Vanuatu

Hi! I'm in Vanuatu. Before I got here I had no idea what to expect. Would it be like Fiji or Tonga? Would it be anything like French Polynesia?

Vanuatu is a very interesting place so I'm going to give you a bunch of random facts about it:

We've gone to a lot of villages and have been given fish, paw-paw (papaya), pumpkin, bananas, and coconut by the locals in exchange for T-shirts, canned goods, and fish hooks.

Instead of the whole country speaking 1or 2 languages, there are over 100 languages spoken in Vanuatu! Each village speaks its own language.

The Vanuatu people used to name the months after different types of yam.

Every year at the yam festival, men jump off a 15-story tower with vines tied to their ankles to ensure the growth of their yams.

When we were anchored off a island for the night we saw flocks of Dugongs, They look a lot like manatees. ( I fail to see how old time sailors could have ever believed these blubbery creatures to be mermaids, what happened to the long flowing hair, the sleek,shiny tail?)

Another time on a island called Epi we saw so many sea turtles that I started ignoring them.

I wondered what Vanuatu was like and I found out that it is a unique place all of it's own.

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Waterfalls

Hello!

I'm in Vanuatu right now. A lot of you probably have never heard of Vanuatu. It's in the middle of the ocean and it's a group of islands. It is, in fact a whole country of its own. I bet a lot of you are thinking "wow, a whole country I never knew about". We went to the most amazing water fall yesterday. There countless pools of cool, clear, water with minerals in it. You could get the best back massage in any pool. You can climb up the water fall and it isn't tricky. The people that own the water fall have put hand rails up the falls and scraped away the algae. I could have spent days there, it was that amazing. I shouted for the sheer joy of being alive and healthy. We swum and floated and slipped and slid. We charged up the falls like little kids.
We had the best day ever. Just our little family.

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Happy Thanksgiving

 I just saved thanksgiving. Again. The day before thanksgiving I asked my mum when thanksgiving was. She checked on the internet and found out . . . THAT THANKSGIVING WAS TOMORROW! Quickly my mum radioed our friends Connect 4 and invited them to Thanksgiving supper.

We celebrated with our friends with lots of fun and tons of food. Our menu included roast chicken, (we passed on the $113 turkey, we didn't think our friends would mind chicken) mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and apple pie. 

We ended supper by telling each other what we were each thankful for. It was a lot of fun.

                                                    Happy Thanksgiving!

School in Fiji

Hello!

I just visited a Fijian school. Compared with my old school, Emily Carr, this school was tiny! The rules were very different than the rules at Emily Carr. Some of the rules were “beware of falling coconuts” or “get in the school boat professionally”. Also, almost none of the children wore shoes. If I went bare foot to school in Vancouver I'd injure my feet!

 When we went to the school we brought textbooks, books for the school library, and pens and pencils for the kids. They were very excited about having visitors. We were shaking hands and high-fiving kids for ages. They were very hard working and very happy. The school goes from Grade 1 to Grade 8. Kids from three surrounding villages go to school there.

 We had a really fun time and met lots of great kids, the school is really nice and the kids are very proud of it.

Time in the Yasawas

Hello everyone,

I just came back from an amazing dive and I'm going to tell you all about it. We set out in our small dinghy toward the reef with our friends on Connect 4 following in our wake. While I was waiting my turn to get my gear on, my friend Chelsea and I went of to explore a bit. I was free diving down and I started to get out of breath, wow, that's weird, I thought I'm only at about ten ft. I turned around and looked up, I had actually gone down 25 ft. The clear water had fooled me into thinking that the bottom was much shallower than it was!

I went back to the dinghy and got my gear on. The my Dad and I went down to the bottom. There were brightly colored fishes, flashy coral, and clear blue water. We had a beautiful dive. We dove at Navadra and I would recommend going there if you can. If you're a beginner and you want a cool dive I would suggest Navadra. It's in the Yasawas in Fiji.

Last night Connect 4 and us had a big bonfire on the beach. We set of fire works and explored and made secret hideouts. It was really fun, we had a great time.

This morning, after I got up I saw a huge cruise ship coming in to the little harbor, it was crazy! It was called Captain Cook Cruises.

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