Hong Kong Sevens

Bula everyone! The hustle and bustle around here was the Honk Kong Sevens Rugby Tournament this past weekend. Rugby talk was everywhere and immediately after Fiji won the finals, there was honking in the streets and shouts of "yeah Fiji" and "go Fiji" everywhere.

Unfortunately I was only to see highlights as we don't have cable in our apartments and I had a big paper due on Monday but here is a highlights clip:

Friday night we stayed in and watched a friend play volleyball for USP. Saturday we took an overnight trip to a small island south of Ovalou (close and easy to get to, pretty cheap too!). It had awesome food but was just a gorgeous small island. Not a whole lot of activities compared to previous places but I got my tan on and continued to meet other travelers, locals, people working in Suva, etc. I'll post some pictures when I get them from my friend who joined. Hope all is well back home, everyone in Florida enjoy your vacation!

Nananu-I-Ra Weekend Getaway

Sorry everyone! Computer malfuctions...many walks to both the Mac store and ITS services. Thank goodness for warranties and thank goodness that the only Mac store in all of Fiji is only a 15-20 minute walk away. Internet here is still shaky, doesn't seem like that will get any better while we're here. Last weekend we visited an island off the northern coast of the main island. I haven't really talked about the geography or layout of the country, so below are a few maps that explain where I am and where I've been.

We've only been off the main island of Viti Levu once or twice. USP is situated in the middle of Suva along the east coast. Nadi is the main airport where connecting flights from LAX or Australia fly through. Pacific Harbour has been an attraction for us, that's located in between Sigatoka and Navua along the southern shore. As you can see from the picture below, the island of Nananu-I-Ra is an island just off the coast of Rakiraki. 

MacDonald's Cottages were right next to Betham's Beach Cottages where we stayed for the weekend. This island had no internet and only had the generators on for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the afternoon...there was obviously no need to plug in our computers so that didn't bother us. I've never felt so secluded in my life, it was so peaceful and quiet at night. It didn't take long to walk around the island but there was a village on the island too. Between the three resorts, there were only around 20 people visiting.

Fun 4 hour bus trip...

I don't really have anything nice to say about the bus ride up. Definitely makes me grateful for the space I got during those famous Bisket road trips because there was absolutely no space on this bus. People were standing in the isles and our knees touched the seat in front of us. It was blazing hot and super bumpy. Oh Fiji...

Off the bus! Where's the island?!?!

I wanted to kiss the ground when I finally got off the bus. We made arrangements with Betham's to pick us up so we had a speedboat waiting for us to take us across the water.

Matt and Shawn ready to depart

 Including both the bus and the boat, it was a five hour trip and we didn't arrive until after 6.

Being the only girl I got ridiculed for how "cute" our housing setup was.  Like always, we had asked to stay in their dormitory style housing. I was not expecting the actual cottage that we were led to!

Our cottage :)

Kitchen area

Shawn, Andrew, Matt, and I

Unfortunately it rained quite a bit on Friday night so we stayed in. In good American fashion we celebrated St. Patty's Day by playing cards and drinking. (Shout-out to Chip and Trish...my whole program has now learned the card game hockey and we play it all the time). Saturday we spent snorkeling a good portion of the day. Shawn and Andrew took out the kayaks and wanted to kayak around the island. They got about halfway and came back because they weren't sure they were gonna make it. Haha if only they had kept going! We explored the island and the other resorts, talked to some of the other guests that were there.

My Saturday :)

Just sitting in the water, fish would come up and nibble at your toes. I expected the minnows to, but there were some 3 in. and 4 in. fish that would come up to! It was amazing having a pier, the water was so clear you could see the coral and the fish without even getting in. 

View from the pier

They called this day a murky day so I can't believe what it'd look like on a clear day! They also called the edge of the pier a fish sanctuary. People sometimes feed the fish so often there are large gatherings of fish in that one specific area. Below are some of the pictures we got from snorkeling. 

Fish everywhereeee

 I wish I could describe how it feels to just have fish swarming all around you. It's so beautiful underwater and it seems like such an undiscovered world to me. I don't regret getting my scuba license one bit, in fact, I was lucky enough to do my first real dive on Sunday. It was absolutely incredible...the reefs were so colorful and there are always so many different kinds of fish, I love always have something pretty to look at! We even practiced doing some swim-throughs, where you swim between huge rock crevices or through rock formations.

