Last week in New Zealand! and Fiji :) then home!

The last week in Hamilton was very exciting. My flattie Jodie stole me for lunch one day to see the pukekos at the lake in the city. We had fish and chips, sorry fush and chups, and fed most of our chips to the pukekos and watched them fight over them. I tried going up to them to pet them, but they wouldn't let me go too close :(

I'm not sure what it means when they do this, but I think they were fighting eachother? Certainly not attacking us, they look pretty crazy though. At the Otorohanga Kiwi House they told us that the amount of white tail that they show signifies their rank in the hierarchy, maybe this is when they show it? All I know is that they're funny looking and I wish that America had them.

 The Saturday before I left there was a casual race between Waikato University and Auckland University, and I competed with Waikato in a few of the races. This is the intermediate 8 race, and my flatties Greg and Rich are in it too.

This race was the costumes race, and the grande finale. We were the superheroes and Auckland was the smurfs. The guy who was supposed to be behind the orange guy was in a spiderman costume, but he's not in the pic, and it's hard to see in the photo but the guy standing in the back has chopsticks on his hands like claws. I am obviously a superhero already so I didn't need a costume. They said it was very difficult to row with the slippery spandex gloves on, but we won anyway. The smurfs didn't stand a chance.

Next it was off to Fiji!
This is a photo that I took out the window of the plane in Auckland on the tarmac. Such a nice rainbow! Thanks for that New Zealand! I miss my flatmates and friends, but it softened the difficulty of leaving to be going to Fiji, which was absolutely beautiful!

 This is what it looked like flying into Fiji. I'm not sure if those are mountains, they kinda look like it, but for the most part the country is lush and green and beautiful!

 This is the shower that was attached to my hut. It had walls on all sides but no ceiling, so I could literally shower in the rain and it was fun.

 This is the view from outside my hut. I wasn't more than 15 meters from the beach!

 This is my hut. They really call them bures in Fijian, but I like calling it a hut. You can see the mosquito net on my bed inside. I came home covered in mosquito bites, but who cares, I was in Fiji!

This is the hotel grounds. I had to take a bus 2 and a half hours to get to the hotel, and the whole island is a tropical paradise and it's all as green as this photo, and just so beautiful. Most Fijians live very poorly, but they don't need anything because they have a beautiful communal way of life and they live in a tropical paradise, so they're some of the happiest people I've met.

In Fiji they are also the most laid back people I've met. They operate on what they call "Fiji Time" where everything is 30-90 minutes late, and it's actually a pretty good system. If anything were on-time the system wouldn't work, but everything in Fiji is uniformly late and relaxed. I was supposed to get a bus to the airport at 4:30, but they didn't take me to the bus stop until 4:50, but the bus wasn't there until 5:10, so it's all good. I think that Fiji Time is the key to their happiness. This is a photo from my last day in Fiji, just before going to the airport. I had made friends with some Irish girls there and we were posing with bottles of Fiji Bitter, which we had become quite familiar with in the days before. I would love to go back there with a flower in my hair and a bottle of Fiji Bitter in my hand, but it was definitely nice to come home to New York.

This is what it looked like coming into New York at 11pm on Wednesday. After 17 hours of flying, hardly sleeping since 4:30am New York time, it was nice to be home. My dad and sister picked me up from the airport with a bagel and lox and a chocolate bar, and I was officially back home in New york.