Well, the last week was emotional... and the day I left my village I don't think I'd ever felt so sad and flat whilst being in Fiji. It was very strange to see my rucksack and think that everything was in there, nothing was left in the my home and that the next few days would be spent in Nadi.... not Viro, Ovalau.
I left on the 9th with Miss Jessie from Uluibau, Moturiki and took a very rainy fibre boat journey to the mainland. From there we had a 3 buses and an 8 hour journey round Viti Levu back to Nadi where we met up with the other volunteers for a farewell. As well as making such great relationships in Fiji, I've made some incredible friends with the other volunteers and it feels so great that I can really say I have friends all over the world :) No trip to Australia will ever be a lonely one, not with my fellow island girls! A amusingly large part of our farewell consisted of checking for nits, an inevitable consequence of living and working with school kids for the past 3 months!
During the next few days in Nadi I saw a lot of friends off at the airport and also found quite a bit of satisfaction at getting the locals rate at the tourist places showing them my work visa and also by just being dressed up in my sulu jaba - I loved being able to say "No, no, I live here." and seeing the price drop! It was always fun meeting people from Ovalau (MY HOME!) and even getting to show off by speaking a bit of Lauan dialect (different to to the widely spoken Fijian dialect) which I learnt from living in Viro.
Fiji's an incredibly friendly place and I always felt like I could go and talk to anyone. In the departure lounge, the first time I was totally alone in Fiji I chatted to the shop staff about life in Viro which was really comforting.... especially as I found out these guys were the ones in charge of giving out free samples. I had my first taste of CHOCOLATE in 1/4 of the year and it was possibly one of my most amazing moments!!
On the plane it really hit me that I was leaving Fiji and I was glad to have my diary. I just consolidated my thoughts and remembered how scared and nervous I felt before I came... not knowing what awaited me, worried about who I was living with, what work in the school would be like and worrying about meeting the Australian volunteers. After I finished writing, I realised I'd written over a page of things starting with the sentance "I'll miss...." I really did have a wonderful time and experienced so many emotions over the whole trip. There's so much I'll miss though, I really feels like I have an entire life in Viro, Ovalau. But I feel happy, really happy that I did it all and now I'm so excited to be going home.... home!
20 hours in transit before my flight back to England, luckily the airport is rather snazzy and there's lots of recliners to sleep on! I also managed to leave the airport, it's dark and the city's an hour away so I went on a bus ride around the airport area before buying some exciting and mysterious (I've no idea what's in it!) Korean food from a convenience shop. It's cold here in South Korea, good practice for England. Very pleased that my passport got stamped here and I'm even more amused that it shows me entering and leaving Korea on the same day! Hopefully if I get up early tomorrow I can go on a morning temple tour before my flight. I'm finding Korean language incredibly hard to pronounce so I'm communicating with lots of smiles and thumbs up!
Moce!
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