Malo a' lele

Here is what has been happening within the past couple of days. Not a whole lot. Friday everything was closed because it was good firday so we decided to go to the island to get our tan on. It took us about an hour to walk to the port where we caught the boat to take us to the island, pongimotu. There isn’t a lot to do there and you can stay the night there but we’ve heard that it is infested with rats so we decided it would probably be best for our safety to just go for the day and not go anywhere near the bushes or buildings. The tide was high when we first got there and there wasn’t much beach, around 2 it started pouring and at first I thought I might be able to wait it out a bit but boy was I wrong it sprinkled then it poured. I couldn’t gather my things fast enough and shake the sand out of my towel without getting soaked. Yes it did feel good but after a while I was a little chilly and by this time covered in sand. We waited a while under this little palm tree hut until the showers passed then went back out into the sun. I did a bunch of reading and finished my book, Courtney you should be proud. Once 4 o’clock came around we were ready to get home, I didn’t want to burn. While we are in the boat we notice this one Tongan lady who had the longest nails and toe nails EVER. It was so nasty I had to keep myself from puking. Her big toe’s toenail was probably an inch and a half long and pointy it was so gross and her fingernails were just as long and pointy. I didn’t know how she walked and didn’t break those suckers. We get back to the port and start our long journey home; because it is Friday nothing is open so we had to find food to eat at the house, which wasn’t much. We ended up eating more Pringles and a few of these peanut butter crackers we had bought the day before.  We spent the majority of the evening watching tv until Drews nephews came over to watch rugby and by this time we were way too tired to stay awake so we went to bed. I’m still sitting on the couch finishing up my row of knitting and I hear this “OH MY GOSH LINDSEY HELP” and I run over and see this HUGE spider. These insects are obviously exposed to large doses of steroids because I have never seen a spider so big unless it was a tarantula. And if it were a tarantula I wouldn’t have been so afraid except for this sucker was so big and looked like a giant black widow. I don’t know if you know this but I really do not like spiders and Rach doesn’t either and she couldn’t even kill it. Thank goodness for my killing skill because I knew it was life or death and if I didn’t smash this spider no one else would. So I grab my shoe and very sneaky, sneak up on this little blood sucker and kill it. I was so scared it was horrible I swear if I ever seen another one of these I may have a heart attack. I don’t think the Tongans like you to kill bugs, the other day I was killing everything that came near me and one of the little kids sort of looked at me funny like I was doing something bad. But the more bugs I kill the less that will be around the house. Needless to say we went to bed very scared that night that we were going to be attacked by a spider on steroids. We didn’t do much today we needed a day away from the sun so we woke up and went for a run into town. We were told that we shouldn’t go too early and run on the main road due to all of the drunks that pass out alongside the road so it wouldn’t be too safe for us. We took the back roads. We made it to town and wanted to get breakfast and we tried two breakfast places and neither of them had bagels. I had a fruit salad and Rach had a breakfast burrito. It was nowhere near as