My Fijian Experience (as told by some of my favorite old Hollywood actors and actresses)

I came to Fiji, and obviously:

My favorite season is winter, remember?

Lots of walking and lots of sweating. Shirley and I share a bond here. 

Our country directors loaded us into the back of a sketchy truck, and when we arrived at the house we each carried our 50 lb. suitcases up a lot of stairs. Back then I was still a little nervous about frustrating people, so I tried to go up those stairs as quickly as possible. If I had to do it again, now I'd make like Jean Harlow and:

Meanwhile, I tried my hardest to look like this: 

And by the next week I gave up and celebrated this look:

After arrival, I immediately crawled into my shell and it took a lot for me to socialize with the group. 

I'm kind of shy. 

I also remember my first meetings and teaching experiences going a lot like this:

Yeah...zero confidence in my ability to teach anything. 

I know you are wondering about our weekend getaways, but I'd like you to know how we traveled to our weekend getaways first. We mainly rode in a minibus--a 12-14 seat van that sometimes squished 17 people. What else? Uncomfortable, so many hours long, queasy, my head hit the window at every turn, traveled mostly at night, and just awful. My friend Bette sums it up pretty well:

A saying eventually caught on among the team members: The days are long, but the weeks go by fast. The days were long, and by the end of them we were so tired that the smallest things either bugged us or made us laugh like this:

Oh Shirley Temple, how you represent us so well:

This is us wanting warm showers.

This is us still wanting warm showers.

A few of us went to the hospital once to see the doctor. Hey, it might have been just a cold (and a little fungus), but it was brutal. There was a sick day where three of us (Kelli, Holly, and I) locked ourselves in a room (posting a sign that threatened anyone who dared disturb us), and we tried to heal ourselves by taking a long nap. We legitimately felt and acted like this:

There were so many times (during sickness, lice infestation, numerous candy bar and cookie consumption, etc.) where we probably laughed and thought:

But there was so much happiness in our experience too. For example, some of the members of our team rescued a puppy (there are lots of stray dogs here in Fiji), and though I never actually held Tommy, he made our hearts happy and well, you know:

And so what if we ate a lot? At least we did it together. 

Speaking of together, remember how I was so shy? I ended up crawling out of my shell and now:

Needless to say, I've gone from

to...

I'm still so much of this it's not even funny:

P.S. The greatest thing about this trip is that I found the love of my life. I figured he deserved to be mentioned at some point in all my blog posts, why not now? Isn't love grand?

BAHAHA. Just kidding. Nope. This is a more accurate portrayal of my relationship status: