Back in South Georgia!

I've been home for nearly a week, and although I had the time of my life in Australia and Fiji, its good to be home. We spent the last day in Fiji shopping, visiting the Hindu temple, and waiting around for our flight which left at 10 that night. My plane landed in Atlanta at midnight on Sunday, and I luckily wasn't affected by jet lag too bad! I had such an amazing experience, and it's sad to think that the trip that I had looked forward to for so long is over and done. While there, I visited some of the most beautiful places in the world, made many lasting friendships, and learned some outstanding life lessons. I wouldn't change a thing! Thanks so much for following my blog throughout my trip, and I hope this reflected the incredible experiences and excitement that I enjoyed while studying in the south Pacific!

Coming to an end...

Only two more days left! This trip has completely flown by, and it feels like yesterday that I was stepping off the plane in Australia with absolutely no idea what to expect! I have had a blast! On Wednesday, we left The Beachhouse and drove 10 miles down the road to Votua Village. We were welcomed by many small children waving, smiling, and yelling “Bula!” Before entering the village, we all went to the city hall, and sat in a circle on the floor as we presented the kava to the village chief. We then introduced ourselves to the people there which were mostly the men and children (while the women cooked lunch for us) and participated in another kava ceremony. I accepted two bowls of kava this time, mostly because I was too afraid to refuse, offend them, and give a bad first impression! The kava is not bad….but definitely not good! It’s good that we have to swallow all of it in one gulp because if I stopped halfway, I probably wouldn’t be able to finish it off. All of the men were so friendly and many of them spoke very good English, but yet still spoke to each other in Fijian. We were then introduced to our homestay families and given beautiful necklaces draped around our necks made of flowers and leaves by our family (I think my family’s looked the best!). A Clemson student, Abby, and I were assigned to stay at the Weriera House, where the chief of one of the tribes lived. Two of the sons, “Iceberg” and Ronny, carried our bags to the house and showed us around. The village contained 47 different families and five different tribes. The houses were side by side, with every window and door open, welcoming in whoever happens to be passing by. The village was so alive, as every person in the village was on the move with their daily tasks. Children were playing, dogs and cats were everywhere, and every single person had a smile on their face. The village was right off the beach, and we could literally step out of our backdoor and be on the beach. Our family was great! We walked in the backdoor of the house because the front door is only used for the head of the house and met the rest of the family. The family had a mother, father, and six children. The two oldest sons, Iceberg and Ronny, were 23 and 20 and spoke great English, two younger girls, Esta and not sure the other’s name, were 13 and 11 and spoke very little English. Wally was 4 ½ and was the life of the party. He was so smart and made us laugh the entire time. And finally, Sara was 2 ½, and she was the pretties baby I have ever seen. Every time we would smile, wave, or make a funny face at her, she would grin and laugh. She loved our camera, and each time we took a picture of her, she would want to see it before she insisted on taking a picture herself. We met so many different family members throughout the day who continually came in and out of the house. Abby and I stayed in a room together that was very suitable under the circumstances. He had a clean and comfortable bed, lights, and a door! However, we had to go outside to use the bathroom, shower, or wash our hands. After we arrived, we sat on the floor in Indian-style and had lunch. The rest of the family watched as we ate, which is very common when guests are present, and ate with our hands for most of the meal. The food was so much better than I expected! We had bread, sausage, a potato and tuna dish, rice, pumpkin, soup, and lemonade. They have no refrigerator or freezer, and eat all fresh food from the village farm, ocean, or livestock. They have a very good water system that they have just installed, but are stomachs are still not used to the hard water that they drink, so the families boiled all their water before giving it to us. When Abby and I stood back up from our meal, the mother pointed out that we still had our shoes on, which we were supposed to take off before we came in the building. We forgot all about it! Normally, they rest after lunch, but Abby and I were anxious to see a little bit more of the village. Iceberg and Ronny told us they would take us snorkeling, and we were so hot and so excited to be going to the beach that we forgot to put our sulus back around our waste before leaving our bedroom. We blew it again! The mother was very friendly though and simply explained to us that as part of the Fijian custom, we had to wear our sulu at all times while in the village, but once on the beach we were free to take them off. The boys had snorkel gear for us and we followed them out to an absolutely beautiful reef that would definitely be classified in the same category as the Great Barrier, if not better. There were so many cliffs and ledges underwater, and so many different kinds of colorful fish. The water was so clear and calm that we could see all the way to the bottom in areas of 40 ft+ and the weather was perfect. There was, however, an extreme current that wore us out fast as we tried to swim against it and prevent being carried away. When we had snorkeled our quite a ways, we ran into some of the boys who had gone fishing with the men from their family. Abby and I climbed into the small boat, gave our masks to the guys to use, and watched as they caught our dinner. All of the men were in the water and had stretched a huge net across a large area. They then spread out about 20 feet apart and began to splash, kick, and basically go crazy in the water to scare the fish into the net. We watched as the men began to swim one by one up to the boat and throw all kinds of fish into the boat. There were unicornfish, parrotfish, stone fish, clown