good as the ones at home but I guess it made due. I ordered a latté before we left and it was so hot I could have had 2^nd degree burns on my hands if it had not had a sleeve. I burnt my tongue it was that hot, and they don’t believe in iced beverages here. I ordered a small vanilla latte, it was 4 bucks and in an 8oz cup and tasted more like a mocha. It wasn’t too bad and if anyone knows me they know that it takes me FOREVER to finish a coffee. This coffee did last me almost all day but I had to quit drinking it so I could fall asleep tonight. We hung out at the café for a while then decided to go to the market and look for some food to take home with us because there isn’t anything for us to eat at home and tomorrows Sunday so we cant go out and get anything. We walked all around town looking for a store to go into, oh and no one I mean no one knows the meaning of grocery store. One of the stores we went into we were looking for some draino and they had no clue what we were talking about, their response was “oh yeah you mean to drink, pop yes we have some.” No thank you. But we were unable to load up on our Pringles for the day, but maybe that’s a good thing. We ended up going to a market and buying some apples so I hope they are good and not infested with worms or something. We got home and decided that we are going to go out for pizza and decided to walk down to this little restaurant just down the street called little Italy. We sit down and order our family size Hawaiian pizza and a drink that will hopefully help us fall asleep faster. The pizza was amazing and we should not have ordered the family size because we now have pizza for days and I really hope it doesn’t end up tasting like meat. Oh yes on a side note let me tell you about this meat issue. The refrigerator and freezer has meat all over the place and it is so bloody it drips everywhere and our freezer thinks it’s a refrigerator its so warm its gross. So anything we put into the fridge comes out tasting like rotten meat. Oh yeah while we are on that note everything here smells like warm rotten meat it’s nasty. We filled our water bottles up the other day from the filtered water in the fridge and I swear some of the blood dripped into it and contaminated it because when we drank the water it was  like drinking uncooked meat. Nasty. I have to hold my breath every time I go in to get anything out of the freezer or fridge. But anyways after dinner we decided to get two Heinekens to drink on our walk back home and I’m carrying this HUGE family pizza in the box and rach wants the camera so I set my beer on top of the box and feel like I’m doing a great job at balancing everything until all of a sudden the beer spills and spills all over me, my dress soaked, it was horrible. I was however able to save half my beer. At least it made for a funny moment. I don’t know why I’m here to teach English when I should be here to teach drivers ed. I swear its like a game to see how many pedestrians they can hit. We have been hit almost a dozen times and almost backed over. It’s horrible. Maybe its because they drive on the other side of the road and car so it’s hard to tell the distance but still if the road is wide open and you see someone walking you would think “common sense” that you would sort of move over and give the people walking some room. Nope not here, it’s let’s see how close we can get to the people without actually hitting them. You can actually feel the car brush up against you. Hopefully I don’t end up hit by a car before I come home. Well I think that’s about all that’s been going on. Hopefully I don’t see anymore huge bugs. Until next time malo. 

