BULA!!!
Oh hello there. I am still in Fiji and it is still amazing. Since I have been here over a month, I decided that I will dedicate this blog to talking about the culture in Suva, where I live. As you know, the people are really nice and friendly. But there's more to it than just friendly people saying bula all over the place. But seriously if I had to pick up all of the Bula's people have said to me since I've been here, it would be like picking an entire bag of rice grain by grain. I love rice jokes by the way.
Life is extremely different here than it is from the US. For one, time means NOTHING in Fiji. Every clock says a different time and everybody pretty much lives on their own time. Appointments also mean nothing. I also have learned a lot of life lessons. For instance, you cannot take a long walk without sunscreen on at noon. Also, you have to start doing laundry 2-3 days before you really need to start doing it. Not many people have dryers here so clothes have to dry outside and if it rains, you are out of luck. I have also learned to appreciate things back at home such as warm water, microwaves, CVS, and Taco Bell. This place is definitely missing cheesy gordita crunch's. And doritos locos tacos. Also, some nachos belle grande. Even just plain nachos with cheese would be awesome. Or just cheese. There isn't enough cheese in Fiji. The only cheese I eat is usually just on a pizza. Not good enough. Not complaining either, just sayin.
People here wear sulu's which look like skirts. They actually don't like it when you call a sulu a skirt. I think it's because men wear sulu's so it's weird to call them a skirt. I'm beginning to really like seeing men in sulu's though. I feel like guys are more meant to wear skirts because they have such straight up and down bodies while girls are just all over the place in a skirt (Don't tell anybody I kept calling it a skirt...).
Life is extremely different here than it is from the US. For one, time means NOTHING in Fiji. Every clock says a different time and everybody pretty much lives on their own time. Appointments also mean nothing. I also have learned a lot of life lessons. For instance, you cannot take a long walk without sunscreen on at noon. Also, you have to start doing laundry 2-3 days before you really need to start doing it. Not many people have dryers here so clothes have to dry outside and if it rains, you are out of luck. I have also learned to appreciate things back at home such as warm water, microwaves, CVS, and Taco Bell. This place is definitely missing cheesy gordita crunch's. And doritos locos tacos. Also, some nachos belle grande. Even just plain nachos with cheese would be awesome. Or just cheese. There isn't enough cheese in Fiji. The only cheese I eat is usually just on a pizza. Not good enough. Not complaining either, just sayin.
People here wear sulu's which look like skirts. They actually don't like it when you call a sulu a skirt. I think it's because men wear sulu's so it's weird to call them a skirt. I'm beginning to really like seeing men in sulu's though. I feel like guys are more meant to wear skirts because they have such straight up and down bodies while girls are just all over the place in a skirt (Don't tell anybody I kept calling it a skirt...).
Here are some school boys in their school uniform which is usually a sulu.
Sulu's are actually amazing things. I wear mine all the time because they are so easy. You can wear them as a dress, an under the boob skirt, or as a regular skirt. So awesome. We should make them a thing in the US.
Suva is not exactly what you would picture as stereotypical "beautiful Fiji". It is a city so I guess you can say it's "dirty". It's nice though because I'm not in the middle of nowhere so if I need anything it's easily accessible. Another thing about Suva is that there are hardly any white people. Usually if I see a white person, I either know them, they are also working/volunteering here for a certain amount of time, or a cruise ship has arrived. Most of the people are either Fijian natives or Indian. Loads of Indians were brought over by the English [hundreds?] of years ago. It was because the English found out quickly that Fijians are always on "Fiji Time" and didn't like to work. This still seems to hold true today. The Fijians just seem a lot more relaxed than the Indians. I believe it is because in order to not sweat in the hot heat, the Fijians have figured out that they must do things in slow motion. Not trying to say anything bad here just different lifestyles.
I take the bus to the Suva bus station everyday to get to work. I then walk 10 minutes down Walu Bay. It's a really nice walk. The bus ride is fun because buses here usually don't have windows and they also play really loud music like you're in a club. It's hilarious. They also give some popular American songs a "Fiji remix" which is also hilarious. I've heard Payphone by Maroon 5 at least 100 times with a Fiji remix. They even go as far to give Celine Dion songs a Fiji tune. The Fiji remix just makes any song sound happier and more Islandy. There are a lot of new songs I've heard at the bar that I like as well. Here are two songs you can check out if you'd like:
This is a normal looking bus in Suva. Notice the lack of windows.
This is the bus station where I'd catch my bus home
This is a view by the front of my house
Directly outside of the bus station in Suva, there is a lot of food being sold for very cheap. It is also a good place to buy some local fruits and vegetables. Everything in Fiji seems to be about food sometimes. People are always asking if you want more.
This man wants some corn.
You can buy some fish for only $2 Fiji/$1.10 US
This is this week's special novelty cake.
I learned about an interesting food here it's called a bread fruit. I really like bread fruit not only because of the taste but also because it tastes exactly like how it sounds. It tastes exactly like bread fruit. If I was the first person to find it, I would've named it the exact same thing. Pretty cool.
