What’s so great about Fiji anyway…?!?

In Letterman’s “Top 10 List” fashion, I’ll break down what all the fuss is about:

10. Fijian men sport skirts and rat tails to attract the ladies… AND IT WORKS!
9. You can hear island reggae music mashed up with various American artist, like 50cent while shopping, riding the bus, eating dinner, walking down the street, etc inducing a dance-comma 24/7.
8. Basically every single fruit is in season here year round… you want it, you got it. Fresh AND cheap!!
7. The term “fresh fish” is forever understated here and you can get it for less than a few dollars. A plate full of sea scallops is one of the cheapest things on a dinner menu.
6. The only time you don’t see flowers is when your eyes are closed.
5. My 2 year old host sister whispers the word “fuck” to me when her mom isn’t listening.
4. Going to the 7th most beautiful beach in the world and then playing on sand dunes is classified as a ‘typical’ day.
3. The hospitality here is out of this world and people constantly insist on feeding you with their extremely delicious food that they made from scratch with the veggies from their gardens.
2. My bedroom window faces a sunrise over the ocean and mountains every morning.
1. Google Image it… and you’ll never wonder “what’s so great about Fiji” ever again.


If it’s not already obvious, I did arrive! My flights went great until I actually arrived in Fiji at 1 AM… that’s where the drama began. The immigration people did NOT like me. I wrote down exactly what I was told to write on my custom form and yet I was still stopped and harassed about why I was in Fiji and why I didn’t have the correct permit. After explaining that Fiji does not give American students visas to study in their country until AFTER they arrive they finally let me go and gave me one month to get everything figured out. I must have done something they liked though because the other three girls on my program were only given 14 days. I then moved onto getting my luggage… which was problem number 2 because bag number 2 was a no show. While filling out their “missing bag” form, one of the guys from the airline that had been helping me walked over with a huge plastic bag covered in tape in his hands. Turns out… the $3 duffle bag I so proudly bought from the Goodwill was not made to travel. Every zipper on the bag was destroyed, all of the contents of my bag where smashed, broken, thrown all around, and I was left with the hot mess-- customs didn’t even make me pass it through the X-ray machine, they felt too bad for me.

Finally making it out of the airport I realize… no one is there to pick me up. I search for all of about 30 minutes before deciding that sleeping inside the airport wouldn’t kill me and that I would be able to sort everything out just as easily after I had slept. It turns out my program had been given the wrong arrival time and arrived at the airport around 5 AM. They eventually found me and took me to the hotel we are staying in for orientation… and that was how this Fijian adventure started.

Eventually another girl showed up, Emma, and we spent the day hanging out while we waited for the other two girls to show up. We went to lunch and the open-air market with our Academic Director and Program Assistant (who are two INCREDIBLY kind, loving, and outgoing women). Later, we went swimming and hung out by the hotel pool.

The next day we had an adventure to the city of Lautoka, or the Sugar City. The four of us ate lunch, wandered around buying forgotten essentials, and eventually rode the bus back to our hotel. That evening, we were invited to eat dinner at a Muslim farmer’s house. He showed us around his entire farm, we accompanied him to the mosque where he goes to pray, and enjoyed dinner at his house. His name is Abdul and for some creepy reason he was in love with me… it is supposedly because I look like a person from India with some European blood but none-the-less, it was rather hilarious—I show up in his dreams every night…? What’s new.

I am so far behind on my blog at this point I don’t have time to write in detail the other things that I have been up to and I really want to post this sooner rather than later so I will leave it with a short list of the other things I have been doing…

-Visiting the world’s 7th most beautiful beach
-Touring sand dunes
-Going to a youth group for a kava ceremony and dancing the night away (I will explain kava later!)
-Visiting South Sea Island, or a secluded tourist island
-Surviving a tsunami alert
-Touring a Hindi temple
-Meeting my host family!!! (Super young mom and dad… plus a 5 year old sister and 2 year old sister. I already have tons of great stories to share)
-Going to the Fijian national museum
-Running around Suva acquainting myself with my new city

I have collected a million incredible stories so far and I will try to write again really soon so I can reflect on how my orientation went and give more details on the new things I am doing. I leave Friday morning for a two week long trip around the islands so hopefully I will keep better record of what I am up to. For more information, you can stalk me on facebook and look through my pictures which will explain many of the things I did not have time to write about.

The number one reason this blog post totally sucks: Fiji is incredible… so, don’t worry about me. I am living the good life—

Love, Sarah