New home

Well where to begin… This is probably one of the biggest culture shocks I’ve had in a long time. There are so many hidden rules and regulations we have to follow. Let’s just start from the beginning. You MUST at all times wear skirts or capris that are longer then your knees, if your knees are showing it is equivalent to flashing someone. It isn’t so bad or rude for us “ palanigas” or white people to show our knees if we are going to the beach or are around the hosue but if we are around young boys they don’t know how to react to it because they never see girls knees or legs. It is respectful to take your shoes off before ever entering a house, you should shower before you go to sleep and when you wake up, and I mean I could live with that with this humidity. Let’s see the hierarchy system is very tricky, the men are higher up then women are unless you are the grandmother or the dads sister then you have the power. The young kids especially boys do not dine with you. It was weird before we had lunch there was a group of two older white women, the man of the house, Drew, Rachel and I and we were the only ones sitting eating the other kids were off away from where we were and they were eating. We had to go first and get our food, I tried everything because I didn’t want to be rude…I ate some sort of fish, chicken, sweet potatoes that were purple, these other root things, watermelon and the worst but I tried a bite anyways was lamb ribs. It was hard to eat it but the taste wasn’t that bad. I would never order it from a menu but I was hungry and didn’t want to be rude.  The worst part was the meat had sat out for hours before anything was done with it. When we woke up this morning  we walked outside to where they were preparing the day’s meal and watched as they carved out the cocoanut and cleaned these tapa leaves that the lamb was later cooked in. The lamb was wrapped in these leaves along with the cocoanut milk and onions then it was baked for a few hours over a large lava rock. The process to get cocoanut milk is a large process, you have to carve out the middle then strain the milk out I think it took an hour and a half or two hours to do like 8 cocoanuts. We met this one lady who gave us the 411 on the way Tongans do things and the rules we should follow. It was a lot to take in and hopefully we don’t mess up. I thought I already had the chickenpoxs….oh wait those are just mosquito bites. Last night I had this little coil repellent next to my bed that was burning in full force, I don’t think it’s healthy to breath that in but too late now. So we went to sleep around 9 and didn’t end up falling asleep until close to 11 because of the noise of this little kid who is SO loud. Our sleeping arrangement…when we first arrived they said we could each have our own room, ehhh nope there was no way we were staying in separate rooms! It is so hot at night you can only use a sheet; I’ve only been in this situation one other time while at a cabin a couple summers ago, it was so hot and we didn’t want to open the door or the bugs would come in. So at least I was sort of prepared for this sleeping thing. We do have a fan that helps keep us cool and the mosquitoes away, especially when it is on full force. There are a bunch of dogs around here and they are very small dogs, around the house we are staying in there are a few dogs, pigs and chickens. When  I showered this morning it was with cold water, and I must say it was the fastest shower I’ve ever taken.  Around umm 3 we were put to bed to take a nap, I can’t remember the last time I had to take a nap. We were sort of unsure on what to do because we were not tired so we played some cards, a little speed, go fish, and war the we laid down and stared at the ceiling and this got so boring that I fell asleep for a good 45 minutes. We didn’t do much after we woke up went on a drive to drop off one of Drew’s nephews at the boarding school then we came home and no one was here, Drew went to sleep and Rach and I just went to our room and played more cards. All of the kids here go to boarding school and they go Monday through Friday it is a lot like college. They stay in dorm rooms which give a whole new appreciation to the dorm rooms back home, we thought ours were small these have bunk beds and there are like 4 or more guys to a room. Every Sunday and Wednesday the families bring the kids food and hang out for a while. The kids have to work in the farm fields, it is pretty much child labor and they get beat if they are out of line in the schools. I’m a little nervous to be going into the schools and see this, I hope they don’t do it around me. We won’t be in the schools this week because there is a big sporting competition. All of the other schools of the islands come here and people drop what they do to watch it. I’m not sure what else we have going on. They were not lying when they said time stops when you get to Tonga. There is a King who rules the island and he has a palace close to where we are staying, it is so pretty it’s just my kind of house a huge Victorian style white house with a wrap around porch and white pillars. Beautiful. Tonga is not very civilized, they have a couple grocery stores, everything has to be shipped in a couple restaurants and fruit markets. People here don’t do a lot for work, they don’t have any money so they mostly grow their own food and try to sell it to make money to pay for the school fees. The people here do a lot on Friday night well the drunks do, and we were told not to go running Saturday morning by where we live because that is where all of the drunks sleep, there were a lot of people out Saturday night walking around and going to do their last minute shopping. They have to do this because on Sunday everything closes down and I mean everything. The only thing open is the churches and a bread shop where you can get bread milk and butter. Oh speaking of these the milk here is 3% fat, and the butter for 1tbs I think it was 12g of fat. You can’t even write a check that was dated on a Sunday or it will not be accepted. I still have my cold so that sucks, it keeps me awake at night coughing and I feel bad because I don’t want to wake anyone up. I hope this passes soon. 