fish, puffer fish, sweetlips, and all kinds of other colorful fish. It was so amazing to watch, and unbelievable to imagine actually living like this. It was SO BEAUTIFUL! We were about 300 yards off the beach, in pristine, blue-green water, watching the Fijian way of life. The men then pulled the boat back to shore, with us girls still sitting in it! We tried to help but they insisted…. By the time we were back to shore, most of the other students were on the beach exploring and we all hung out for a while in the sun. At one point, I looked up and saw Wally sprinting down the beach with one boot on, yelling something, while the men in the village were laughing at him. He ran right past us, and just like that, he was gone. The little boy was wide open at all times!! Abby and I returned to our house around 3:30, and the boys took us with them to rugby practice. Rugby is, for lack of a better term, a very popular sport in Fiji. The men practice every single day at 4 o’clock and play against other villages on Saturday. The young men are pretty much expected to play it, and many of the villagers usually make the mile long trek to watch practice. Along the way, we passed a guava tree, and one of the guys picks a few for us. I’m not a fan. I liked the taste of them a lot but I hated the texture! The outside was tough and chewy and the inside had way too many seeds. It’s nice to say I have tried it though. About 8 of us students watched practice and refused when the Fijian boys tried to make us all play. On the way home, we stopped at an amazing overlook just as the sun was setting that gave us a breathtaking view of the ocean, village, and surrounding mountains. When Abby and I returned to the house, we took a shower outside in an outhouse type stall in the dark, with cold water. I took the shower so fast that I hardly felt clean afterwards. We then all met back at the city hall for our Lovo feast. We eat a lot of the fish that we had watched the men catch earlier that day and chicken. The meat was wrapped in banana leaves and placed in a whole full of hot stones. It was then buried, and left to cook for a few hours. It tasted great, and we also had many different vegetable dishes and fruit. Later that night, we had another kava ceremony (go figure), and a meke ceremony. I had just one more bowl of kava, making the grand total five bowls of kava I accepted while in Fiji. Some of the people in our group drank a few tsunamis that night, which was a larger bowl filled all the way to the top. I don’t think I could have handled that, especially all in one gulp! All of our homestay families participated, and then joined in for the meke ceremony, a dance ritual that involved seemingly everyone in the village. They sang many Fijian songs, danced, and played many different instruments. They wore costumes and laughed and had so much fun entertaining us. After that, our entire group stood up and sang “Lean on Me” and “I Will Survive”, although our performance was nowhere near that of the Fijians. We had so much fun that night and didn’t end up going to sleep until around midnight.
Abby and I woke up the yesterday morning to the sound of all the children whispering and giggling while peeking in the door of our room. When I opened my eyes, they quickly scattered and disappeared. We had pancakes for breakfast, which was fried dough that tasted more like a doughnut. They were so good but our mother cooked way more than we would ever be able to eat! We then took pictures with the family, exchanged addresses, and headed back to our bus! Before we left, the entire village sang the Fijian farewell song, and we left the village around 8AM. Altogether, our stay in Votua Village was amazing. Every single person in that village did everything they could do make our stay perfect, and we truly felt like part of their family. They were so sincere, happy, and friendly, and so unlike any place I have ever been in my life. Their joy was contagious, and although they don’t have as much as people in the United States, they consider themselves blessed and wouldn’t change a thing. How amazing it would be to live with that mentality!! I learned so much about life in that one day, and I’m so glad that we visited the village.
From Votua Village, we drove two hours to Port Denarau, where we caught a ferry to Bounty Island. Bounty Island is so beautiful!!! It’s a very small island that contains only one resort. We are staying in tiki huts literally a few feet from the ocean. Right off the beach, an amazing coral reef is protected from fishing or other harmful activities, resulting in an amazing array of fish and coral. When we arrived, we were served lunch and given the rest of the day to enjoy the beach. We immediately went swimming and snorkeling. Brittany and I then hired kayaks and rode around the entire island, which took only about 20 minutes. Later on, I fell asleep on the hammock outside of our tent…it’s tough, but somebody’s gotta do it! The weather in Fiji has been great, but the heat would have been miserable if we wouldn’t have been right on the water our entire stay here. This class has been a lot less schoolwork than our Australian course, making it seem like a complete vacation! We had a group debate last night, but besides that, we have had nothing but free time while on Bounty. While kayaking yesterday, I left my camera sitting well up on the beach, away from the water. However, when we returned, the tide had risen, and my camera and clothes were being splashed with the waves. Again, I need a waterproof camera! It definitely threw a wrench in my trip because none of my bottoms worked at all when I tested it out. I took the memory card and battery out and let it dry over night, and surprisingly, it worked fine this morning!! Today, we met early and worked on a research project for a few hours. After that, we had the entire day to ourselves, which we spent laying on the beach and enjoying the last of the Fijian sunshine! We will leave tomorrow afternoon and head back to Nadi for the night, spend the next day visiting the Nadi temple and markets, and finally board our plane at 10PM. We will leave at 10 on Sunday night and I will arrive back in Atlanta two hours later at midnight on Monday morning! I will be getting the day back I lost on the way to Australia, but be really affected by jet lag! I can’t believe I only have 48 hours left of this trip!!

