Alpaca My Bags! : Day One in Fiji

We finally arrived in Fiji. Half of the group had to wait 7 or so hours for the next flight. I was part of the first half that had to literally run to catch the connecting flight to the island that we were staying. We landed, went through customs, claimed out bags, and ran. We had to check in again and this time we had to weigh our bags and ourselves because the plane was so small they had to make sure the weight was evenly distributed. We then walked outside and walked on the runway to our small plane that had only 7 rows and small propellers instead of wings. Everybody had to hunch over in the plane because it was so small. I laughed imagining my mom doing this. The cockpit had no doors and it was cool to see the pilots at work and look out their window in addition to my own. The ride to the island was only about an hour and the views were amazing. Out the window, all I saw was green everything. We flew over water and the water was teal! When we landed, all I could see out the windows was palm trees everywhere. We got off and got our bags off the runway. We loaded them up in a bus and took a short 10 minutes bus ride to the little bungalows that we would stay in for the next few nights. Given time to unpack, we settled down and rested up for a little while before heading down the road to a small beach. At the beach, Chase helped me set up my eno. Okay that’s a lie. I watched Chase set up my eno. He stacked mine on top of his, which meant I had to climb into mine. Chase demonstrated the proper way to climb into the top eno and made it look easy. This was no easy task. Nevertheless, I made it into the top eno and turned around to see everybody’s eyes on me because it was apparently quite the show. Chase and I talked all about photography and Ms Hartman had me working on recruiting him for yearbook. I see the next photography editor of 2017! All of the kids in our group ran and jumped into the water with our leader Lisa. We all floated around in a circle and shared stories of traveling adventures. It was cool to listen to Lisa recount her adventures and all of her favorite places that she has been. It speaks volumes about a person when they are telling a story and not a single kid interrupts because of the gravity of her stories. When Lisa tells stories, everybody shuts up. I think that’s really cool. For lunch, we ate in this little restaurant with a beautiful view of the water and the food was dank. We learned and listened all about the culture of Fijians and heard our Fijian plans for the next two weeks. On our walk home we encountered many Fijian people along the road. They are all very friendly and shout bula, which means hello in Fijian. Finally the other half of the group arrived and we listened to them tell stories and they were given an hour to unpack. We had a really long orientation in which we played interesting warmer upper games to break the ice. We talked a lot about the differences between what it meant to be a traveler vs a tourist. Our Nat Geo leaders told us that the people in the village have taken off work to prepare for our arrival. We are the first westerners to ever live among them and stay with them. That’s pretty cool. Later we gathered in a circle and talked about our goals and fears for the trip. Finally after all this orientation we got to eat dinner. I cannot even recall the names of all the food I tried because it was a buffet. The only familiar thing on my plate was rice. Our bedtime was set for 10 but believe me I passed out at 9. What an exhausting, but great first day.