Last few days :(

Thursday we hung out at the hotel and of course woke up for our daily run on the beach. Oh except this time instead of waking up at a reasonable hour we woke up at 5:30 am. I’m laying in bed because it is still dark out and I’m thinking to myself man its early and I didn’t want to turn the tv on because I was sure Rach was still sleeping, then I hear “are you awake” and I’m like oh my gosh yes you are too!? Thank goodness for nickelodeon, we watched the rugrats and this other show that I can’t remember the name but it was those porcupine creatures. This brought back many memories and we talked about all of the AWESOME cartoons we used to watch and wish they were still on. Cartoons when we were little were WAY better then what they are now. I mean if they were still on I’m sure I’d be watching them pretty often. So anyways we go on our run then eat our delish breakfast of freshly scrambled eggs and fresh fruit. It is a way better choice to get the scrambled eggs then it is to get the ones they’ve already made, those don’t look very good, they are sitting in liquid and are a sort of orange/pink color I’d say. Yuck. We decided that it might be fun to do the water aerobics today at 10:30 so around 10:20ish we go to the pool and are there waiting for quite some time I’d say and no one shows up so we thought well we might as well leave and go lay back in the sun. Go figure as soon as we get back to our chairs the music starts with some Shania Twain, my favorite and the aerobics start. I’m lathering on my spf every 10 minutes it seems so I don’t get burnt again I had to go out and buy a small bottle of 45 from one of the little shops and it was so expensive it was like 14 bucks for a bottle the size of umm let’s see… let’s just say it’s only 4oz. I hate when hotels rip you off!  So after a couple hours of laying in the sun we decided to do a little shopping and we had heard that downtown Nadi was pretty cheap. We decided to take the bus into town because it was only 1 dolla instead of 10ish and as we are sitting at the bus stop one of the hotel workers just got off work and was waiting for the staff shuttle and gave us a few tips about going into the town and what bus we need to catch to get there and back. He was very nice and was talking about the types of shops they had in town and the people. He said we needed to watch out because there were a bunch of hookers. Immediately rach and I look at each other in terror and think “oh my gosh what are we getting ourselves into, maybe we shouldn’t go to town” apparently Fiji people and American people have very different definitions of hookers. Hookers here are like venders who try to get you to buy their products, well I guess the definition is the same just the products are different. Anyways, instead of waiting for the bus he tell us we can take the staff taxi with a couple other workers into town for 1 dolla. It was very nice of him, we were a little unsure about where we were going to be catching the bus home, the girl sitting next to me told us she would show us were to go. Alright we made it to town. Humm what can I say about the town, there were a lot of people, and a lot of shops with SO many random things in them. We went into a few shops and found a few good trinkets, then we started getting farther into town and we had already been warned about the hookers and some of the people to stay away from but “it’s a very safe town” so after this one guy shook our hands and tried to get us to go into his store, and this little old lady with no teeth who stood about to my shoulder tried to get money from us we decided it was time to turn around and book it back to the more “touristy” area.  After going into a couple stores that carried the same thing we decided it was about time to go home and get ready for dinner.  As we are walking back to the bus stop we decided to go into a grocery store to get some snacks for the next day and we walk into one and turn around immediately it was SO gross and humid inside we couldn’t even go in 2 feet. Thankgoodness there was another one right next to it. It too was very humid we couldn’t breath, and it smelled. We got our Pringles which we have practically been living off of, the salt and vinegar and the cheddar. We also got some apples to be a little healthy. Oh I almost forgot while we were in one of the stores we bought some Fiji water, yes it taste that much better drinking Fiji water in Fiji, but anyways we got a 1.5 liter bottle of water for $2.80 when we had to pay like 8 bucks the other day at the hotel we thought we were getting a steal! So just as we get back to the bus stop the bus comes and we think “YES we can get out of here!” no, we waited for like 20 min before even leaving and it was so muggy you don’t even know.  Finally we are on our way and before the bus stops it goes to the port where there is more shopping and restaurants and we decide to get off and share the nachos from Hard Rock for dinner. Bad choice they were horrible! While we are waiting we are trying to think of something to do on our last day and rach goes over to this information stand with lots of activities. She comes back with this awesome deal where we would get to go on a free day trip to an island with all these awesome activities included and the only catch is is that we would have to sit through a 90 min promotion deal. Hummm where have I heard this before…. Anyways she comes back and tells me all about it, pumps me up and we get super excited to go on this free trip. That is until I go in to get more information. Why do I have to be the one with the bad news?? The nice lady goes through the details and I show my interest then she asks when we could do the promotion thing and I tell her when and that we wanted to do the cruse tomorrow and she says yeah I’ll try to squeeze you in. I just have a couple questions…are either of you 25…shoot I’m short a couple years maybe they wont ask for id? But I do the honest thing and say no not yet…thank goodness. And bummer our free day to an island is shot. Apparently you have to be 25 to attend and make over 65k a year. HA no way jose not this kid, not yet. I tried to make her a deal and tell her my parents are interested and we would take the information back to them and stuff, but she didn’t go for it. Speaking of being interested in property we were looking at a couple listings, yeah mom and dad get ready for my sales pitch. The amount of property around here with nice houses next to the water is SO cheap! You couldn’t even buy a 3 bedroom house for these prices, especially in hood river. So come on people if anyone wants to go in on it we could arrange a deal. Where was I…oh yeah dinner being horrible, we had like 6 chips each and called it quits and went back to the hotel to prepare for tomorrow.