Rivers Fiji Kayaking

What a day! The group pulled out this morning at 7AM for our Rivers Fiji kayaking trip. We drove 2 hours deep into the Namosi Highlands of Viti Levu Island, past huge cliffs, jagged peaks, and amazing photo ops, before we arrived in Nakavika, a small village. When we arrived, we were each given a sulu to wear and were greeted by many excited children. The village was so full of happiness, and although it was by no means clean or tidy, the people who lived there were completely at peace. The village had many open buildings, placed side by side, so that members of the village were much more like an extended family rather than neighbors. After choosing a sulu and making sure our knees and shoulders were completely covered, we walked as a group to the chiefs house to take part in the kava ceremony. The Luva River we aimed to kayak down belonged to the village, and they claim that those who use it without their permission are cursed. We did this by visiting the chief’s house and drinking kava, the Fijian drink usually consumed as a ritual. Kava is made from the root of a certain plant only grown in Fiji (sorry, I forgot the name) and is ground into a powder. During the ceremony, the kava powder is placed inside a small bag and water is poured into a big kava bowl. The bag is then rinsed in the water, and wrung out, along with the kava powder. This is continued until the kava reaches a good consistency. The kava was served in small bowls, in a series of three rounds. The chief was served first and then each of us was given a bowl, one at a time. We were told that we were to clap once before receiving the bowl, and after receiving it, we had to finish the entire serving in one gulp. I was a little hesitant, first of all because we were told not to drink the water in Fiji, second, because I am not too keen on drinking after others, and third, because kava is actually a type of narcotic that can cause numbness, dizziness, and many other side effects if consumed in large helpings. We could choose whether to be given the low tide, high tide, or tsunami in relation to how full our bowl was. I drank only the low tide, and I probably wouldn’t have drunk any if it weren’t considered rude not to accept. I drank the whole bowl and immediately after, my lips, tongue, and throat were a little bit numb. The kava tasted like dirty water (and looked like dirty water too) and even though it didn’t taste as bad as I anticipated, I had no desire to participate in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. Tomorrow in Votua Village, we will have a more in depth kava ceremony, and I may decide to be bolder then!
After being granted permission we took a short hike to the river, where our kayaks were waiting. Each kayak was inflatable, and we were given a life jacket and helmet before facing the class II rapids. Ok so I know that a ranking of 2 is not very difficult, but most of the class and I are amateurs and resembled a deer in the headlights as we fought our way over rocks and tree limbs. I went over the first sequence backwards, after running straight into a rock sticking out of the water! Yea, it wasn’t a good start. It seemed like the farther I tried to paddle away from something, the quicker I headed towards it. The river, however, was gorgeous!! It was crystal clear and many small streams and waterfalls flowed into it. One of the guides even led a few of us to a nearby hot spring that flowed into the river. We kayaked for a while down the river, and pulled our kayaks up onto the beach to eat sandwiches that the guides had brought for us. We swam for a while there and jumped off a nearby cliff into the water. We then kayaked a little further down the river before stopping and hiking to a nearby waterfall that we swam and played in for a little while! The waterfall was beautiful and waaaay better than any of the waterfalls I hike to in South Carolina! We kayaked the remainder of the route and then climbed on board three long boats and traveled the rest of the way down the river, through the rainforest, and past many equally amazing waterfalls. It was such an exciting day and by far the most enjoyable one so far. It rained a little bit while we were on the long boats, but besides that, it was sunny and the weather was perfect! The guides would splash us with water every time we passed by them but we didn't even care because it was so hot. Although I’m sunburnt and sore, I had a great day! I didn't get as many pictures as I had hoped because my camera isn't waterproof, but even if it was, it would have been impossible to capture in a photograph how beautiful the river and surrounding were. As amazing and unbeatable each day seems, the next day always seems to bring a new adventure! Tomorrow we will be in Votua Village with our homestay family and I'm sure we will have a blast!

