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.

Mamanucas: Mana Island

This last weekend, we went out to the Mamanucas, a tiny cluster of islands on the Western side of Viti Levu. The Mamanucas and Yasawas are extremely touristy islands - very few villages were there before tourism set in, since none of them have fresh water available - and they are very beautiful, like what people think of when they think of Fiji. They are immune to the rainy weather that befalls most of the mainland. We spent 2 nights on Mana island, at a backpacker resort that was filled mostly with annoying gap year Europeans that were looking to get drunk and spend all of their day on the beach. I've grown to have a real distaste for tourists here; spending a lot of money to get all the way to Fiji and then not seeing anything real seems like a waste. The island had 2 backpacker places and a giant 5-star resort, which despised the backpackers. It was funny when we first got there - the backpacker director told us to go into the resort grounds and poke around as much as we wanted, swim in their pool, go to their restaurant, use their laundry facilities, etc...they really didn't like the resort either. Some of my friends got kicked out from the pool the second day we were there. There was also a settlement that sprung up to house the families of the workers at the accomodations, which mostly surrounded our hostel. They had many stray dogs (including an adorable tiny puppy that lived by the building we were staying in) and a fat black and white pig that surprised me by walking through the "internet bure" one morning after breakfast. He was very friendly and mostly snuffled around making little hog noises by the sand, although he was a little too eager to nibble on my fingers.

On the first night a few of us went to the western tip of the island to see the sunset. It wasn't that great, but we got to see some of the other islands nearby. Fun fact: the one on the far left is the island where the movie Castaway was filmed. I went diving on a reef break near here on the second day; the site was named Seven Sisters, after the seven coral heads that you drift around on the dive. There was nothing special on the dive - just a bunch of coral and fish. I've definitely been spoiled by the diving here. I didn't have any issues with my head exploding this time though, which was a definite plus.

A little white wedding chapel in the big resort, looking right out onto the sea. The garden next to it had metal plates engraved with the names of everyone who had been married there. Very sweet. The resort had special honeymoon bures out on stilts over the water, and a grass airstrip and helicopter pad, so I'm guessing a decent amount of people get married here.

On the second morning there some of us decided to hike up the tallest peak on the island (there were a few steep hills). A few of us girls ditched the boys, but couldn't find the path, so we bushwhacked our way to the top through six foot high grass. It was really funny trying to get a group of four girls to scale a steep hill covered in thick grass but we succeeded. The cross was on the top of the peak. After returning from diving on the second day there, I could see the little winding path we made from out at sea and burst out laughing by myself on the boat.

The view from the highest peak. We were extremely gross and sweaty when we got there, but the view was worth it. It wasn't an especially sunny morning so the colors aren't too vivid, but you can get the idea of how beautiful it was.

After hiking up the mountain/large hill, we followed a real trail this time to the other side of the island were Survivor: Fiji was filmed a few years back. This is the set of where the tribal council would meet to throw people off. It was trashed inside - probably locals from the only settlement on the island taking materials for building. There were a lot of other structures all around the area, which was pretty cool. It seems strange that they set up the show on an island with resorts on it already instead of one of the hundreds of uninhabited islands in Fiji, but whatever. The backpacker director kept referring to the beach on this side as "survivor bitch" because of his accent, which had a lot of us snickering during our welcome speech.

On the second day I ran with a couple of the boys up one of the smaller hills to get a view of the sunset. Unfortunately a line of storm clouds was stopping the sun from touching the water, but it was still very beautiful.

More sunset. So pretty.

That night we decided to pass on the birthday party being held for one of the backpackers and opted instead to take some drinks and sulus out to the survivor bitch to have a bonfire right by the old survivor set. It started out as a little fire, with everybody just chilling out. After a little while some british kids from a rival bonfire across the beach started drunkenly yelling about yanks and iraq. We decided to do the American thing and build it into a 30 foot bonfire to let them know the business. They shut up after that. We spent the night drawing artwork in the sand, scampering around and exploring while the stray dogs on the island lazed around, occasionally tearing down the beach barking or starting fights with the crabs scuttling around at night. We stayed out until around 3 or 4 in the morning, letting the fire die down and cuddling up on our network of sulus. I fell asleep listening to the sound of little crabs clicking at each other from their holes in the sand. I woke up when everyone else was packing up our few materials to head in since it had gotten windier and a bit chilly. I think this was one of my favorite times spent in Fiji so far.

This is the last week of classes, so there's a lot of work to be done before the end. Then we have a week off for "study break", which will be spent traveling around Fiji. We've got a lot of great plans, and we'll see what falls through and what ends up actually happening. I can't believe we have only a month left, and there's so much more that I want to see and do...for now though I've got to do work for the first time all semester (it actually feels good being in a legitimate routine rather than lazing around).

Leleuvia

This weekend a small group of us went to Leleuvia, a small island in the Lomoviti group. It's right by Cagalai (in fact you can see it) and was very similar: beautiful little island with not that many people. This place had a couple of sandy outbreaks that were better for swimming, but didn't have good snorkeling right nearby.