Hello all it is our last night here and we are pretty bummed. Today we went to this other beach at a hotel about an hour and 20 minutes away. Oh yes again today we woke up at 6am wide awake ready for the day so we go on our run and then to breakfast I had fresh fruit and an omelet and coffee with brown sugar. They don’t use regular sugar in their coffee and I must say it is pretty tasty. After breakfast we got our things together for our long day. We get in our taxi and are on our way. This was probably one of the worst drives and taxi drivers ever. We could not understand a word of his gibberish let alone could he understand us. There were a couple things we asked him and got back a way different answer. So we then decided not to ask any questions at all and when he tried to talk to us we had to have him repeat things like 5 times just to make out 2 of the words to get the just of what he was saying. It was stressful and is stressful having to think about it again. But we get to where we are going and it was a beautiful resort in the middle of nowhere. At least the sand was a pretty color and the water was sort of clear. Lucky for us the tide was out today and so there wasn’t any clear water. Great a whole day pretty much shot. We did make the best of it, this whole time I thought we were going to get kicked out because we were using their pool and stuff and were not even guests. I felt like we were walking around with huge signs saying “imposters” but don’t worry things were fine. There was a point when we were on the beach when I had to go take cover from the burning sun. We got a very refreshing pineapple popsicle and were on our way home. So remember our driver who didn’t know English well he wasn’t the greatest driver. I felt as if I was a bobble head the roads were so smooth; between the millions of potholes and swerving I’m surprised I didn’t get carsick. Courtney you’ll enjoy this, apparently they don’t believe in country music down here so all I’ve been listening to is rap and all of that stuff and Courtney that bow chica song comes on like every 6 minutes along with lika g-6. Our drive was pretty nice besides the whole car and driver issue, it is very green down here and a lot of trees and hills. We passed a bunch of sugar plantations and sad dogs the size of cats pretty much. Every cow or horse we saw was tied up along side the road, it was pretty sad. Once we got home we did a little walking around the hotel then got ready to go back to the port for our last dinner. I was so disappointed with my dinner, I ordered the fish and chips and they were not very good, and the tarter sauce was pretty much just mayo it was yucky. The nice thing about where we ate was the location; we were right on the pier overlooking the calm water. There was live music being played so that made up for the lack of good food. On our way back to catch our cab we stopped and watched these fire dancers they were pretty good. Well that’s about it I better get to bed I’m pretty nervous about leaving and very sad to leave this place. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to post next so I miss you all and I’m sure my next post will be just as long if not longer. 

First couple days in Fiji!

Well lets see I don’t even know where to start it is only 7:30 pm here and I feel like I’ve been up for days. Oh wait… I kinda have. When they say time stops, it really stops today felt like it went on for ever. So let’s start at the beginning with the   flight to LA. We chit chatted the majority of the two hour flight and also read our Chelsea handler books. The most eventful part was this crazy lady two rows behind us who had the highest pitched voice I’ve ever heard and she was talking loud and did not know what was appropriate to be talking about, especially on an airplane. Well her voice upset a few of the people sitting around her and they complained and had the sturdiest come over and ask if she could quiet down, this of course upset her and made a big scene. “What do you mean I always talk like this, this is my real voice that I’ve had for 45 years…ok fine I just wont talk the rest of the trip.” Then after about 15 min the people in font of them were very immature about the whole thing and started talking about it and making fun of her and this drew in more stewards and the other people around us to look at each other and laugh a little. Oh by the way this lady had fizzy white hair with magenta streaks in it. We finally made it to LA. It took us a while to figure out where we needed to go to get to the air pacific international terminal. Finally did and oh here comes some more bad news, as we are checking in they require that no matter how many suitcases you take in they have to be 50lbs or under, and for anyone who knows me and my travel style you know I can not fit everything in one suitcase let alone have it be under 50 pounds. So yes I had two suitcases, which were both 50.2lbs and 50.4lbs so I was charged a whole bunch for that one over the limit suitcase. It would have been nice to know this ahead of time, at least I’ll know for next time. ;) Let’s see we didn’t do too much after this, went to our gate and had a beer that was 8 bucks and a small snack then tried to skype with Bethany but apparently you have to pay for your internet while at the LA international gates so that was kinda lame. We mostly people watched and waited to board, by this time we were getting verrry tired and just wanted to sleep. Finally the time has arrived and we get to board our plane, and I would like to refer to our plane as a ship because this puppy was huge, double decker, huge first class seats and then section upon section of seating areas. We of course wanted to sit together so we were put in the back of the plane, which was the greatest thing ever. We were able to spread out and take our own rows of seats. I also took a natural sleep aid thing to help me sleep and boy did that works, I wasn’t but 10 minutes into Seabuscit and was out. I woke up a couple times to rotate my position and then was back to sleep and I was asleep until like 45 minutes before we landed.

