Sweet Home Minnesota

After traveling by plane for 20 hours or so, we landed in MSP and got to hug our families. It has felt pretty good to be back home. After a few days we got our sleeping schedules pretty close to normal and we even got to witness the last snow fall of the year. It was unreal to wake up and see the ground blanketed in white after being in Fiji less than a week earlier. It melted within a couple of days and it feels like spring has arrived. We have been lucky enough to have beautiful weather on our trip and to miss the harshness of the winter here. But, we still appreciate these days in the beginning of spring. The air is so crisp and clean and we know that summer is on its way.

Anyway, it has been really great to be able to see our families and friends and to live in comfort for a while. Traveling takes a lot of sacrifice and getting used to being out of your comfort zone. It is all worth it and it makes me realize how easy we have it. But, I am, of course, not done traveling. I love it so much! I seeing traveling as investing in yourself. I plan to continue writing and posting photos in this blog of future trips in Minnesota and elsewhere. (Drew and I are off to California in a couple of weeks for a friend's wedding. I look forward to driving around the vineyards there.)

I just had to post one snow scene. (I'll get some MN spring pictures up soon.)

The End of the New Zealand Trip

When we left Fiji and returned to Auckland, Stacey (Dave's daughter) and Craig (her boyfriend) took us in and took care of us during our last few days in New Zealand. We are all so glad that we met them and we will be sure to keep in touch. I cannot explain how thankful I am for their kindness. As travelers, we end up relying on the kindness of strangers at times and as a result appreciate it all the more. But, the kindness that Stacey, Craig and co. showed us was above and beyond anything we could have imagined. They took us in as their family and we will never forget it.

We have learned so much on this trip about traveling, the world, and ourselves. New Zealand is an amazing country. It has so much preserved natural beauty that is accessible to the public. Where else in the world could you see penguins running on the beach? Where else could you see glaciers on a warm, sunny day? We were able to see scenes with endless mountains in the back ground, sheep in the fore ground and never be more than 1 1/2 hours from the ocean. New Zealand is wonderful for its natural beauty but is made even more amazing for the people that live and travel there. We met so many wonderful inspiring people that have enjoyed the places and the feelings of being there as much as we did. The backpacker culture there was so great. It enabled us to have many homes with temporary families and to be able to learn from other travelers about the places where they were from and have been. we met people from Germany, Sweden, Hungary, England, Taiwan, Japan, etc. We had many fascinating conversations learning and teaching others about what our lives and cultures are like. Some people we met were on around-the-world trips and others came to New Zealand to live and work. It was a really great trip and I'm grateful that we were able to do something like this. I hope to hold on to the things that I learned there and to return to New Zealand some day.

Beautiful Fiji

Here are some more scenes from Fiji that I wanted to share. As you can imagine, it was stunning. I'm glad that were able to see and experience part of Fiji.

Relaxing at Walu Beach

Here are some more pictures of Fiji. After Robinson Crusoe Island we went to Walu Beach on Malolo Island. It was pretty amazing to be there! We went snorkeling and kayaking every day.

We also did a lot of this: (taken by Drew)

Island Life

Here is the little hut that we stayed in on Robinson Crusoe Island:

And, here is the "shower" that we had to use. It may look to you like a bucket. That's because it is just a bucket. In order to shower we filled up a bucket of water and dumped it into this bucket with a little spout.

They had no access to internet or television and the power was turned off at midnight every night. That was just the sacrifice we had to make in order to see these kinds of views:




Here are some pictures of the performers - they were really fantastic!

Fiji School Visit

We visited a local public school close to Robinson Crusoe. Children from 3 villages nearby go to this school. They speak Fijian growing up and start learning English when they start school. The ages and grades are similar to what they are in the States but the school is so small that some rooms have two grades in them. We were able to spend time with all of the grades (1st-8th) and talk to the children. The younger ones didn't know as much English so many of them would just read us the small English books they had over and over. The older students made us promise to send them some of the photos we took. They were so beautiful and welcoming. The school has tourists visit about once a week. The money donated from the tourists goes toward the project that they have been working on for more than a year: flushing toilets.










The children sung and danced for us and had a kava ceremony. I think visiting these children was the best part of our Fiji trip. They loved having there and getting their pictures taken.

Fiji - Robinson Crusoe Island

We decided to book five nights on Robinson Crusoe Island before arriving in Fiji. When we flew in to Nadi it was pouring rain. It is their rainy season and we were afraid that it would continue through our trip. But, of course it cleared up after a day or so and we were in paradise. Robinson Crusoe is close to the Coral Coast on the main island. The island is 26 acres and has a backpackers type resort. They had lots of activities, shows, and hammocks to relax in.

Here are some pictures of the island:



Our first sunset in Fiji: