This week was crazy busy and so much fun. My roommates and I have been doing so many activities outside that I’m already pretty used to sweating constantly. Its honestly not that different from summer in St. Louis (always humid and 80), except that I get sunburnt way more easily.

Thursday

On Thursday we went to sign up for our classes. I asked to change my whole schedule, haha. I sent in my requests to change my schedule on Thursday, and it is now Sunday and no one has gotten back to me on that. School is not everyone’s top priority here, clearly. Hopefully USP helps me figure it out by tonight or tomorrow, but who really knows. Maybe I’ll just stay here and not go to school!! (haha jk mom)

After attempting to get our schedules changed, we went to the Suva market. This is the city’s downtown area. It kind of reminds me of a small local towns I’ve been to in Mexico and Costa Rica.

I bought some fresh pawpaw (papaya), and we walked around for a while. Since I’ve been here, literally everything we do exhausts me. Im not sure if its the Fiji energy to just be lazy, but I am always exhausted by like 7pm every night. The Suva market really wore me out 🤷

FRIDAY

On Friday, we decided to go back to the waterfalls and hang out with the locals all day. They were so much fun, and really hilarious. They all love the Lakers and think Chicago has a gun problem. Haha. Good to know some accurate info about the US is spreading.

After that, we had our cocktail party. The USP cocktail party was by far the most fun school sponsored function I’ve ever been to. I felt like I was in the movie Lilo and Stitch. It was awesome. Everyone was wearing a sulu, and we watched some traditional Fijian dancers called the Dance Teka.

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

Early Saturday morning we left for a small beachfront resort called The Beach House Fiji. It’s about an hour and a half from Suva, and only cost us $10 USD to stay there for one night.

The food was so amazing, and very cheap. A large smoothie made with local fruit was $4 USD, compared to the same shit I buy in Chicago for about $12 USD. This made me feel quite bad about myself and my money spending habits 😬.

All in all, literally everything about being in Fiji makes me think the way we live in the US is excessive, and wholly unnecessary. The thought of having to at some point leave is daunting.

Today we had our first day of orientation. We met in a lecture room for a campus tour and an information session. There are only a few other international students who are from the US, and the rest are mostly from Japan, Korea, PNG, and Australia.

After all of the information meetings, they gave us a traditional Fijian (not pronounced fee-jan, its pronounced fee-gee-ian) food.

The left third of the plate is obviously watermelon and pineapple. The third of the plate below that is a slice of boiled sweet potato and regular potato, and seaweed with some sort of coconut cream sauce. The top is a plantain, tuna (with small green grapes that were super weird), battered fish, and some dark long vegetable, I’m not sure what it was. While I am here I decided I am going to try eating some fish (yes, breaking my veganism). I hated the tuna, and the battered fish was alright. Not sure if fish is for me, but I gave it a try.

After orientation, we decided to go to the waterfalls. They’re about 15 minutes away (a $17 FJD taxi), and it costs $5 FJD to get in. So the cost for each of my three roommates and I individually for both the taxi ride and entrance to the waterfall park was $6.30 American dollars. Doing anything here is insanely cheap. We met up with some of the Australian exchange students at the waterfalls, and we all hiked around and got in the pools.

All of the waterfalls we saw were super small, but still really beautiful. There was a rope swing at one of the pools, but I didn’t get any good pictures or videos of it.

I have also noted some random things about living here you may want to know:

1. We have a maid, Hannah, who come everyday to clean our house. This is so crazy to me because we don’t have anything like this at US colleges, definitely not at Lake Forest College. She is super sweet and cleans our rooms, bathrooms, and kitchen every afternoon.
2. They fill chip bags and pasta boxes all the way to the top. Not half way full like in the US. Insane.
3. The hard liquor here is insanely expensive. It is all imported, so the cheapest bottle you can buy is about $80 USD. Whats crazy Smirnoff is one of the most expensive in Fiji and is soooo cheap in the US. We were all shocked the first time we went to the liquor store. I still can’t believe its that expensive, though it makes sense logistically. In these pictures, all of the labels are the prices in FJD, and they’re about half that price in USD.

Since the hard alcohol is so expensive, we drink Fiji Gold haha.

I am not sure if anyone is really interested in hearing about what I have been eating in Fiji. But, since I am already putting in the effort of writing a blog, I am going to tell you at the end of my posts.

Tonight all three of my roommates and I made stir fry with rice, broccoli, carrots, onions, and soy sauce. Talia and I added avocado on top, and Maria and Walker made scrambled eggs.

For snacks earlier today we got pea crisps (one of the only healthy Whole Foods-esq snacks they have imported from the US) and bananas with peanut butter.

Talia and I are still in shock of how cheap and huge the avocados are. This is literally 60 American cents. As you may have guessed, we are going to be eating avocados everyday.

Hi everyone!! Today is currently my second day in Fiji (Tuesday, January 28), but I am writing this about my day yesterday.

I got in to the Nadi airport around 6am, everyone was extremely nice and welcoming. Nothing like American airports. I was wearing a sweater and leggings and immediately starting dripping in sweat when I walked outside. I got a bus pass and took it from the airport to Suva where I was picked up by USP.

Here is a picture of the bus pass they gave me, and where I started in Nadi in relation to Suva, my final destination.

I live in a little house with three roommates, Talia (from Montana), Walker (from North Carolina), and Maria (from LF).

Talia is also vegan so we have been making meals together. This morning we made potatoes and peppers with avocado. The avocados here are different than the US. They are green on the outside, even when they are ripe. We didn’t even recognize them at first at the grocery store.

Orientation starts tomorrow, so we haven’t done much yet besides exploring Suva. For orientation we are going to do a city tour, go to a resort, and have a cocktail party.

Today I’m leaving for Fiji. I had basically nothing to do at all this entire week, or the whole six weeks of my break. So naturally I waited until the last minute to pack. I spent most of my free time sitting thinking about how I should pack, and how I had so much time to do so.

Heres what my journey to Fiji is going to look like:

1. Leave for STL airport at 3pm
2. 6pm depart for a 4.5 hour flight from STL to LAX
3. Layover for 2 hours in LA
4. 10:30 pm depart for a 11 hour flight to Nadi, Fiji (land at 5:15 am)
5. Wait for a bus to pick me up for 4 hours.
6. Bus pickup at 9am for 4 a hour ride to Suva (where my school is)

This takes us to the mighty total of a 24 hour travel day.

All I have with me are two suitcases and a backpack. I am super proud of myself for this, especially considering that I have two towels, a blanket, and pillow in one of my suitcases. Oh an 15 bottles of sunscreen.

I also am bringing my student visa, passport, and Fiji dollars I ordered ahead of time.