Ahhh finally in Fiji! We get through customs and go to call for our shuttle that was said to be part of our hotel, it wasn’t. So I tried to talk to this one guy about it and could not understand a word, was he was even speaking English? So we went to this other lady who confirmed that no we did not have a shuttle, let me remind you it is about 5:45 am at this time and I’m still half asleep. Finally we get a cab and are on our way to our hotel.

            Once we checked into our hotel we decided to go run on the beach, it was so great. The sea breeze blowing in my face and the waves crashing next to my feet, I loved it. I am not sure how far we ran but it was pretty far. Running on sand is a lot harder then it looks. After we went for our run we showered and got ready for our day at the beach. Oh yeah its still only like 8:30ish in the morning, they are still grating the sand and no one is awake let alone out on the beach, but we head out there anyways. We pick our perfect spot right on the sand under all of the clouds. How wonderful our first day in Fiji and it is not sunny out. HA big mistake, just because it is not sunny does not mean you wont burn. Yes I am a little pink at the moment, I mean I guess it is expected when I was very white before this trip and we were out there for like 6+ hours.

We are totally messed up on time it is so early in the morning but so late to what we are used to so our schedule has been very off. After a while of sitting in the sun a huge group of kids come over with some of the people who work there yelling “fish time” “time to feed the fish” and all of the kids come running. Just about 5 minutes before this event happened Rach and I were talking about taking a dip in the ocean until we saw all the fish. The kids all got pieces of bread and were not but ankle deep in the water tossed the bread and the fish came alive, freaked us out of course. So after this we decided to move closer to the bar and farther into a patch of sun we found. There we stayed for a few more hours. We chatted most of the time, went for a swim, ordered a couple drinks.. These drinks were not very good and not worth the money. These drinks were like 8 bucks or so and were not blended and did not tastes very good. We had to drink them anyways because they were so expensive. Bummer. We did a little shopping in the hotel lobby and in a small hut where some of the ladies make homemade jewelry and things. We also set up a catamaran ride to go on tomorrow it’s called “ooolala” we will get to go to a private island with white beaches and clear waters where we will get to snorkel. So that should be fun. We got a 50 percent off voucher to eat at this buffet, which was amazing because we didn’t eat much during the day due to the high cost of things so when dinnertime came around we felt like we could eat a whole cow. We showered and got ready for dinner headed down and ate like we’ve never ate before. We had a good couple plates and went back for seconds. It was great. Oh a big thing people say here is Bula and some of the time I cant understand the people and it sounds like they are saying hola. So after we ate we came back up to the room and started to watch tv because we are sooo tired!! I’m getting very sleep so I think that’s all for now, I will keep you posted on how the boat ride goes. Miss you all!

