Day 6: Holy Freak Out Batman!

Our crazy luck is catching up with us…you know, the kind where crazy things happen but it all works out in the end?  Yup, that’s the story of my life.  

Getting off the plane in a new country is fun.  You've got no clue where to go or what to do or how to do it.  You just follow the crowd and hope you're in the right place.

Doing this with 8 children in tow is hilarious!  Luckily, people are friendly the world over (so far) and SUPER helpful--whether you want it or not.  We made it through customs no problem  (except when we took this picture and almost had our camera confiscated.  Apparently you're not supposed to take pictures in customs.  Who knew?!)  and decided we'd find the baggage locker and store our bags for the day instead of hauling them with us.  

That done, we found the Avis rental car place and got outfitted with our van.  Learning to drive on the left side of the road in Fiji was a good idea!  There's just one road that goes around the entire island so getting lost isn't too easy (we managed to do it more than once though).   The people drive crazy, but no crazier than in Utah if there's no cops around.  After an hour or two we realized that, if there were laws, they were more like suggestions than actual restrictions. 

We had a bit of an adventure finding the Koroipita community--there aren't really street signs so turning onto the designated road on the map is a bit difficult but we eventually got there.  The roads are so skinny that, in our big van, it was challenging to stay in our lane and yet stay on the road.  I never really realized what a 3rd world country Fiji really is.  I mean, you see the videos on youtube and wherever and it's all sandy white beaches and happy vacationing people.  

Not so when you're up close and personal.  Our first stop--we just pulled over on the side of the road to walk down to the beach and get out the initial excitement that we were in Fiji--was a big eye opener.  The first thing we noticed was all the garbage everywhere.  Like people just threw whatever straight into the ocean--which is pretty much what they do.  Their houses though, were what we'd call shanty town homes.  Basically it was corrugated metal held together in whatever way they could.  It was very eye opening.

At any rate, we finally found Koroipita and the group from Hobart, Tasmania that we were to be joining and helping out.  The lady that I'd been corresponding with was nowhere to be found, but the people there knew we were coming and were excited to see us.  But they had no idea what we were to help with/do.  There were some older guys building some beds, and some really older guys building a roof on a house--not really tasks 8 year olds can help with.  

Eventually they got the kids some hammers and set them to nailing the slats in the beds. 

 Another gentleman came up for a break and when he saw a bunch of us just standing around with nothing to do set us up planting some shrubs along the roads to stop the soil from eroding into the concrete gutters they'd poured.  It was a lot of fun but we didn't last too long, just an hour and a half or so.  It had been a long flight, a long drive, it was hot...and then one of the kids reminded me that it had been over ten hours since they'd last eaten.  It was time to find some food.

It took us about 2 hours--we kept taking fun windy roads that didn't lead us to where we thought they should!--but we finally found a restaurant.  We stopped and asked a lady walking down the road if we were headed in the right direction.  She confirmed that we were and I asked,

"Is there a restaurant there that we could try real Fijian food?"

She looked at me with an expression of consternation.  She paused for a really long time before she answered, "I've never eaten in a restaurant."

What a humbling experience!  

I didn't feel guilty that I was here on this extravagant vacation with 8 children--we worked and saved and sacrificed to be here.  But the reality of the 'luck of the draw' of where you're born struck so hard at that moment.  We didn't do anything special--we were just born in the US.  How does that entitle us to so much?  I mean, here I feel like we've done something extraordinary buy earning this money and being able to come on this trip when the reality is, all we did was walk the neighborhoods of Salt Lake.  These people have walked everywhere they've ever gone their whole lives.  They don't own cars.  They walk to survive.  The best way to describe the feelings raging inside is with the word humble...but it doesn't quite cut it.  Is there a word that's more fitting?  I don't know.  

The rest of the drive and all through dinner the conversation kept coming back to that woman.  Her simple admission carried so much weight, especially considering the audience observing the encounter.  What a lesson we all learned today!  As we ate our lamb fried rice, fish and chips and chicken stir fry--all names of foods we thought we knew but brought to life in a different way in a different country--we were further astounded that this bounteous fair was so inexpensive in our standards, yet is completely unattainably expensive to the local woman who kindly gave us directions.

Satisfied physically, we decided we should use the hour and a half of our remaining time on the island to go work out our mental and emotional obfuscation on the beach.  We meandered up the coast until we found a road that looked like it might lead to one of those iconic looking, white sandy beaches and followed it to a resort.  We drove along the access road running parallel to a golf course you'd expect to see Tiger Woods playing on until we came to a car park.  (I don't know why calling a parking lot a 'car park' makes the kids giggle so, but it does and I find that, as I wrote that, I chuckled a bit.  Good times!)

The pictures do a far better job describing what it looked like than I do so yeah, this is where we spent our last hour on the island.

 This is the path that leads to the beach.  Once we'd walked down it we thought, wow, that was really pretty we should probably take a picture! So that's our van in the distance.

Best swing set location EVER!!  Seriously, we each took a turn swinging and it was just so surreal!  We want to come back to this same spot when we fly home and spend a little more time, maybe have a picnic lunch.  It was the epitome of 'a day on the beach in Fiji'--well, the tourist division/story book version anyway.

We'd been told to be back at the airport 90 minutes before our flight--we choose to get there 3 hours early.  We returned the car (^ was so tired he fell asleep helping us unpack the van!), we picked up the bags from the 'left luggage' desk and we head over to check in and get our boarding passes. 

The guy starts scanning the passports after the almost obligatory, “Wow 8 kids?! You’ve got your hands full! How do you ever plan a trip like this with 8 kids?!” (I swear there’s a script somewhere that I haven’t been shown and I’m blowing my lines every time!)

Then he asks, “What is ∞’s birthday?” 

Rotely I respond with her birthday, only saying the wrong year.  I knew my mistake before he had a chance to respond.  I said, “2004, not 2006."  Immediately I knew what had happened.   "Did I put one date on the passport and one on the visa?!”  I knew I had.  He didn’t have to answer.  My fingers just want to make her two years younger every time I type her birthday, it happens all the time.  My head knows when she was born but my fingers refuse to accept it.  I’d made the mistake MANY times, but caught it almost immediately every time, I thought.

Clearly I missed it this one time.  This one CRUCIAL time.  I went to one of their internet access terminals and quickly filed for a new visa for ∞.  Done I went back over to the desk only to find that I hadn’t included her middle name on the visa, yet it was on the passport!  If the names don't match exactly, it's invalid.  I was about ready to break down.  Time was steadily ticking on and each new mistake I was making was costing more than money, it was costing time.

Seeing that I was at the end of my rope, he phoned the Australia consulate and got her cleared--even with the mistake.  We walked onto the plane as they were finishing boarding.  Three hours early for a flight, ridiculously early you say?  Just right I say.

The kids were sad to see this was a 'normal' flight without any of the neat amenities of the international flight that had brought us this far.  Bored before we'd even taken off, most of them fell almost instantly asleep.  I think only 2 of them were still awake when the plane took off, and they didn't last much longer than that.  All 10 of us were still asleep when the lights came up and the announcement came on that there was just 10 minutes left of the flight and we should prepare for landing.  

I love it when a plan comes together!