Eli doing a backflip as the tide came in. We're in sandy swimming area - at low tide, it was just a big sandy oval that stuck out in the sea. On Sunday we just hung out sitting on the flat sand as the tide came in slowly.

A really cool looking crab. At low tide there were a lot of fat crabs just hanging out in the rocks out by the water, and they were too lazy to run away. This one was green on top with bright orange on its leg joints and purple claws.

A coconut crab! We saw this one when we hiked through the middle of the island (it took about five minutes to get to the other side). They look like giant (about the size of your fist) hermit crabs that use a small nut shell as their protection.

Sweet palm tree going over the water. Nichole and I laid out on it and tanned while the boys explored the water. It's probably the best tanning bed I've had at this point.

One of the little boats used to move luggage and people from the boat landing at Bau (by Nausori, where the airport closest to Suva is) to the island.

Eli climbing up a big dead tree that was washed up in the tidal flats. There was one side of the island that had a handful of giant dead tree stumps and limbs washed up - probably from the mainland when a cyclone came through.

It was gorgeous the first day, and we laid around and tanned and explored the island. At night we had dinner and then sat around drinking for a little while, heading out to a bonfire where we hung out and looked at the stars. In the morning we got up - Will and I wanted to go diving, but the guy that ran the dive shop was still sleeping - and wandered around some more. I did a lot of beachcombing and found a ton of sweet shells, half of which I had to bring back because it turned out that they had tiny hermit crabs that got ambitious and decided to live in a shell far too large for their body size. I also saw a cone snail shell! There wasn't a cone snail in it (a hermit crab had commandeered it) but it was still really cool since it looked a bit like stained glass. I'm doing a report on cone snail poisons for my marine biology class so I was really excited.

On the way back, I sat next to an Australian woman on the boat who was the only vet at the humane society in Suva! She was really cool and we talked about vet stuff for a while - I was pumped since I haven't met anyone yet that understands vet stuff. When we got back to the landing our taxi wasn't there, and she got all of her friends to help out and give us rides back to Suva, which was great.

We're all realizing that we only have a little over a month left here, and we're starting to freak out about getting to see everything that we want to before we leave. I can't even start to think about leaving here yet. It's weird with my friends from home that are already back, I feel like I'm missing out on happy reunions and a lot of other stuff at home. But I get scared when I think about it. I find myself having nightmares about leaving, and a lot of other people have the same problem. A couple of times I dream that I'm back at home, and I wake up relieved that I'm still here. It's very strange. For now though, we're going to focus on planning trips out and getting to everywhere we want to go. Some work needs to get done this week so that I can get out for our last actual weekend there.

Lovo Barbecue

This afternoon, we were laying around in the living room when Eli jumped up and decided that it would be a good time to finally make a lovo. A lovo is a traditional Fijian method of cooking where they light a fire in the pit, pile a bunch of rocks on top, and wait for the fire to go out so that the rocks are super hot and fall into the pit. Food is wrapped up and then placed in the pit and covered up with banana leaves and palm fronds for about an hour until it is cooked through. Eli asked our housekeeper, Marama (she insists we call her mom) about a lovo pit and she said that there was one right outside of our house, it was just covered up. He bought a bunch of food that morning, and went outside to get Mom, who was puttering around the house. He just asked her to help him find some firewood, but Mom scampered around the backyard for a little while shrieking in Fijian and in five minutes there was a small contingent of Fijian housekeepers that had assembled outside my house preparing food.

Our other housekeeper Polly, cutting up dead coconut husks to toss on the fire to smother it and let us start cooking food.

We only had a little bit of tinfoil, so the Fijian women tied together the packets with palm frond leaves.

Dalo leaves. We stacked these up and cooked them - they taste a bit like spinach. I followed Mom to help her gather a bunch up, since a lot of the plants grow in the drainage ditch that runs behind our house and the flats. She jumped around cackling and yelling for me to pick the lailai, yalewa! (The little ones, girl!) I'm guessing that the bigger leaves are too tough and not delicious.

Polly chopping up garlic, onions, ginger, and chili peppers. The woman to her left is squeezing coconut meat to get coconut cream. Fijian food is cooked vakalolo - in coconut cream. It's seasoned with all of the things mentioned above, and then poured over the vegetables or meat and wrapped up in either tinfoil or banana leaves.

Eli had picked up a fat parrotfish from the fish market that morning. The women cut slits in the sides of the fish, and stuffed the seasoning mixture into the flesh for cooking.

The parrotfish, ready for cooking! One of the women wrapped it up in a banana leaf and wrapped the whole packet shut with a palm frond. They're very good with making do with what's available here.

Standing around the lovo, watching the process. The Fijian women didn't seem like they wanted that much help, but I still forced myself in there to do some stuff.

We tossed all of the banana leaf/tinfoil/palm frond packets into the pit (along with some cassava, a super starchy root vegetable), covered the whole thing up with banana leaves, and let it cook. After an hour, everything was perfectly cooked with a little smoky flavor. Lovo food is a little plain (they don't put any seasonings like salt or pepper), but I still really like it. Maybe I'll try making my own back home with actual spices and stuff.

