One of my favorite foods that I’ve had in Fiji is ‘roti,’ which is the Indian version of the tortilla. My host mom’s roti is soooo good. You usually eat roti with some kind of curry (chicken, beef, cabbage, okra, etc.). An Indian girl in my class, named Crystal, usually has roti for lunch. Why bother with a lunch box when you can wrap your food in newspaper?
Vani, the naughty girl who caused the spider incident in the classroom, is so cute that it’s hard to be angry at her for long. I love this picture of her at lunchtime. She looks like a little model!
Last weekend, I went on another fabulous island trip with four other Projects Abroad volunteers. We left Friday morning and got back to Nadi on Sunday evening. This time, we went to Nacula island, which is the northernmost island in the Yasawa group that you can reach by boat. (There’s a couple beyond it, but you have to take a private jet to those.) We were on the boat for about five hours before finally reaching our destination, Oarsman’s Bay Lodge. If you look closely, you can see the lodge here:
Gorgeous beach:
On Saturday morning, we rode a small boat for about forty minutes to swim in some caves on a neighboring island. The caves were so so so cool. Here’s the boat ride over (me, Heather from Canada, Tamara from Egypt, and Molly from England):
And this shows the entrance to the first part of the cave. That’s not a white coffin floating in the water, don’t worry. It’s just a huge random piece of plastic… It was creepy and dark in the caverns beyond this! I wish I could have taken pictures inside those parts, but the only way to get to them is by swimming underwater, so of course that didn’t happen.
I went snorkeling on Saturday afternoon! I took some pictures with my disposable underwater camera (thanks, mom and dad!), and I really hope they turn out. I saw some cool fish and coral. Alas, I think I was spoiled by my first Fiji snorkeling experience on Waya Island – nothing I’ve seen since compares to that.
The sunsets were just incredible. This is my new desktop background:
This is Tamara, a volunteer from Egypt, frolicking in the ocean. Moments after this picture was taken, she saw a snake in the water and ran out screaming, terrifying us all. The snake was pretty small – only a little more than a foot long or so – but according to a local village woman on the island, it bites and is poisonous…!
On Saturday night, we were served ‘lovo’ for dinner. This was my first time having lovo, which is a traditional Fijian cooking style. Our food was essentially cooked in the ground. First, the cooks heated up lots of stones and placed them in a pit, making an oven. Wrapped meat, potatoes, and cassava were put on top of the stones to be heated. The whole thing was covered in leaves. It was delicious!
We kept seeing this boat at the resort next door. Its name is “DR PHIL FOREVER.” I'm not sure what the story behind that one is, but it made us laugh every time we saw it.
On Sunday morning, we went to a Methodist church service in a village. We had to travel by boat for about ten minutes to get there. The service was almost entirely in Fijian, meaning we couldn’t understand much, but it was still really nice to see. The people were very welcoming and friendly. Tourism is the sole source of income for these villages, so they’re always happy to see visitors. All the females who wanted to go to church had to wear the proper clothing. The staff at our lodge kindly offered us their ‘sulus’ to wear. We looked pretty ridiculous. :) From left, Molly from England, me, and Heather from Canada.
I still can’t get over the blueness and clearness of the water here. I’ve yet to take a picture that looks as good as the real thing, but I’m still trying! The fish aren’t shy here either. They aren’t bothered by splashing or movement, and will continue to circle you as long as you stay in the water. You can sort of see some fish in the shallow water here, though they almost blend in with the sand.
I love Fiji!
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