Bula!!

So…I officially never want to leave!!! Fiji is so beautiful, relaxing, and perfect! Our plane arrived last night, and by the time we went through baggage claims, customs, and found our hotel, it was nearly 9 o’clock. We stayed at the Hexagon National Hotel in Nadi, Fiji (pronounced Nandi), and left this morning around 7:45 for the Coral Coast, about a 2 hour drive. We stopped along the way in a small town called Singatoka to shop for groceries, souvenirs, gifts for the homestay families we will be staying with in Votua village, and a sulu, the skirt we are all required to wear while in the villages. A few of us walked into a nearby market but didn’t stay for long due to the hustle and bustle and pressure from every owner to visit their stand. Many women tried to give me and my friends bracelets or necklaces as a “gift”, but we were told not to accept these because the store owners have been known to chase people down after giving them gifts, accuse them of stealing, and force them to pay high prices for them. It took a lot of will power for me to refuse these beautiful gifts, but I wasn’t going to take any chances! We bought a few groceries because we have no idea what types of food to expect while in the villages or resorts, and searched numerous shops to find a sulu pattern we liked. The sulu should be long enough to completely cover your knees and is to be worn at all times while in the villages, and we were told that the brighter the fabric, the better. My sulu is a blue and purple fabric with Hawaiian-like flowers that I will simply wrap around my waist a few times. After that, we traveled a little further and stopped at Kula Eco Park, an environmental park and zoo. We enjoyed the park but we the entire group was hot, hungry, and still not recovered from our mild jet lag. We finally reached The Beachhouse, our backpackers resort, around 2 o’clock and began to explore. Fiji is awesome! The beach at our resort is perfect, complete with a lagoon, countless palm trees, and hammocks to relax in while trying to take in every ounce of the beautiful scenery! If I could trade in my classmates and teachers for my family and friends, I could easily stay here forever  Our resort has enough to keep us busy for the next year, including horseback riding, massages, scuba diving, kayaks, or hiking but we sadly don’t have much free time. We had a lecture on tourism not long after we arrived, and then visited the Warwick Resort and Spa, a nearby 5-star hotel, that did nothing but make my classmates and I jealous and bitter. Brittany and I swam for a while at the beach afterwards and made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to avoid the curry that was served for dinner here. Tomorrow, we will have a really long day! We have to meet at our bus at 7:00 to depart for the Luva River, where we will be kayaking down the class II rapids and down the rest of the river, past numerous waterfalls before pulling our kayaks onshore and hiking through the rainforest. It will last until around 5 in the afternoon, and our guide told us that it’s his favorite part of the trip…so we are excited. Fiji is the most relaxing place I have ever been, and the people are so friendly! They wave and yell “Bula!”(Fijian phrase for hello) whenever they see us and their generosity is remarkable. The Fijiian children are so beautiful and happy, and I would absolutely love to bring one home as a souvenir!  We will leave the day after tomorrow for Votua Village and two students will stay with different families there for one night. I think we are all anxious to visit a Fijian village and learn a little bit about their culture! We will them spend two nights on Bounty Island, the “celebrate the journey…” picture from the top of the page, and one more night at the Hexagon Hotel before returning home.  I miss home, and I’m anxious to catch up on everything I have missed out on while gone, but Fiji is truly amazing and I’m so sad we will be in this beautiful country for only a week!