Love always

Lindsey

Oh yes I almost forgot most of the people here are either families with many little kids or couples so it is very depressing. But our room is very nice we have two large beds, ac, flat screen tv, private balcony, and this sweet shower that has a showerhead coming from the ceiling and also a normal one so you get double the water. Our room looks out towards the water, we have a garden view due to the cheaper price. Apparently Fiji is made up of 300 islands and we are on one of those, our hotel is on a small island called duranu which is close to the main island so its pretty cool and pretty private.

Well what can I saw about today besides that it was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time! We woke up around 7am to my scary alarm that made Rachel jump out of bed practically, thinking it was a tsunami warning. So once things were calmed down we went for our morning run along the beach then went to our kind of breakfast, a buffet style. We figured hey it’s complementary we might as well eat as much as we can. We had freshly scrambled eggs and fresh fruit while sitting out towards the water with the fresh warm ocean air.  After our bellies were full we went back and showered and got ready for our oolala cruise. 9:10am we’re down waiting for our bus to take us to the port to board our boat. The boat ride was so much fun, we went slow and there were about 25 other people who joined us, most of them from Australia. We spent the hour and 20 minutes on the back of the boat basking in the sun. It was very hot today, there were not too many clouds out so that was great. Due to the over exposure of sun yesterday I wore 45spf today and I still managed to get some color. J We stopped short of our island that was called Salvala I think and got to snorkel. It was so much fun the water was so warm, I saw a round blue fish thing and a bunch of others. Snorkeling is a very tricky thing we kept getting salt water in our mouths and eyes even though we had our gear on. Our group swam pretty far away from our boat so when Rachel and I decided to swim back it was a lot farther then we had remembered. I swam like I was swimming in the Olympics, thinking at any point a shark was going to come up out of the water and get me so I was booking it. Don’t worry I made it with no sharks around. We get back to the boat and I’m trying to catch my breath and just as I stand up I get sprayed in the face with a hose of fresh water to clean off the salt water. It was quite refreshing. The taste of salt water is still in my mouth and is a terrible taste, so what better to do then to wash it down with a nice cold Fiji beer. After waiting for a while we put along towards our private island where we are then shuttled over on a smaller boat. Words cannot even explain how pretty this island was. Picture paradise on white sand and clear water, because that’s what it was. We could stand neck high in the water and still see our feet. What better way to spend time on this island of paradise then to get a massage. Yes, we both got massages on the beach it was amazing. This was probably the most relaxing massage I’ve ever had, she may not have been the best but the setting made up for it. Nothing is more calming then the breaking of the waves along the beach and the nice warm ocean breeze. It was out of this world awesome. For the rest of our stay we had a nice picnic on the beach and laid out in the sun. It was so nice we didn’t want to leave we asked if we could sleep there with a tent and make a fire and we were told no because we would get taken by pirates. Haha.  So the day was coming to an end. L While on the boat we met these two adorable little girls one was 6  her name was Ariowin and a 3 year old, Briana. They were from Australia and this little 6 year old was the cutest little girl I’ve ever seen.  So we played with them for the rest of the ride home. After we got back to the dock we made our way home and just in time because there was a small rain shower that hit. We finally ended our day with a trip back to the port where we did some shopping and went to dinner at Hard Rock Café Fiji. I had the fish and chips and it was SO yummy it was a local fish, I don’t remember the name of it but it was good. Our waitress was so nice she sat and chatted for a little bit. It takes her about an hour to get to work and an hour to get home, she works 6 days a week and pretty much all day long. The worst part of this is that she makes $2.80 an hour, which is like $1.40 US dollars.  She was so nice and we wanted to leave her a big tip but she said when people tip it all goes into a jar and then they split it between everyone. We still left a pretty good tip. Speaking of money, things are so expensive or at least they seem expensive when we first look at them because they are in Fijian dollars. Oh yes how could I forget when we got back to our hotel we went for a little walk on the beach and laid out by the ocean under the stars with the tiki torches going it was so relaxing. It upset us a little we really wished we would have had a boyfriend or something with us to enjoy this romantic scene…but we didn’t. Bummer dude. So that’s all I think we did today tomorrow we are going to lay out in the sun and then go to a fire show at night.