Fiji Museum and Colo-I-Suva National Park

Back at Uprising for the night celebrating a birthday tonight, totally taking advantage of the unlimited internet again!

This past week has been orientation. We've just been getting to know the campus and I finally have my schedule somewhat down. Here, they do mandatory set time lectures for your class and then you sign up for a certain number of tutorials per each class period. Unfortunately I don't have Fridays off anymore annnd I have an 8am on Monday. I'm in Fiji though, I can't complain right? Haha. The international office has been helpful so far. They set up a trip for all the international kids to go down to the Fiji museum.

Bamboo house boat

War uniform for one of the islands back in the day

Compared to the Smithsonians I'm used to back home, this wasn't a very intense museum. And it wasn't air conditioned. So while it was hard to pay attention to everything, I did learn a few things about the culture and history of the making of this country.

This was the description for a necklace...how creepy!

Guns from the British settlers

The Fijians were quite the scary people back in the day. They were pretty ruthless cannibals, not a proud moment in their history! Don't worry guys, they've evolved past that. However, much of the museum was full of war weapons and explanations of the passing of power from the British to the Japanese back to the British and finally gaining their independence back in the 70s. 

War paddle...imagine getting hit with one of those...sheesh

Bugs the size of my hand! Gross!

Evolution of dress in Fiji

Sugarcane pumper car

It was interesting when I wasn't sweating my butt off. I learned some new things and was able to converse and get to know some of the other international students. There are quite a few kids from Wisconsin here because there's a program through one of the schools up there. Other than that there are kids from Australia and New Zealand, Germany, one kid from Russia, Canada, China, and the Koreas. I've been grateful to have my friends from AustraLearn though, we've bonded a lot in the time we've been here. We even planned our own trip yesterday out to the Suva National Park to hang out in the waterfalls. Maybe if we had some help planning from the International Office, we wouldn't have been lost in the park for 2 and a half hours!! We finally found the waterfalls and had a great time nonetheless. 

So grumpy after being lost!

First source of water!

Now that we know how to get to the waterfalls (its only like a 30 minute hike from the start) it will definitely be an easy favorite of the group. We didn't go to the other waterfalls which were much bigger so we'll have to check those out eventually. The park was absolutely gorgeous, much better than the "city life" of Suva. It's taking a bit to adjust, but my friends in my group are helping me with all of it. As I mentioned, classes start on Monday so I'll be in a regular schedule soon. I'm looking into getting my scuba diving license soon so maybe I'll start that next weekend! Hope all is well back in the states!