Celebrate good times, come on!

This was a weekend of celebrations. 

Saturday we celebrated one of our frisbee teammate's birthdays at Bondi Beach. Here's a picture of a fading rainbow I saw on the way to meet up with everyone...

Also, we had some quality time with the cats...

And, last but not least, today I went to a tea party at our trivia friends' apartment, which turned out to be a surprise announcement (although I had a hunch) that they are expecting a baby. As usual, they had a spread of amazing organic treats and mulled wine in addition to the tea. This was the sunset over the city skyline on my way walking home...

I'm a motorist!

I took the day off work today to, among other things, get my driver's license since we've been officially living here more than six months. What they don't tell you, however, is that you have to have lived here for six months and you can't have left the country for any reason in that time. If I had known that, I would have gotten my license before I went to Fiji. Since those terms were never clear, I didn't. So, I didn't get my license, which isn't a big deal since apparently I can keep using my Virginia one until I become a permanent resident (if I do). It's just another one of those things where I wish my time hadn't been wasted, but oh well. I did get some other things done so the day wasn't a loss. Not to mention, I got to spend quality time with the cats, well Eve. I spent time with Ninja too, but he doesn't prefer my company as much as she does. I think I might be the sun Eve's solar system. 

We have been making even more upcoming domestic travel plans to get excited about, some sooner and some in several months' time. Thank goodness for Kayak.com so we can keep everything organized. 

I'm seeing through social media that it's the time of year a lot of my teacher friends are gearing up for the new school year and all the kids are heading back to school. All of this just reminds me how off that northern hemisphere cycle I am. 

In other news I tried a mooncake for the first time since the Chinese Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is approaching and one of my students' moms brought us some. It was too dense for me, but I'm glad I tried it. I think I'll get more enjoyment out of reusing the cool tin container they came in. 

That's all there is to report here for the moment.

Fiji Montage

Montage of our time in Fiji!

 

 

BULA! 

A Case of the Mondays

Over the weekend we went up to Brisbane (in Queensland, known as "The Sunshine State") for an ultimate tournament. The weather was cold and rainy for 3/4 of the weekend, and I still get cold at the thought of playing in that wind and rain. We had the privilege of staying at a teammate's mother's apartment, which was nicer than staying at a hostel or hotel like most of our friends did. A hotel or hostel with friends would have been fine, but there was the added amenity of our friend's sweet mother offering to put our towels in the dryer and continually trying to feed us cake and fudge.

Michael is currently in Adelaide,  where he will have to travel back and forth a little over half the time in the next few weeks for work. Since he was away and our friends were under the weather, I represented the trivia team all by my lonesome tonight at the local pub. I came in unsurprisingly second to last, which means I won us a few free drink vouchers to use next week. The only team I beat was a team of five people- FIVE. That means I am smarter (at least trivia-wise) than those five people combined. Either that, or my team has managed to get on the good side of the trivia host more than that team over the last few months. Either way, it's a small win at least.

More random thoughts on our trip to Fiji:

-It was nice to travel somewhere where the currency exchange was in our favor. It's been a while since we have. The exchange in Australia is technically in our favor, but I don't count it because most things are more expensive despite that. 

-I feel more "Australian" since it's a common holiday destination for many Australians, and a very rare one for Americans.

-For the most part, the food we had during the trip was mediocre. Perhaps it we went at a time that a lot of the local produce is out of season? Maybe was just bad luck? Maybe just personal taste? 

-The native culture seems relatively in-tact, compared to other countries I where I have traveled that had been at some point invaded by other cultures. 

-Locals are friendly and accessible. We were able to have a few relaxed chats with some of them.

-Where are all the people walking and hitchhiking at night on the one highway around the island? We would be driving back to our resort around 8pm and see people stick thumbs up (or not) while walking along the side of the road kilometers from the nearest village. Roads are mostly unlit and most people didn't have a flashlight or "torch" with them.

The Spotify 90's one-hit-wonder list is making my night right now. Time to spend quality time with the cats. Buenas noches. 

Bula!

