Blogs from Suva, Fiji, Oceania - page 3

The alarm went off at 6 am today. We were again hoping for a beautiful day in paradise, especially since this was the last adventure for the two of us. We put on our swim suits, packed our dry clothes and ate breakfast. Pick up for the rafting was at 6:45. Several people from our lodging were on the bus and we met up with several others at the main office. In all about 29 people were on the excursion. After we sign our life away we pile back into the buses and head for the drop off, this took 3 hours. They told us it would take 30 min Fijian time. We were not expecting that. It has been raining for 3-4 solid days and today was not different. It was a very rocky, bumpy ... read more

Last November, I was incredibly excited sitting on a plane getting ready to embark our 3-week-internship in Fiji. It was the most satisfying and unique 3 weeks in my life, in which I have broadened my knowledge and developed a better understanding of my personal interests and career goals. What kind of work did I do as an intern? During my time at the University of the South Pacific (USP), I spent most of my time watching films, research about films, and write film synopses. The synopses will be used as part of a weekly film series to be presented in a film festival at the university in 2011. The collection of the films is very diverse in terms of genre, country of production, and messages conveyed. Regardless of the diversity, the films record the collective ... read more

Continued… Sadly, we’re now on our last day here in Fiji, and if all goes to plan, we’ll be landing in La la land in just a few hours*, to spend a week in San Fran, before fleeing for Cuba via a detour through Mexico. However, the crumbling and unpredictable stability of this planet means that over breakfast we watched reports on Aljazeera TV of an 8.8 earthquake in Chile. Obviously the consequences of this are devastating for the people in Chile, but it means that most countries in the Pacific are also on Tsunami alert - including Fiji. All you can do is wait for updates and keep your eye on the news. So in the mean time, I’ll tell you about our last few days of island life. Spending another couple of very quiet ... read more

Hi all, Well we're already a week into our project and this is the first opportunity to get in contact with anyone. Its going so well. Last week we arrived in Nadi after a very very long time on the plane and were met by the local guiding commissioner and also their international co-ordinator which presented us with these amazing flower garlends. We spent some time getting over jet lag and then travelled to a place called pacific harbour. From then on we have been to five schools and have just finished a leaders weekend training. The school visits have been a lot of fun and the kids have been great. The leaders training was more challenging by just as rewarding. Although Fijian do like their packed programmes and early mornings so our saturday trainings started ... read more

Our last week in New Zealand with “Dr Who” our little camper van...................... Well as a matter of fact we had a nice last week there, the weather wasn’t to bad, dry most days with the odd appearance of Mr Sunshine. We spent most of the week back in Taupo, it’s a lovely little lakeside town and had a great free campsite just on the outskirts, everyone is a winner. We spent some time wondering round the town, plenty of window shopping and also borrowed the use of Taupo library, did some reading, sorted out our music collection and watched some films from there DVD section. We decided to get into Auckland on the Saturday morning, found a great campsite just on the outskirts again (had to pay for this one) the plan was to spend ... read more