Matt and I ready for our dive on Sunday

Matt is actually getting his license this weekend so he just joined us on the boat and snorkeled above in the open water last weekend. 

First dive descent!

Matt's view from the surface

One of the sharks we saw! (It was a baby one though, roughly only 2 meters)

I'm alive!

 We actually did a two-tank dive so we had a surface interval of about an hour and hopped back in the water at a different reef. The first spot was called Magic Mountain, the second Nemo's Playground. The people from the resort were so sweet, the wife had made banana bread and chocolate cake as a snack between dives. They also had coffee and tea for us. Our group consisted of our Dive Master Steve, Ken and April (worldly travelers), Tim (Diplomat from the UK), Matt, one other random snorkeler, and I. So it was fun getting to know them on the boat and asking about other dive spots that were a must before I leave in June.

View of the island

It was a fantastic weekend. Food was a bit of an issue, it was pretty much a steady diet of cereal in the morning, peanut butter sandwich for lunch, and pasta and sauce for dinner. Overload on carbs there haha but it was the easiest to bring along with us. Plus we had Pringles and cookies for snacks. I'm glad to be back to fruit and meat here in Suva. 

Family photo

 The journey back to Suva was a little less planned than the journey to Nananu-i-Ra. In fact, this is pretty much what it looked like:

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Haha, no not that extreme. But we did catch the boat back to the main island and looked around when we got there saying "what's next?" We flagged down a taxi and asked him to take us to the closest town that the bus would pick us up from. This "town" consisted of a store on the side of the road. So we had a bit of down time (3 hours) waiting for the bus to pass. There were some kids playing in the water across the street from the shop as well as some locals just hanging around everywhere. I ended up playing around with some of the kids while we waited too. They were big goofballs, many of them are very shy and won't say much. But once you get them started to talk they laugh at everything too!

Andrew and I waiting for the bus

 Bus trip was another 4 hours again, we finally got back to Suva around 10 pm. It was a looong day considering I had done a two tank dive just 10 hours earlier. This week has been pretty busy, had my first midterm and my first literature paper is due Monday so classes are in full swing. We're looking at doing some kind of day trip this weekend to get out of Suva so I'll keep you posted! As always, hope everyone's doing well back home.

Can't get enough of this beautiful place!!

AustraLearn group

Hey there's finally a group picture of all of us! This was taken when we visited the Sote village right after we were formally welcomed.

Back row from left to right: Evan, Emily, Dan, Matt, Ravi, Nate, Austin, Andrew, and Graham
Front row: myself, Steph, Kellie, Katie, and Sydney

Scuba Diving

So this weekend I finally decided to go for it and get my scuba diving license. I hate planning things, especially for a large group of people. I don't know how I got meddled into being the point person for this activity...probably when nobody else stepped up to do it! The worst is when you have ten "maybes" in the group, so I finally said ok I'm doing it this weekend, regardless of who else does. Lo and behold I had two others join me from the group. We literally got our books on Wednesday and were certified by Sunday!

Shawn, Dan, and I before leaving for the first trip

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get many pictures of underwater. First of all, our dive instructor Greg asked us to refrain from taking pictures, just out of courtesy of making sure we were paying attention to him during our dives. It's interesting how much you can actually learn in the water with only hand gestures! Secondly, without a protective case, my camera can only go up to 5 meters deep. I'll have to look into getting a case for it!

Friday we did our confined pool dives. Like a naive American, I assumed that the Fijian National Aquatic Center, recently built within the last 10 years for the Pacific Games would be an actual facility. How wrong I was when I showed up to pretty much a regular pool. Thank goodness the instructor brought extra sunscreen as all three of us assumed it would be indoors!

National Aquatic Center

Because it was Friday afternoon, there were literally hundreds of Fijian kids everywhere in this pool. Buses of kids kept arriving, most of them for an organized swim practice, but several who were there to swim for fun, and would occasionally bet with each other to see how close they could get to our group without our dive instructor asking them to give us some space :)

Dive theory, check!

We split up our four dives over the weekend, doing two on Saturday and two on Sunday. The weather was gorgeous and perfect for diving, with pretty great visibility both days. How lucky I was to learn amongst Fijian reefs; it was so beautiful and so colorful under the water. I was hoping to see some big sea turtles but we were only fortunate to swim amongst the tropical fish. I felt like I was in Finding Nemo!

