island: Where everyday begins....and where everyday ends". I want to come back to Taveuni specifically to get a picture with this damn thing since we couldn't find it the first time.

After recovering with food and sleep, a few of us went out to visit the other American students who were staying in a much prized air conditioned motel room. We all hung out and had a few drinks before heading back for the night...actually I curled up on the floor watching a champions league game, and had the best night's sleep of the whole trip sleeping on wooden floor boards. It was great.

Taveuni Day Two: Waterfalls and the Beauty of Educational Fundraisers

I woke up this morning to find that my crummy $5 tennis shoes that I brought along for hiking had disappeared from the front porch overnight. The same thing had happened to a couple of my friends at Nananu-i-ra with a clear culprit: dogs, or na koli. So, I spent some time wandering around the property looking for my shoes. The owner and a couple other people staying with her were really sweet and helped me look around, and we found one shoe under the house. We had to leave at this point to catch an early bus, but fortunately I found the other shoe down at the end of the driveway, covered in mud, so I rejoiced.

We got on the bus to head to Lavena, a town on the eastern side of Taveuni. If there were roads that allowed us to cut across the island this would probably only take about a half hour, but since there's only one road along the coast of the island this took about 2 or 3 hours. We saw even more cyclone damage on the ride over, with uprooted trees, tons of debris on the dirt road, and power lines laying around everywhere.

A small village we passed by along the way. It's hard to believe that houses like this could stand up to a cyclone.

Once we arrived in Lavena, we realized that the road happens to end in Lavena. It apparently picks back up again at the southern tip of the island, but if you want to go anywhere in between your only hope is to do some hiking. Anyways, we talked to the manager of the lodge where we were planning on staying, who revealed that she didn't really have a room for us to stay but she could set up some tents and mattresses for us so we agreed to that. The place was right next to the village, and we later found out that the lodge had been set up by the Peace Corps in an attempt to try to train villagers in tourism and hospitality management so that they could get jobs. Once we were settled, we got a guide to take us on the Lavena coastal walk along the shore to get to a waterfall in the forest.

On our way along the coastal walk. It was very beautiful the whole way, which is getting to be pretty standard wherever I go in this country. Our guide told us that one of the beaches we passed by was where the second Blue Lagoon movie was filmed, so there's a fun fact.

There were a bunch of rock pedestals on the flats during low tide, which were really cool. I went out and scrambled up one and got stuck so Eli had to help me get off of the damn rock. I saw some prawns in the tidal pools which was thrilling.

A walking bridge to cross a river between two ridges. The guide told us that this reminded him of Indian Jones, haha.

Finally, the waterfall! It took about 2 hours to hike up to it. You have to swim up a riverbed to get to it, so this was as close as my camera was getting to it. Again, my friends with waterproof cameras will unknowingly contribute pictures to this blog once they get posted. There were two waterfalls: one short one, and one very tall one, that emptied into a very deep pool fenced in by craggy black rock. This is part of Bouma national park, a huge park that takes up a considerable amount of the island. The park has a lot of other natural attractions but unfortunately we weren't staying long enough to see everything.

We spent a couple of hours playing around in the waterfalls. The boys jumped off of the higher of the two (our guide later told us that it was 45 feet tall), but I wasn't messing around with that. All of the girls jumped off of a smaller rock face by the shorter waterfall, which still seemed awfully high up once you were standing on top of it. Unfortunately I lost my bracelet that Lizzy gave me from Turkey, which was a bummer since I've been wearing that since I got here. On the way out we found a frog that the guide said was named dreli in Fijian, and he also said that it was a rare species. It jumped off of its spot on the rock wall and was floating downstream, so I picked it up and carried it to a nicer mossy ledge where it could escape onto solid ground if it wanted to.

After hiking back, we all showered and grabbed dinner. A few of my friends ordered dinner from some of the villagers, which turned out to be delicious, if not a little interesting since everyone got a whole fish (with eyes, scales, fins, everything) along with dalo or cassava, chow instant noodles, and these amazing dalo leaf and coconut cream patties that I need to figure out how to make. After dinner, we were invited to a fundraiser in the village for their school, which mostly consisted of singing and dancing and drinking lots of kava. I'm amazed by how everyone here seems to have a good singing voice, especially the men.

This gathering was very large, with the whole village turning out. If you look closely I'm on the right of the center pole, drinking kava. We all sat on palm frond mats under a sheet metal roof, and the different parts of the village were separated with everyone wearing their own colors and banners. The fundraiser consisted of having each group getting up and singing and dancing around the whole structure, eventually making their way up to the front where they would deposit money into the bucket for the school. It was very interesting and a lot of fun. I actually talked to the chief of the village for a while (I had no idea he was the chief so I hope I didn't say anything offensive) about the school - it turns out that they only built it in January. Before then, all of the children had to get up at 3 or 4am to walk and catch an early bus to Bouma, which is 7km away, and then walk back home in the evening. He also said that the village had had a handful of homes swept away by the cyclone, but thankfully no one had died or gotten hurt.

As soon as our group of girls sat down, we were overwhelmed by small Fijian girls wanting to play. It was pretty apparent that adults don't really spend too much time with the children, and that the young ones are pretty much raised by the older kids, so it must have been fun for them to have some attention from adults for once.

My roommate Kirsten, playing the pinchy hand game where you pinch the skin on the back of another's hand and shake the whole procession up and down. I wasn't a big fan of this one since little Fijian fingers hurt when pinching intensely. The little girls were big fans of hand clapping games, like the ones that we played when we were little. Kirsten and Natalie knew a lot of these games but I had forgotten them all, so I had to have the Fijian kids teach me them. They all thought it was funny that I sucked at them. They were also fascinated by my digital camera, and loved looking at their own pictures after I took them.

I stayed up for a while drinking kava with Cliff and some Fijians after the children all went to bed, and we eventually got tired too and headed back to our lodge. This was the worst night ever, and I didn't sleep at all. I started out trying to sleep in the tents, which were roughly 200 degrees. I then moved out to sleep on a tarp outside of the tents, which got dropped after I kept having bugs crawl up my sulu and all over my legs. Next, I tried sleeping on a mattress on the floor of the lobby, but was getting eaten alive by mosquitos. I ended my night sitting up watching the sunrise, which was very pretty, but didn't really help my lack of sleep. With the sunrise all of the mosquitos were replaced by swarms of flies, which apparently weren't a problem until after the cyclone came through. No one slept well that night, so we all spent the morning waiting for the bus to come by to take us back to Wairiki. I laid out on the beach with Nichole, and we had a couple of Fijian girls come by with a large bucket filled with hermit crabs - I asked them in broken Fijian if they were going to eat them, to which they grinned and nodded. I can't imagine hermit crabs taste too good. We walked back with the girls along the beach, having tickle fights along the way and helping them climb up palm trees. I attempted to climb up a slanted palm that they had been running up on two feet, but I couldn't make it more than a couple of steps. I'm convinced that all Fijian children are born with the natural ability to just SCALE EVERYTHING. It's ridiculous.