My Nerdy Rant

Academics here are ridiculous, but I haven't really said much about them so far. Pretty much, if the course material that was covered here was taught by competent professors in the US, it would be the easiest thing in the world. However, the professors/TAs here don't really make expectations clear and seem to make up grades. This makes it pretty difficult to get good marks, not that it really matters anyways since the scales are so steep (a 75 or above is an A. Seriously?) Today I received one of my first lab reports back with a 30% grade. Behold the only marks on the entire report:

Those two dashes and a 2 in a circle help me figure out how I lost 70 points. Nevermind the fact that I submitted this at the beginning of March in the second week of classes, and even if there were constructive comments here it wouldn't affect the other 7 labs I've done since then. Do I really care? No, since the lab portion of the course doesn't count for much (every final must count for at least 50% of the course grade, as decreed by the administration here for reasons that are not known). Also, my grades aren't being counted into my GPA at Williams, otherwise I might be spending a lot more time doing work and crying with frustration. I got my first invertebrate biology test back a while ago, and although I still got an A on it, I got a couple of points deducted from it with the only one comment on my essay on how queen fire ants control their colony's behavior: "how does this compare to the control that a prime minister has over a country"? What? What planet am I on?

The education system here seems to be based off of arbitrary grading with no opportunity to actually display what you know and be credited for it, so I can understand why so many students here are fairly apathetic towards their coursework. Although it's constantly kicking my ass, I'm definitely going to have a newfound appreciation for Williams next semester. It's tough and it sucks but at least it makes logical sense, instead of the alternate universe where I'm currently going to school.

Caqalai

Saturday morning we got up early to catch a bus to a small boat station by Nausori, which was a rickety shack by the edge of the road next to a muddy river. This is where we would get a boat transfer to Caqalai, a small coral island. It's off the coast of Ovalau, a larger island off of the eastern coast of Viti Levu. It was a really rainy day, and the first boat at the station (an hour later than scheduled of course) was a covered one that could only take so many people so five of us stayed behind to get on the next boat that was "leaving in 5 minutes as soon as the captain gets back from picking up petrol". This turned into a 3 hour wait, during which we played games and laid around - some of the others actually did an ab workout that my laziness had no interest in. After our delay, the boat owner came back in a cab filled with groceries to be taken to the island. We headed out in the boat through a river fringed with mangroves that spat us out into the ocean (complete with choppy waves that soaked all of us) and finally got to the island.

Caqalai's tiny; it takes about 20 minutes to walk around the entire thing. There's one backpacker resort on it and that's the only thing on the island. The place has some friendly staff, a few happy dogs, and not much else other than beautiful beaches and reef all around the island.

The first day there, we hiked out to Snake Island at low tide. I think it looks like something out of a Dr. Suess book, like a clod of dirt plucked out of the ground and stuck on a reef. We walked out on the reef to the island, which is pretty much just sharp, craggy volcanic rock with one palm tree. We snorkeled back, which took about an hour. The snorkeling was great - there were tons of fish and colorful coral all along the reef.

We had a good night of hanging out. I went for a walk on the beach at night and saw a bunch of little bits of bioluminescence on the beach! I tried digging around in the sand to figure out what sort of little worm or whatever was making the light but it was too small to find. I was really excited though. The second day we were there, it was a lot sunnier and much more beautiful.

A brittle star. These were hiding in little holes all over the reef surrounding the island with a few legs poking out. If you grabbed one of their bristley legs they'd rush back into their holes to avoid getting eaten.

Will's feet. We went diving on the second day, and it was absolutely amazing. We took a little boat out about a half hour to the reef crest, and it was very swelly and kind of scary since it was stormy and very windy. Once we got there though it was great. I saw sea turtles for the first time! They were just slowly flapping their fins going up and down the reef edge, looking for food. We saw big schools of batfish, triggerfish, and lots of other fish. Will had a leak in his BCD (the flotation vest you use to control your buoyancy) and ran out of air early, so he had to get up to the surface and float there for a while. I got low on air next, so we headed up - except I had some issues with getting up to the surface. My head cold is still hanging around, and I was fine with equalizing the pressure in my ears on the way down, but coming back up was terrible. I kept hearing lots of popping and whistling noises in my sinuses, and a ringing in my right ear, and it was very painful. I had a reverse block, where you can't equalize the pressure in your ears on the way back up from the dive, so your eardrums are sort of pushed inwards and you can't push them back out. By the time we got to the surface I had a huge headache and a nosebleed. I didn't go down on the second dive, and instead just laid on the boat. I felt better eventually, and I feel all better now, but it was the scariest thing I've had happen to me while diving so far. I still want to come back and do it again though, because it was very beautiful here.

Arti, Claire, Nichole, and Sam on the boat transfer back to Viti Levu. The boat ride back was much smoother than the one there since it wasn't windy and rainy. I think this is my second favorite island in Fiji so far, behind Taveuni, and I definitely want to come back. I probably won't be up to too many interesting things this week since I have a lot of work in Physiology (test, term paper, lab), but some people want to head to an island in the Yasawa group which would be a lot of fun. We'll see.