So far I have used 3 bars of soap. I'm not really sure if that's a lot actually since I don't normally use bar soap at home. Just stating a fact.
One weird thing I have noticed since being here is the large amount of transvestite people. They are boys who at a young age (as young as 4) start to have feminine qualities and eventually start dressing like women. At night I see them running from the police a lot. They are only the Fijian's, not the Indo-Fijian's so maybe it could be genetic? Not sure but it's interesting. Look into it if you want to and please let me know.
Going to the movies in Suva is extremely popular because they only cost about $3.50 US. Also, a lot of movies come out in Fiji before they do anywhere else. I have seen at least 8 movies since I have been here which is a lot for me. It's also amazing to go to the movies because I don't watch tv anymore so watching things on a giant screen has gotten a lot more entertaining. The movie Snitch was pretty good. Safe Haven was also good and gets pretty intense for a romance. I didn't really understand Side Effects and it was a shame because I saw it with my non English speaking housemates who were relying on me to understand the movie. Ooops.
This is a picture on the way to the movie theater. It's the orange building to right right.
The Indian food here is amazing. All they really eat is roti which is basically like a burrito with curry in it. A few weeks ago we went to an Indian restaurant called Ashiyana and I shared a cashew vegetable and a spicy cottage cheese curry roti with Ina and it was amazing.
Eating roti's at Ashiyana! Mmmmmm
Another interesting fact: Fijians like to eat everything with their hands! Some people say it tastes better. I eat some things with my hands but not everything.
I had a pretty cool day a few weeks ago I'd like to share it with you. A few weeks ago, Ina and I thought of a great last minute idea for me to help teach her class of around 40 ten-twelve year olds. We thought of it because Ina had to be alone with the class for the entire day so I thought it would be cool to help. I decided that I wanted to teach the kids about wild cats all around the world. That morning, I left to the SPCA like I normally do but instead of working with the animals, I got straight to working on gathering as many amazing pictures of cats on my tablet as I could. I gathered pictures of cats from each continent (except Antarctica and Australia) and decided to give a geography lesson at the same time. Cats included mountain lions, ocelots, lynx, tigers, cheetahs, leopards, and more. When I got to the class, the kids were extremely excited to be learning about cats from a girl all the way from New York. They were really into it and enjoyed seeing all of the pictures as I walked around the room explaining each cat and giving interesting facts with my tablet. At the end I asked questions to the class to test them and they got all of the questions right. They all even had their own favorite cats! It felt really good to get the Fijian class into something I am so passionate about.
Ina helped me quite down the class a lot. She's a good strict German teacher.
I came to the class at the end of the of the day so once I was done with my cat lesson, it was time for the children to pack up and leave. Since Ina and I were in such good moods, we decided to head down to the Fiji Museum before it closed. It was really interesting learning about the history.
The outside of the Fiji Museum in Suva.
We learned a lot but the absolute coolest thing we learned about was the cannibalistic nature of the Fijians.
Read this if you're interested:
Here is a Cannibal Fork
Cannibal fork said to have been used in eating some of Mr. Baker's flesh
Outside the Fiji museum was extremely beautiful. I want to have a picnic there some day.
I even saw a mongoose here! My second wild mongoose I've ever seen!
Yeah so pretty good day. We even walked home from the Fiji Museum because it was nice out. It was about an hour and a half walk and we stopped at the super market to refuel. They sell a lot of different interesting chips here in Fiji. For instance, they have a lot of chicken flavored chips. They also have burger flavor. The burger flavored chips taste a lot like fart.
Chicken flavor to the left, fart flavor to the right.
It was nice to take a short eating break at the bus stop. Ina bought some rice bhuja which is basically just rice and bhuja. She shared it with me and it was really tasty. Kind of spicy noodly rice things.
Rice Bhuja
On the walk we saw cool flowers like this one:
Three weekends ago, around 11 of us went to Beqa Island which is a small island southwest of Suva. It was really fun and beautiful as always.
Here's the group chillin in our taxi van that was taking us to Navua which was where the boat to Beqa Island was picking us up.
Beautiful Beqa (pronounced Benga)
This is fluffy, resident of the hotel we stayed at and ex resident of the SPCA!
Pretty flower at Beqa Island
I'm extremely proud of this bed idea so I would like to share it with you. We wanted to somehow fit 4 people in 3 beds with only 2 bed stands and 3 mattresses so I thought of the brilliant idea to slide the end beds a little off the bed stand on the outside giving the middle bed some of each stand and voila! It looked a lot better the night before... but yeah.
So another beautiful weekend happened in Fiji. Life is really good. I also got a chance to visit a Fijian village but I'll save that for another blog post. But yeah life is always interesting here and I meet new people everyday. New volunteers come in every week also so It's always fun to see new faces being excited about Fiji.
Since this is a blog post all about Fijian culture, I must end it on a picture of a kava shop. Fijian's love their kava which is a drink that kind of tastes like soil but makes you feel numb. They say when you've had too much, you can't move your body at all. These shops are all over the place just like liquor stores.
Moce!! -- Bye!!
Vinaka -- Thanks
