morgan's visit

Anyone else want to come visit me? Great times are bound to be had! Morgan is about to leave, and I thought I'd share a little bit of our time together. The plan was to be in the village Tuesday through Monday, then head to town Monday and go to Taveuni Tuesday-Friday, then she would leave Saturday. However, as happens in Fiji, the plan changed as we were in the place to buy tickets for the ferry on Tuesday and they say, "There's no ferry this week." Excuse me? You didn't say this when I just talked to you two days ago! There wasn't another ferry that would get us there in the time we had left, so we turned around and headed back to the village. So Morgan got to experience almost two weeks in a rural Fijian village, a life very different from the one to which she is accustomed.

Tuesday she got welcomed with a traditional grog drinking circle and met all my family and tried the dalo leaves, which she loved. Wednesday and Thursday we attended two weddings in other villages which were long, hot days full of eating, grog, and dancing. Lots of dancing. Late nights and wild parties were had. Thursday we rested and Friday I guess we did, too, with grog in the evenings. Morgan brought Uno and that was our entertainment every night in the shed. Saturday we wanted to go out in the boat on the water, but while waiting for the boat we ended up in the river. A bunch of the boys wanted to show Morgan the traditional Fijian way of cooking, called the 'lovo.' This is an oven made of heated stones and then covered. That morning, I had gotten up and after making breakfast for all of us (Morgan, my brothers, the uncle that eats with us, and a few other visitors), I set out to pick the dalo leaves. I come back hot, sweaty, dirty and find Morgan, Tui, Nemani, and Kanu playing cards in my house! The Little Red Hen, was I. We ended up cooking dalo and palusami, which is dalo leaves with coconut cream and then we cooked them in coconut shells (no tin foil). We also killed a chicken and threw that on. While waiting, we ended up in the river. Normally, I stay as far away from this water as I possibly can but I wanted to bring Morgan a 'bilibili,' which is a bamboo raft so I went to where the kids were playing and begged them to come down to our end of the river. To do that, I had to get in all the way. We swam, I was pulled on the raft, paddled our way down and pretty much everyone ended up in the water until church started and we got called out. Then we waited for the lovo to be done and when it was, it was delicious! This was an extremely fun day and very memorable. Makes me realize how much I love the kids and how great my brothers are.

Sunday we went to church in the morning, had a big lunch, and then went swimming at a natural pool nearby. Again, the kids were great hosts and we had a lot of fun swimming around. The weather has been hot, hot, hot. Then we went to church again (i went to church again, where I nodded off so much I had to leave) and after that had a big tea, then drank grog and started the first of Morgan's many farewell parties. I have to leave the adventure off here, because she wants to get going. More to come...