It's like Vegas on Crack

I’m officially sitting on flight #4 in a just a over a week. I’m going to get really used to airports and airplanes! Sarah and I have decided we might create another food group: Airplane food! It’s odd, they serve meals on every flight over here. Sarah and I were talking about it and I’m not sure I’ve ever been served a full on, hot meal on a US flight.


We left Octopus Resort on Friday, June 12th. The actual Octopus Boat we took to the island was broken, so we rode in a "water taxi" type boat that stopped at other resorts on the way back to the main island. It was really cool to see the other islands and resorts, but I'm even more confident that we stayed at the best resort Fiji has to offer :) We had heard some good things and some bad things about all of the hostels in Nadi. We said screw it, the exchange rate is AMAZING and booked a room at the Sheraton. It was nice to be able to repack our bags and get organized again... and sleep in a comfortable bed... and take a LOOOOOONG hot shower! I would like to point out that I went 9 days with no blow dryer or hair straightener..... We went back to the Port for a nice dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. The food at Octopus was amazing, but it was great to have a nice dinner and just talk about Fiji. My pictures don’t begin to capture how unspoiled and surreal Waya Island was. The people are some of the nicest, unselfish people I’ve been around. They smile and sing and dance all the time. Sarah and I were talking about it over dinner and the Fijians have found that true happiness that comes straight from the heart. After dinner, we went back to the room to climb in our beds and do something we hadn’t been able to do for a week: internet!! It was nice to update the blog and post some pictures to Facebook. I’m having a hard time getting my pictures to upload to my blog, but I’m going to work on it more when we get to Darwin. We woke up early on Saturday and walked back to the port area. We were able to go shopping and buy all the souvenirs and presents we wanted to buy. In the shopping area was a jewelry store that caught my eye. I’m so my mother and grandmother’s relation… I had to check it out! I knew Fiji was known for their black pearls… and I’m now the proud owner of a Fiji single black pearl necklace. It will be a nice remembrance of Fiji and isn’t a typical souvenir. After shopping, we headed back to the hotel to pack our bags and head to the airport. We caught our flight from Nadi to Brisbane, Australia. The flight was a little longer than we thought it would be (4 hours!), but it was great study time (that dreaded GMAT!).


After arriving in Brisbane, we spoke with a couple from our flight and they recommended a few hostels. We ended up booking a room at a hostel they recommended: the Bunk. It was a very urban hostel right in the middle of Brisbane. This was by far our WORST hostel experience!! It was so loud and not really the cleanest one we've stayed in. We went for a nice Thai dinner and went to find a place to go enjoy Brisbane. The first place we went was recommended by our waitress, but we didn’t stay long. It was called Cloud Nine and was a brand new bar. The waitress had told us it cost $20 million to design, build, and open and we quickly saw how! It was immaculate!!! We grabbed a drink there and then decided to head back towards our hostel. There was another bar next to our hostel called Birdie that we decided to stay at for the rest of the night. The culture in Brisbane was really different: there were a lot of metro sexual people and their fashion was really different and urban. I don't even know how to describe this city!! It reminded me of a Vegas on crack... However, we have talked about flying back to Brisbane for a day or two at the very end of our program to do the Koala Experience we originally went to Brisbane to do. Our flight got moved around and so we didn't get to Brisbane in time to go to Lone Pine. We woke up (or didn't go to bed?) EARLY on Sunday and went back to the airport, where we met up with the other students in our program. We had another 3 hour long flight (I've flown so much in the past 2 months!!!), but it was nice to be able to talk to some of the other students and get to know them.