We're Up and Running

Spring break is coming to an end (there's 7 weeks left before summer break). We've been living the Kiwi life for nearly a month. It feels like we've been away from home forever. We got our computer this week and I was finally able to unload all 2000 photos from my camera. Looking back at the Fiji photos means we actually were there, but it feels like it was all just a dream.

Yes, Fiji is amazing. I still can't believe I got to go.

The water is blue, the corals are bright and the jungles are lush, but it is the people that really impacted us. Never in my life have I come across more boisterous and joyful people. One of my favourite memories was the village visit up in the interior of Viti Levu. We lunched, rafted, played and danced with the villagers.

These people know how to live.

I am madly searching through all my pictures, trying to figure out how to tell everyone at home about our time spent there without writing a novel... and then there are the videos that need to be edited (Scott W- I could really use you right now!). So the first entry will be short, but I will leave you with a video I took from the village.

We had just come up from billi-billi rafting down the river (explaining why Scotty has a wet sulu) and after the Kava ceremony, we, the guests, were to choose our dance partner when the singing started.

We kept breaking between each song for another round of Kava (a mild narcotic, looks like muddy water and makes your tongue go a bit numb, and is part of every welcome ceremony whether at a village or a hotel/resort). On one dance round, a bunch of ladies started hooting and hollering at Scotty. They wanted him to dance with one of the older ladies in the corner, so he went over and grabbed her hand. She hopped up and just started shaking it. Scotty totally knocked her for a loop when he started gyrating his hips (they didn't think a white guy could move like that). The ladies got real loud as he started to shake his butt and thrust his pelvis around. My face hurt from laughing at this pack of ladies pounding the floor, screaming, whooping, and crying with laughter as this 60 year old lady wrapped her arms around Scotty's waist and rested her head on his chest while he was just shaking it like Beyonce. When the song ended, the lady collapsed on the floor and all the ladies were laughing and fanning her. It was an unreal moment that I wish I could have gotten on film, but I had to join in on the dancing and fun too. The video can't even do justice to the electricity in the air. The life that these people radiate. I get excited just thinking about it.