Only 8 days left :(

After most of Clemson’s group returned home after their Australia course, the five remaining girls and our two teachers spent the weekend in Sydney with thirteen students from ECU. The five of us stayed in a 6-bed room at a really nice hostel right in the middle of Sydney, while the other students stayed a few blocks away. It’s Saturday night and we leave tomorrow morning for Fiji! I’m sad to be leaving Australia but I know Fiji will be just as beautiful (and much better exchange rates!) I can’t believe we only have eight days left!! The course begins tomorrow when we arrive, and we will be squeezing a three hour course into a little over one week.
I’m sitting in our room right now, exhausted from the long day of running from one side of Sydney to the next, trying to fit as much in as we could! All five of us left our hostel at 8am, met up with our teaching assistant, and navigated our way to downtown Sydney. It started our being really chilly but warmed up later on when the sun decided to come out. We hopped on a ferry that took us across Sydney harbor, under the Sydney harbor bridge, and right past the opera house….SO PRETTY! We got off at the opera house, walked through the city, shopped, and had brunch at a world famous restaurant called Pancakes on The Rocks. It was luckily so much easier to find Americanized food in a big town like Sydney. We shopped around for the afternoon, trying to get the last of our Australian souvenirs. Tonight, Brittany, Jamie, and I looked up the address, found a map, and walked a countless amount of blocks through parts of town that we probably shouldn’t have been in to attend Hillsong Church’s Saturday night service. This church is the largest church in Australia, containing about five different branches throughout the country, and we were more than excited when we realized we would be able to attend a service while in town. A band that originated from this church has produced countless amounts of worship music that is played in churches all across the United States and many other countries. The service was AMAZING!!!! There was a ridiculous amount of genuine enthusiasm to be praising God and it was one of the most moving church services I’ve ever attended. This weekend, Jerry Savelle, a pastor from the United States, was visiting and preached an awesome message. We stayed and talked to a lot of really cool people afterwards and caught a free bus back to our hostel. I must admit, we did a impressive job of navigating our way through Sydney, efficiently finding the places we were looking for and figuring out the cheapest transportation possible. Give us one more day here and we would know Sydney like the back of our hand! Australia has been such an amazing experience and I’m so sad to be leaving tomorrow. I would love to come back one day, but if I don’t, I will at least know that I have gotten a true taste of the Australian culture, and I have visited some places that I will never be able to forget or outdo. This is truly a dream and nothing will ever compare!

everything else...