Suva Harbor

Suva Yacht Club

Shawn helping load up the equipment

It was so great to be out on the water, reminded me of being out on Grandpa's sailboat on Lake Michigan! This boat was definitely not as nice, just a simple pontoon boat to get us to the reef and back, and had the necessary equipment holding spaces to make sure our tanks wouldn't fall and roll around. There were 6 of us taking the class, the 3 Americans (or as our instructor joked, "colonials") and three other Germans (a husband, wife, and a boy about our age) who are living in Suva for the time being. It was a close call trying to fit all of us with all our equipment on the boat!

Myself, Shawn, and Dan ready for our first dive!

The first dive definitely took some getting used to, although we were grateful to have some more space and depth than what the pool had offered. The deepest we went was only around 14 meters (just under 50 feet) and each dive lasted under an hour. You don't realize how exhausted you get until you're back on the boat. We learned things like what to do if you run out of air, how to put your mask back on underwater, and how to control our buoyancy and depth in the water.

Ready to dive! That's the dive instructor Greg in the background

 What a great experience and a great weekend. Although diving can be quite pricey, I have enjoyed every minute of it so far and can't wait to take advantage of some of the student scuba diving package deals! It'd be a shame not to take advantage of exploring the incredible world underneath the surface in the South Pacific :)

Scuba certified!

The University of the South Pacific and Suva

Hey so I promised I would take some pictures of what it's like living in Suva. We stayed in Suva this weekend because our resident director threw us a BBQ last night and some of us already have some assignments due this week. Plus, three of our kids joined the USP basketball team and their first game was this weekend so we went out and cheered for them!

 Our apartments are called the Waqavuka Flats, but in Fijian, the "q" sounds like "ng", so its pronounced "Wangavuka". 

Kitchen/Living area

Bedroom-Thanks for the sign family! :)

Bedroom

Bathroom

Bedroom

Technically we are located on campus grounds. The walk on the main road to my classes is like 15-20 minutes but if we "cut through" the back way we can get there in 10. It's not that big of a campus, but you'll see in the pictures below that there are lots of covered walkways. If necessary, you can get to anywhere on campus under some sort of shelter, which has already been tested as I've been caught in the rain several times. I've learned to bring both my sunglasses and my umbrella with me at all times!

Example of covered walkway

Another covered walkway

One of the student lounges

The main coffee shop on campus

I have my Literature lectures in this building

Faculty of Business and Economics

Inside of the Faculty of Business and Economics building

Typical lecture room-none of them are AC'ed so there are usually ceiling fans and they'll keep all the doors and windows open

Library

Backside of the library

This is where I have my tutorials for my classes

Ocean view from one of the campus buildings

Getting downtown is very easy; you can catch a bus without even being at a bus stop, but there is a bus stop right down the street from our apartments. Bus rides are 70 cents, taxis are everywhere and usually cost around $6 to get downtown. Below are some photos of around the city:

Digicel and Vodaphone are the two cell phone companies in Fiji

"Main St."

There's one huge vegetable market right in the center of downtown. It's what I've been using as a reference point to maneuver through the city. Every stand is almost exactly the same and there are hundreds of stands! Lettuce can be expensive here, but they always have coconuts, carrots, green beans, bananas, and eggs along with local fruits like papaya and breadfruit.

Bargain buy shops-you can find one on every block

Working hard or hardly working...not uncommon to see this!

Flowers are so colorful here :)

TappooCity is one of the two main malls downtown: while everything is closed on Sundays, the malls stay open and even have a grocery store inside.

The buses are nuts here, they drive so close to things and are always blaring music. Some even have LED lights and decorations on the inside. The bus bay can be quite confusing, but there are two or three places to pick up the bus on the route to USP. You always see people squeezing between the buses, even when they're pulling out, its a miracle I haven't seen anyone get hurt. 

This is the park area of downtown. It overlooks the harbor and looks really cool at night when all the boats are light up on the water. The pathway along the water is called the Sea Wall and when its not absurdly hot, you can often find a lot of people walking or running on the path.

That's it for now, hopefully I have some more exciting stuff to show next time! Hope all is well back home, I'm feeling pretty well adjusted here but of course missing everyone back in the states!!