By Ann

Ann and an admirer.

Our "guides" on our beach walk.

More kids on the beach.

You're never alone when you're walking on the beach.

We are still anchored off the main village of Fulaga. Today was full of mundane chores for me. Translation – laundry day. I really miss a washing machine. My wrists hurt by the end of the day from twisting the clothes to wring the soap and then the excess water out. But it must be done. I also made Joaner’s Chocolate Chip Cookie dough. We are hoping to have Mattei (the chief’s grandson) and his wife Ma, and son Wise out to see how the “sea natives” live and thought it would be a fun treat.

After these fun chores we went ashore to walk through the village and then back along the pretty beach to look for shells. We have figured out that it is never a quick walk through the village. Everyone wants to meet you and talk to you. Today we were welcomed into a home of a young man and his wife. Very nice house. She inherited it from her parents. (Unfortunately unless their names are Anglicized or very simple we don’t catch them.) We ended up having a nice discussion about life in Fulaga with these folks. This is what struck us…people here are really quite educated. You just don’t expect it. But we are finding that most young adults ( over 20) have been to the university in Suva. We are not sure who pays for their education but they have attained a degree and returned to help their home village. The couple we spoke with met while in college getting degrees in Economic Development. Yes, we were surprised too! Kudos to these guys for trying to improve their island’s economic status. We find that even the teachers have been educated in Suva and come back to teach. Most of the villagers that are aged 13-30 seem to have learned quite a bit of English. The children are being taught English in school as well as the basic Three R’s. Those older than 30 always seem to have a youngster around to help translate. It’s amazing. As the title of the blog indicates we had a lovely walk with the kids today. It was not intended. It just worked out that by the time we got around to passing the first village, the kids were out of school. Of course it started with a huge. “Bula!”. They love to greet us. And from then on we had at least ten “shadows”. As Bob and I realized this we decided to play with them. You should have seen their faces-first fright, then surprise and delight, when we quickly jumped around on the one lane path in the middle of the jungle and shouted, “Boo!”. They were NOT expecting it and shrieked and laughed. Our shadows were now firmly attached. Our afternoon stroll, possibly romantic – remember this is our honeymoon! – included at least a dozen school kids. They happily searched for shells, climbed trees to act like monkeys, and beg us to come to their village, their church, take their picture….you get the idea. Very entertaining. Finally the kids departed and we returned to Charisma. We bashed our way from the beach back to the boat into one foot wind chop and are hoping that the winds die down a bit tomorrow. Can’t wait to get into the water or at least play on our paddle boards. Tomorrow we will wander into the village again and see who follows us this time!