first week in fiji

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Hi everybody, well today is my last full day in fiji before I board the ship. its been an exsasting week and we are almost looking forward to the posible rest we might get abourd the ship!
When we first landed in fiji and Lusi (the lady of the house were staying at) took us home to a kava serimony, which involved drinking the halusanagenic drink which then made us a part of the family (Caley, Tom and I). after the first few days staying with the famly, visiting town a bit (which causes a little bit of culture shock just from all the people, heat and crampedness of it) and Mo took us to a local beach, which was a little muddy and Caly and I felt a little out of place in our two pices swim suits, we still had a fun time swimming and serchdiving for clams. On the way back to the house we mentoned we were slightly hungry so Mo pulled over and bought 3 giant bags full to the brim with the most delisios mangos I have ever had!
After 3 days of being in Latoka we were starting to get a little ansy to see the islands, so we wiped out the guide book and picked the cheapest, nicess looking hostel that we could find with an internet accses (although once we arrived we found that the internet was down?... sorry mom and dad). but apart from there being no internet it was one of the nices places that you could hope to stay in in fiji (in a students budget of $25 per night)! with the beach just meters from the dorm, a lovely resterantbar to relaxe in (in which tom and caly ran up a bill of over $100 more that me, seperatly) and rolling hill on which we could watch the beautiful pink and blood red sunset (we tried to get up in time for sunrise but it never quite seemed to happen). on the second day there Tom and I decided to go snorkaling, this was after we had waded out to the deep end, looked over the drop-off and became so scard to go any further without visability. so after spending an hour looking around the v. exotic fish we were just about to come and carsh on the beach when joe (a very good looking fijian (caleys opinion) who works at 'funky fish') invited the two of us to go out to the coral reef sand spit that was a mile or so away. so we hoped in the boat and sped off to this perfect little spot with saphire colored water that you could see 250m down. once putting out flippers back on we swam around for anouther hour and a half seeing the most amazing fish that I've only seen in pictures. for eample there were hundereds of these interesting 'zebra fish' as we called them, multicolored florecent ones the size of my feet, pointly spindly see-through ones that we chased along the surface of the water and many many more! once the bost came back to pick us up we were pretty tried and sore from all the swimming, so we crashed in our dorm only to wake up to caley laughing at us and we being unability to move. Turns out that we had forgoten to put any sunscreen on and we had managed to compleatly burn only the backside of our bodys while staying 'pasty' (in fijian standards) on our fronts! but it was worth it to look like frosted mini wheats in order to snorkal in the reefs, although i think we learn our lesson! the next few days we hung around, caght some fish which the resort fried up for our dinner, got to be friends with this german girl, sandra, who was travelling fiji by herself, and had a going away kava party, which was much stronger than the kava we had had in mo's house and we all got fairly high (well, I did at least!) and just spent some great times by the pool having fun and getting to know each other!
on the thursay morrning we headed back to latoka and were extreamly sad to be leaving the wonderfull surrounding and ppl but mo was having a party that we were expected to be at, so we packed out bags and took the fist ferry out. once we got back to mos we had half an hour before the party guest arived, so we through on our salts uniforms to represent nd helped out with a few last minute chores to be greeted by the largest number of white ppl that we have seen this whole trip (tom has taken to counting each north american person he sees). we atimaticly made friends with the entertainment crew from the cruise who were a very lively bunch (it helped that all the men were... flamboyant) and entertaind us greatly, as we did to them im guessing. after a few hours of getting to know these ppl over some sangreas and ground rosted pork (the intire animal!) they had to head back to the boat to get ready to leave, and we had to get ready for anouther party. it turned out that mo's niese was getting married (kinda a shotgun wedding, but still) and a few hours after the first bunch had left all of mo's family showed up beening very loud and togeter! at this point the only three caucasions in the house, us, were very worn out but the days activitys and went to bed early to let the family have there fun. when we woke up in the morrning, we found a very drunk and happy tom who had been woken up at 3am by the fijian cousins to drink with and apperently clime a mountain bearfoot to see the sunrise at 5am! apart from getting tom sick they were a very nice bunch of young men (although the women didnt seem as talkative). So now we are just makeing a few last min. stops to get ready for leaving tomorrow, its still an unreal feeling that I'm getting on the boat tommorow but we are getting excited to meet everyone else and sail off to the horizon!

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