Saturday, June 21, 2014

Stateside

Well, I made it to LAX. Now I'm just sitting enjoying the free wifi and waiting for my flight to Chicago. America feels so foreign, and there's white people EVERYWHERE.

Saying goodbye in Nadi yesterday was so hard. At least I had one more beautiful day on the beach. I don't even know how to sum up everything right now. I have things to post about the last week, but I feel like now is not the time because I don't want to start crying in the airport again. I'll finish this up later.

Friday, June 13, 2014

"Study" week

I've put off updating this re: study week vacation because it was too beautiful to accurately put into words. I stayed a few nights in Nadi at a dirt cheap backpackers hostel with some friends before heading up to the Yasawas for the real vacation and lost my phone there. Fortunately I had just switched out my Verizon SIM for a Vodafone SIM barely 2 weeks prior, so I can just buy a cheap phone off craigslist when I get home. The thing that upsets me most about it is that I lost all the pictures on my phone and don't have a camera for the rest of my time in Fiji. So, I had to wait until others posted their photos from Waya Lailai to be able to put any on here, thus the delay. I'm still waiting for Matt to put his up (he's got the nicest camera and about 600 pictures from that week, so I'll definitely update again when he does put them online), but at least now I've got something.

Because the others went to Manta Ray Island before heading off to Waya Lailai, I traveled alone (or so I thought) and met them up there. When I got on the bus to go from the hostel to Port Denarau, though, Bre and Chase and that whole group happened to be taking the ferry the same day, so I ended up having company after all, which was a pleasant surprise. Port Denarau was weird, because I literally had not seen that many white people in 4 months. The ferry was pretty nice though, and it took about 2 hours to get from Nadi to Waya Lailai Island. I got there about 4 hours before the rest of the crew, and the other group on the ferry with me stayed on the boat to keep going towards a different island, but I couldn't even be bothered by that or feel lonely because I had stepped into paradise. White sand, aquamarine ocean as clear as pool water, blue skies, and rows of hammocks under the palm trees calling my name. We stayed for 3 nights/ 4 days and they were some of the best days I could imagine.

One of the coolest parts is that this particular island is known for having one of the best views in the area from the top of the small mountain. It took us less than an hour to hike up it, and it was indeed breathtaking.

This is overlooking the resort. I love that you can clearly see the reef from all the way up there.

We had nearly a 360 view of the surrounding area from the top.
This is the other side. We thought that island kinda looked like a turtle.

You can see some of the other islands dotted in the distance

Rocks and stuff. I can't get over how pretty it all was.

On top of the world.

The hike up was pretty cool too, we kept finding these natural branchy archways

Buuuut being Fiji, it was a pretty sweaty hike and we were happy to reach the top.

I don't have pictures of the snorkeling yet, although I think somebody did take some. It was incredible though, I FINALLY GOT TO SWIM WITH SHARKS. That was the one thing I really wanted to do while in Fiji more than almost anything else, so I was so happy to do it. One of the staff on the island took us out on the boat to a reef about 15 minutes away to snorkel at where they knew the sharks would be. Mind you, they were just reef sharks, but it was still exhilarating and oddly incredibly serene. They were reef sharks, so they were only about 4-6 feet long and pretty friendly. I immediately could see the truth to the claim that sharks are grossly misunderstood creatures. Yes they are still dangerous, and yes these small sharks still could have taken a decent bite out of me, but they really had no interest in doing so. There were probably around 20 in the area we were at, and being able to swim with that many sharks in their natural habitat was by far one of the coolest things I've ever done. Even if I were to post pictures, there is no possible way to convey the beauty of that experience. 

The rest of the time in Waya Lailai was spent snorkeling by the shore, where there were these neat tunnels through the reefs that you could swim through if you took a big enough breath (I also obtained a number of cuts and scrapes doing this - if you didn't know, coral is SHARP), playing drinking games with Germans, Brits, and a French guy (I wasn't drinking though because I was on antibiotics for an infection), and just lazing around on the beach getting our tan on. It was like something out of a dream, and even better because I got to spend it with people I've come to love. 

Going back to Suva was a letdown. I had to spend all of the next day (Sunday) studying for my Literary Criticism exam on Monday (I actually do go to school here too). The exam was to write 2 essays on our choice topics from a list of 10 questions and we were given three hours. I finished mine in a little over two hours, and I think it went okay. The setup for final exams here is kind of stupid though, in my opinion. Rather than having one exam week and taking the tests in the classrooms, they spread it out over 2 weeks, have 2 exam sessions per day, and have 1200 students at a time take their tests in the Vodafone Arena down the road from USP. Being herded like cattle through turnstiles, given a desk number, and sitting in a giant arena with that many other people doesn't exactly help with any test anxiety. But I don't run things, so whatever. I have one more exam this coming Wednesday, then I'm finally done.