Friday, May 9, 2014

Loving life

Bula, blog readers.

Today was a beautiful day. An email went out last week about a trip to St. Christopher's orphanage, and at the last minute, I decided to sign up. I'm so happy I did. This wasn't a volunteer trip or anything, it was simply to see the orphanage and spend the morning playing with the kids. There were somewhere between 20 and 30 kids housed at St. Christopher's ranging in age from toddlers to 18, and every one of them was beautiful. They loved singing and a few could play guitar, so they greeted and entertained us with songs. They then introduced themselves and each said what they want to be when they grow up. Despite being orphaned, those kids were so happy and full of life with big dreams for their futures. It was very humbling and inspiring to observe and talk to them, and they brought genuine smiles to my face.




This girl right here is my new friend, Mary. She's 13 years old and will some day be one of the best teachers in Fiji.


Going back a bit, last weekend was also fantastic. On Thursday, I finally put my scuba certification to good use and went diving. Some people found a deal for $70 FJD for a one tank dive, which is about the cheapest I've heard of here. The diving conditions weren't fantastic; the water was a bit stormy and visibility wasn't at its best, but I still loved every minute of it and thought it was incredible. I'll post pictures/videos as soon as Rowan or Sam sends them to me. We dove down along an enormous coral wall that went down about 100 meters. We only went down about 25-30 meters, but that's still pretty deep. Swimming with all the colorful, strange looking fish was so cool, as well as being able to look up and realize how far in the ocean I was.
    


We did the dive in a spot that was a 15 minute boat ride out of Suva Harbor, and the dive shop was based at the yacht club. That weekend happened to be the Suva Jazz and Blues Festival, and the yacht club was one of the three venues around the city that was hosting it. So, when we got back from the dive and got everything put away, we stuck around and got some food while they set up. This means that we effectively skirted the $30 entrance fee and got to enjoy a gorgeous sunset and some really good music from some folksy New Zealand band. 


Two days later, I went with 6 friends to stay at Mango Bay, a backpacker resort about an hour and a half away on the coral coast. It was pretty much like most of the other backpacker places we've been, but it's always good to get out of Suva every now and then, and of course it was gorgeous and so nice to be at the beach. Aside from lounging and swimming, I went kayaking and snorkeling too. It wasn't the most impressive snorkeling I've done, but it was still, as always, a great time. Plus, I saw a sting ray while kayaking! I got way more excited about it than a normal person probably would. I don't know what I'm going to do back home when I can't just get away to gorgeous beaches on the weekends by taking an hour long bus ride.




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