Fiji was a lot of fun. We stayed at Naviti Resort on the south side of the main island. While there we got to take a mud bath and bathe in hot springs, kayak, "play" 9 holes of golf (we really just wanted to off-road in a golf cart), stand up paddle board,  take a day trip to tiny South Sea Island and snorkel, and hike. 

One nice thing I hadn't anticipated was how clear the stars would be at night. Since Fiji is in the middle of the Pacific with nothing around, there is so little light pollution it's easy to see the Milky Way on an average night. Three out of the Four nights we were there we could see it. 

Children work. When we were told we needed to get a guide in the local village to see the waterfall, we were presented with a very serious 7-year-old boy who along our walk would stop and very seriously point to something and say, "This is a tree", or, "This is the house". We were happy to have the little guy instead of the other guides we saw simply because he was so quick and we practically ran by the other hikers to the waterfall. At the waterfall he was searching for tiny prawns with his sister and skipping rocks, counting "Dua, Rua..." (1, 2...). By the end of the trip he had shed his serious guide demeanor and was singing us "I'm a Little Teapot", and we taught him "No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed". 

Another experience we had driving along the Queens Highway (the ONLY, two lane highly) was stopping at a stand along the side of the road to buy a coconut to drink from. A boy that was perhaps twelve sold us the coconut and his slightly older friend took out a machete and cut it open in front of us. It's no big deal for children to use machetes. I cringed because I thought he might accidentally cut off his arm the way he was doing it, but he was a pro. 

I will probably reflect more on the trip later when I have more time, but here are a few pictures...

View from our room

Breakfast view

Cutting open the coconut I found

Walking to the golf course

Lucky #2 golf cart was ours

Kava tasting

Hiking to the waterfall

Massi, our tour guide

 Michael taking a dip (it was really cold)

South Sea Island, where we did lots of water activities

Sigatoka Sand Dunes National Park 

(Fiji's first national park founded in 1989)

More pictures and GoPro video to come in the future.

First World Problems

I spend significantly more time doing laundry in this country than I ever did at home.  Not having a dryer in winter means going out when you least want to to hang up stuff or bring it in. Since I have specific things I should wear to work, frisbee attire, etc., Michael and I have to do a few loads a week. At least in summer everything dried much quicker. The only ones that don't mind are the cats, since it's an excuse for them to go out on the balcony.

Cockatoo Island

Today Michael and I took an impromptu ferry ride over to Cockatoo Island. Here are a few pics. When we got off the dock and saw this we thought we had stepped into a Wes Anderson movie.

The sign below speaks the truth. I have never seen so many nesting seagulls in one place, and they scream and dive-bomb you if you get near the eggs they stupidly laid in high foot traffic areas.

Cheeky

As promised, a video of Eve's tomfoolery...

Jailbreak and other things

In preparation for some of our impending travel I went and got some vaccines today. I probably wouldn't have thought about it except I was reading news about the scary ebola outbreak, which led me to the CDC website, which led me to look at the travel warnings for places to which we plan to travel in the next year or so. 

Michael and I bought got a Groupon to try an "Escape the Room" experience with two of his coworkers. It wasn't exactly100% realistic but it was pretty fun. We had to find all these pieces to a puzzle to to get out of a "jail cell", and then another additional puzzle to get out of the locked room. 

Afterwards we had some sushi at Niji, the highlight being pesto edamame. Then I got some green tea steam bread muffins from Breadtop, a really good local Chinese bakery chain. 

And sadly, the weekend is coming to a close.

Eve's New Hobby

Eve has decided she enjoys removing our shower drain cover, and then she carries it and places it in the middle of the living room. We are not sure how she figured out how to do this or why. We didn't even know it was possible to remove it until she did it. It requires spinning the cover to a specific spot and pulling it up at the right time. If I can catch her in the act, I'll post a video. 

Weekends are Wonderful

This weekend has been quite average, which is to say, it has been great. We went to frisbee practice today, did some chores, ran some errands around town on the scooter. We also have made reservations for some future travel. It's always nice to have a trip to look forward to, whether it's just one night, or a week or two.