Our homestay was great! The house was right in the middle of a beautiful field with countless rolling hills. We spent Monday relaxing and exploring the property and went to the neighbors’ platypus farm that evening and watched a group of platypus splash and play in their pond. We had spaghetti for dinner and played cards for hours that night. Sadly, we returned to the group the next morning and parted ways with our beloved family  The rest of that day we toured the nearby rainforest with a biologist and learned how detrimental tourism and pollution can be to environments such as that. We were taken to a reforestation project site and pulled weeds around deciduous plants to reduce the plant competition and ultimately increase the size of the Maby Rainforest. Surprisingly, it was a lot of fun, and with thirty people, we cleared a lot of land in little time. That night, we visited the home of a few Aboriginal people and had dinner. While there, we were taught how to properly throw a boomerang, (I still can’t get it to come back to me) and we all learned how to play the didgeridoo while sitting around the campfire. We spent the night in Yungaburra once again but Paul sadly wasn’t there to provide for us a good meal and some entertainment.
On Wednesday morning, we left Yungaburra around 11:30 and headed to Port Douglas! The drive was about two hours and we reached Ti Tree Apartments in the early afternoon. After a short discussion of class modules, we were assigned to our apartments which were used as vacation homes. They were really nice 2 bedroom apartments with a full kitchen, washer and dryer, and I even got the master bedroom (a whole bedroom to myself!! ) Brittany and I caught the bus into downtown Port Douglas that night and ate dinner at a nice restaurant and I had an amazing barramundi dish. We window shopped and bought ice cream before heading back to our apartment. Port Douglas is so incredibly pretty, a vacation spot with many nice resorts and countless unique restaurants. It has a great beach right along the rainforest, which is what makes it so unique.
The second day there, our bus didn’t pick us up for our Aboriginal dreamtime walk which was the very first time thus far that something hasn’t gone completely as planned. It was no big deal though and the group instead walked to the Rainforest Habitat Park which had koalas, kangaroos, crocodiles, cassowaries, and other animals unique to Australia. A lot of the students in our group got a picture taken holding an adorable koala but I wasn’t too keen on paying 16 bucks for it! We did get to feed the kangaroos and wallabees and enjoyed playing around with them. Our last day in Port Douglas, we had no class lectures or meeting and were free to spend it however we pleased. I started the day off with a run down the beach and later walked there with many other girls to spend the day in the sun. The ozone layer is so thin in Australia that after only about 3 hours, I had gotten way more sun than I needed and ended up being borderline sunburnt. I must admit that I am proud of myself for this only being the first time I have gotten too much sun and I have been here for almost three weeks, spending a majority of the days outdoors, and I’m really not that burnt at all! We took showers after the beach and headed back into town to meet up with a few other people for dinner. I had fish and chips…I feel so Aussie! We left the next morning and moved to our second to last destination of the course, Cape Tribulation. Because we were used to limited civilization and outside communication, after a ferry ride and a long bus ride through the Daintree Rainforest, we were not fazed by the small 5-person bedrooms we shared in a remote cabin. It was misleadingly called The Beach House, but yet had only 2 sets of bunk beds and a separate twin mattress. We had to trek to the bathrooms or community kitchen, and it was a good hike to the café and restaurant. It was however, right on a beautiful patch of beach, but we only had good weather on the first afternoon we arrived. Yes, believe it or not, it rains A LOT in the rainforest. Our first night there, we came across a 6-ft python laying across the sidewalk and fortunately the last one we saw. We were in Cape Tribulation for four nights and while there, we hiked, visited the Daintree Discovery Center, went on a gondola ride over the rainforest, planted trees as part of a reforestation project, and did a research project on leaf litter in the mangroves that we observed during our guided night walk. Hiking during the night is completely different than during the day, and we saw all kinds of insects, lizards, birds, and even an eel sliding by in a small creek. Because of the high prices of food in Australia, much less the even higher prices as we traveled farther away from civilization, I survived off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that I bought at a grocery store. We enjoyed our stay, but with bad weather, we ran out of things to do and were happy to move on this morning.
We have reached our final destination of our Australian study abroad course. Cairns is a populated city right on the coast of the Pacific. It’s so hard to believe that the long anticipated study abroad session is almost complete! After our final afternoon, those that are continuing on to Fiji will have a free weekend in Sydney and then fly to Fiji on Sunday for another “class”. I have finally started catching on to the Australian way and I hardly even notice an Australian accent anymore. I can now safely cross the street but still sometimes run into people on the sidewalks, forgetting to stay on the left side rather than the right. Tonight we are heading into the city to eat dinner, buy some souvenirs at the famous night markets, and make the most of the last few days we have in Australia.