Bula!

(This is my first in a series of postings I'll be making over the next few days as I have time, so check back soon for more stuff!)

Where do I start? It's been an action packed last few weeks. So I'll start with my departure. The plane trips were long and uneventful, and we had an 8 hour layover while in LA. Once we finally arrived in Fiji, it was about 5AM local time. I travelled with a friend from school named Jillian so we headed off to the bus stop. We met two Fijians there named Smith and Ily who talked with us for an hour while we waited for the bus. We asked where they were headed and they said into town, but they wanted to make sure we got on the right bus first. This was just the first example of how nice the Fijian people are! So we left and cracked open a beer on the way to the marina (we had to buy some at the duty free shop of course!)

Along our way, we met up with three other travellers - Meghan from Iowa State who was on her way to Melbourne, Robert from Czech and Chris from Austria who were travelling the world for a few months. We travelled to a different island in Fiji each day we were there, and let me tell you, Fiji is a beautiful place. We went scuba diving and saw an awesome shipwreck with some very cool tropical fish and coral. We also went to see a Fijian village, learned how to husk and eat/drink coconuts, went snorkeling, watched amazing sunsets, and drank a lot of kava. Kava is a Fijian cultural drink that's made with water and ground up plant roots. It doesn't taste the best (sort of an earthy taste) and it numbed your tongue and lips slightly, but it was a cool ceremony to participate in. By the way, "bula" is Fijian for "life," and it's used as a greeting. "Vinaka" means "thank you." We spent our days on the beach reading, hanging out in the water, basically just relaxing. It was really great overall. More pictures coming soon....

P.S. Sorry for the lack of communication. I still haven't gotten to talk to a lot of you, but O-Week (orientation week) is packed with activities, and I'm still getting settled in here. Give me a few more days and I promise I'll talk to you all!!