Tica's Take on our Arrival

Fiji is probably one of the best places I have ever been to. On the first day I was a little home sick, but I’m over it now. It is so pretty here; I am sending some pictures of the house. It’s so topical and green here. There are tons of palm trees that I hate to walk under because I am scared that a coconut will fall on my head. There are also lots of brightly colored flowers that are great to use in fairy houses. The water is so warm. We have a coral reef in front of our house, how cool is that! There is a Lilly pond, 10 cows, 4 goats, a swimming lagoon and a stream all in our yard. There are four buildings on the property; one is our house, the other is for the lady who takes care of our house, her name is Geeda. The third is for some people whom I don’t know what they do, they are really nice though. The fourth one is a bure that is like a hut, it has a thatch roof and no sides, and it is down on the beach. The last one is a really small house that they also rent out. This is where my uncle and aunt will probably stay when they come in December.

It is really weird, but it is the beginning of spring here, because we are in the southern Hemisphere. It is cooler here than I expected. I thought it would be really hot and humid because we are almost on the equator. I’m not saying that it is cold, the highs in the day are about 80 or 90 degrees. I love how the people here are so happy even though they don’t have much money, which goes to show that you don’t have to have be rich to be happy.

The kids here are really really good soccer players. Ian said that one of the kids was playing soccer, when one of the goats got away. Then he passed the ball and ran and jumped over a three and a half foot high barbwire fence, he landed on the goat’s rope and then tied it to a tree. That tale was told by Ian, so the truth was probably stretched a little bit, that is still pretty cool though.

On the first day we went to Savusavu town, it is about the size of down town Winslow, but there were so many people. It was so crowded, because when we went it was market day, there were so so so so so so many people. It felt like all the people from Seattle came over to Bainbridge on the same day to do their shopping. It was chaotic! There were about a million people shopping and getting stuff for the week. On the bright side, I found my new favorite food; it is like a cinnamon roll but instead of cinnamon inside there was coconut. It was so good.

Tica