Hello friends and family of carpe diem travelers!
This is the first of what I'm sure will be many updates from our trip on the blogosphere. There is really only good news to report thus far. We arrived in Nadi, Fiji at about 5 AM the morning of September 10th. Its not often that one is struck by natural beauty when stepping out of an airport, in fact I would say that it was the first time it has ever happened to me. It was cool and breezy that morning, and the sun was just rising, creating a red glow behind the hills. I knew then that I was going to have a very good trip in this place, and my premonition has proved true thus far.
We spent the first day mostly getting to know one another, playing ice breaker games and recovering from our long journey. By the end of the day, our group already felt tight, and that feeling has only increased since then. Our leaders are on the ball, and have laid out very reasonable guidelines for travel, along with good pointers on health and safety.
Yesterday we spent the day exploring Nadi. We split into groups of three and wandered the city, trying to take in all that we could. We met back at the hostel that afternoon and discussed our findings on the local customs, the people and the food. It is a common agreement among the group members that Fijians are righteously awesome. Sometimes their friendlyness is feigned in an effort to get us gringos to buy things. But often, it is completely legitimate, exemplified by big smiles and the many shouts of bula! (hello!) from people we walk past.
Each of these blogs will include a little fun fact or history about the place we find ourselves. In Fiji, Christianity became so widely accepted because of similarities to their traditional forms of worship: mana (meaning spiritual power) and taboo (sacred prohibitions). There are a number of interesting Taboos in Fijian culture that we have been learning. My favorite so far has to be that sitting in doorways is discouraged, because if a spirit should want to enter the house, their way should not be blocked. Fijians do still worship in traditional ways, including the Kava ceremony that the next blog will likely mention. There is going to be a Kava ceremony welcoming us to our next port of call, a northern village called Nannanu, where we will be volunteering for the next two weeks.
The food in Nadi so far has been great, strongly influenced by Indian cuisine which is a favorite of mine. It is going to be a little different in the village we are going to next, no doubt, but the group is excited about getting a taste of authentic Fijian cuisine and culture.
Today we spent the day in Newtown, the more touristy section of the city. The beach there was beautiful. The clear, warm water and palm trees along the shore are the evidence of my facebook status: "fiji: a true paradise." We swam and hung out for a few hours, and headed back downtown.
There is not much more to report, thus far. The group gets along really well together, and we are excited about getting the real itinerary of the trip underway since orientation has gone so well.
On a personal note, our arrival in Fiji reminded me of a part in book that I just read by one of my literary heroes, Hunter S. Thompson. He lived in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1958, before the place became a haven of tourists and rich americans. Some of his descriptions of the landscape of San Juan remind me a good deal of Nadi, but what really spoke to me in his writing was his sense of freedom and awe in a new and beautiful part of the world. Thus I'm going to end this post with a direct quote from The Rum Diary. I hope that all is well stateside.
"I was feeling better now, warm and sleepy and absolutely free, with the palms waving and the big sun burning down on the road ahead, I had a flash of something I hadn't had since my first days in Europe: a mixture of ignorance and a loose kind of what-the-hell confidence that comes to a man when the wind picks up, and he begins to move in a hard, straight line, toward an unknown horizon."
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