this is a strange place, and extraordinary place, and interesting...

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(apparently travelblog doesn't want to be an enabler to my privacy issues. so the public blogs are back. sorry it wasn't working for some of y'all)

i boarded my flight to sydney from lax around 10:20 (for a 10:30pm flight). just the beginning of the troubles with this flight. a passenger was missing but had already checked bags so procedure dictates the bags be removed if the passenger no shows.... as the luggage was being found, amongst the baggage of 450 passengers plus crew, the dude showed up so his bags were chucked back in and we took off.

i was in seat 85g. there were 89 rows. and 2 stories. i somehow ended up next to every family with angry children on the plane. the kids on my row (the unfortunate middle row) were french and completely unaware of personal bubbles. after several elbows to my ribs from the lovely french youngins, and taps from the kid behind me who couldn't grasp the idea of his touch screen entertainment system, instead apparently thinking it a punch screen, i scoped out another seat. just a row back, but it was neighbor free. after supper (plastic tuna steak, dead spinach, and 4 grains of rice) i watched a movie ("wanted". again. cause i love it) ... then took a couple sleeping pills and tried to pass out for a while. got some sleep on and off but was thoroughly distracted by the poor child 2 rows up who was puking, exorcist style, half the flight.

after about 6 hours of fitful sleep (about 8-9 hours into the flight) the pilot asked if there was a medical doctor on board that could please make himself known... thought it might be for emily rose but apparently not. found out later that a man in first class had a heart attack. as this happened 3 miles away from my portion of the plane i wasn't privy to any details but 2 ny ladies, who were loving the attention from being able to share what they witnessed, said the defibrillators were brought out and it was a bit chaotic.

pilot came on a few more times to inform us we had a medical emergency on board but everything was ok. then announced we'd be making an emergency landing in fiji.

aw rats. couldn't it have been somewhere gorgeous and exotic that i could never afford... like fiji... oh wait...

we also had to jettison 20 tons of fuel in order to make the weight limit to land in nadi. he told us this so those of us who could see the fuel pouring out of the wings wouldn't have our own little heart attacks.

we landed at 6am fiji time. apparently qantas informed everyone tracking our flight that we landed at 9:10am in sydney. at that point, however, we were still stewing on the plane on the tarmac that couldn't accommodate our flying time zone. they had to shut down the runway in nadi because our plane was too big. we searched for a parking spot for hours. the ac broke. they didn't serve breakfast before we landed so people were hungry and annoyed. eventually the man was taken off the plane but it was over 2.5 hours after his heart attack. (was taken to the hospital and is apparently doing alright)

pilot (et al.) kept announcing different things. first we were gonna just sit there until the man disembarked. then we were gonna refuel. then grab some food from the fijians. the gigantic, surprisingly comfortable aircraft quickly seemed like a sweltering, stinking paper towel roll once the air conditioning kicked it. we were in fiji so i just stared outside and shoved ear buds deeper into my ears.... and breathed as little as possible. you know how amplified the little annoyances seem when things are out of your control. pilot then told us we were gonna be staying on the island but wouldn't have access to our luggage because during the time we were sitting on the tarmac, some sort of maintenance glitch came up and couldn't be fixed which left them unable to remove our bags (pilot made sure we knew that "our bags" meant crew bags as well ... so we were all in the same jam together)

despite the maintenance problem, they eventually got our bags off and let us go into the "air conditioned lounge". liars. no air conditioning. no food or drink vouchers. it was 12pm fiji time when we got off the plane. we landed at 6am, remember. the girl i had been sitting near hung around me (which i was fine with since her blackberry worked) and she bought me a fiji gold beer for breakfast (yummy). everyone who had a laptop was on it (facebook for everyone, apparently). i didn't bring mine because i figure i'm gonna be annoyed with having to tote it around the 294933 places i'm going but i was regretting that decision right then. got to use a girl's mac and could finally update kade about where i was and what was going on (so far as we knew at that point). he was still at the airport waiting (5 hours after i was supposed to land) because 7 different ladies told him we had landed in sydney already... he didn't find out we weren't even in oz until he went to baggage claim. so i got in touch with him and with mom and besides just wanting to be anywhere other than inside the airport, i was fairly pleased with the situation. it was gonna turn into a free trip to fiji. we had to wait in the airport for qantas to fly engineers over from sydney to fix our plane and make a decision about whether it could be done that afternoon or if we should be put in hotels. at 6pm i finally made it through customs, got my bag, got my hotel assignment, and went to wait for a bus to take me there. the men in fiji wear skirts. everyone is amazingly friendly. "bula". everyone says "bula". which i gathered means "hello" or perhaps "i live in the garden of eden. enjoy the feeling of envy eating away at your soul".

lots of people were annoyed. i felt sorry for the families. i, however, (once i freed kade from his duty to pick me up) had no obligations in sydney on day one so i was obnoxiously giddy once i got outside. i was staying at the fijian resort.

yeah. fijian resort. it's as good as it sounds.

after another 30 minutes of waiting in sticky hot weather, another bus showed up to take the last of us (i couldn't bring myself to finagle my way in front of old people and families just to get on the first bus). it was an hour, 10 min drive from nadi airport to our resort. the scenery was breathtaking. so was the bus ride, but for other reasons. i was snap happy with the camera and didn't even think about trying to sleep like the rest of my bus mates apparently wanted. the resort is on the tip of one of the islands. it was amazing. although i'd have been just as happy being given one of the little grass huts on the beach. got room number 234 (yep. i did). ran upstairs, threw on a bikini and ran to the beach. i had about an hour+ of daylight left. swam in the ocean. apparently got stung by something i didn't see cause once i finally got a shower later, i thought my thigh was going to be covered in blue flames when i looked down at it. instead just saw a long red mark with red dots along the outline. kade said i was fine. said if it were one dot i'd be in trouble. then i showed him the one dot i found on my stomach and he said i was fine again. still don't know what either mark was from but they're both still there... but i haven't lost my ability to see, eat, hear, or breathe ... so it's peachy.

also saw some strange fish swim by. was wedge shaped and translucent with brownish spots on it. (what is that- wren? les?) i love fiji. jumped in the infinity pool to rinse off (the pool felt like warm bath water. little off-putting) and then hiked around the resort. i wish i could have just had a voice recorder for the crazy birds i was hearing. everything was lush and green and glowing. walked back to the beach to watch the sunset. then went to the restaurant to have my complimentary meal. i don't know how it kept getting better but it did. all the oysters, prawns, fish, and sushi i could eat. (there was pasta and salad and other meaty things as well but once i saw the seafood i obviously never left that area until it was time for dessert). dessert was an option of creme caramel, bread and butter pudding, 8 different cakes, mince pies, ice cream, and fruit. freshy fresh fruit. grabbed some pineapple, papaya, and watermelon. and a tiny mince pie with a top crust shaped like a star just because it was a tiny mince pie with a top crust shaped like a star. i didn't like it. but i loved the fruit. thankfully i didn't eat any bad oysters and after my shower and sitting outside on my beach front balcony in my resort robe for a bit, i realized the fact i'd been on a plane for 34235 hours and had then stomped my way around an island, caused my ankles and feet to swell to the width of a gorilla torso so i decided to call it a night and immediately passed out after setting my alarm and wake up call for 1am.

my wake up call came but the phone in the bedroom wasn't ringing. i was very confused. i eventually found the phone in the bathroom and the fijian man said, "bula. hey jen. time to wake up." i love fiji. after the group of us from the flight (only about 60 were at our resort) were packed up and ready to go in the lobby at 2am, we had to figure out the logistics of getting us plus our luggage onto the bus. we were supposed to be to the airport by 3am since it's an international departure (flight was due to leave 5am). i was amazed at the coordination of everything between strangers. the men assembly lined and packed up the luggage and then we ordered another van to carry the rest of us so we could all go together and not have to leave the luggage to be carried in a second bus (no one trusted that everything would go according to plan after the day before... which i was glad to hear since i was hesitant to part ways with my bag). took a while to get everything sorted even though the behavior was movie cliche friendly and cooperative, so we didn't make it back to nadi until 340am. neither did the folks from the other hotels though and everyone was adamant that qantas wouldn't have the gumption to leave any of us behind after their ... screw up... so no one was in a tizzy, thankfully.

i somehow zoned out and missed the boarding call for my row and was one of the last people to board. oops. got a window seat though. we had a few paper work problems and took off about 45 minutes late. between the 2 flights, i watched "wanted", "brideshead revisited", "ghost town", "newcastle" (aussie surfing movie), "the return of the king", 15 minutes of "mamma mia" before wanting to remove 2 of my 5 senses, "in bruges" (awesome movie), and about 20 minutes of "miss pettigrew for a day" (which i'll have to queue up on blockbuster or watch on the flight home cause it was great). finally landed in sydney about 750am on dec 29. i took off from lax at 11 something pm on dec 26, remember.

that's about it for fiji. i'll post some pictures when kade wakes up and can tell me how to upload pics onto a mac. everyone has a mac out here. i refuse to admit i don't know everything about macs even though i'm definitely not the justin long in this situation but... i'm having trouble getting my camera to cooperate with this silvery fox.

if i had been going somewhere other than paradise, i might've been annoyed with the problems.... as it stands, i got a free trip to fiji out of it and had a great time traveling around on my own.

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