BULA!!!

Bula from the beautiful islands of Fiji!

What a place this is! The jungle and the beaches are breathtaking, the waters unbelievably clear and the people uncommonly happy. The air is full of life and character, and you can't walk past anyone, Fijian or traveller, without hearing them call "Bula!" with a smile.

I arrived slightly delirious at 5am on Monday 14th September. And I left LA on Saturday night. So I travelled through time, and completely skipped Sunday. In America I was 8 hours behind England, and here I am 11 hours ahead. The local bus down to the south of the island took me 2 hours. It was 120km and cost me $8 Fijian dollars. Thats £2.42


It is a very simple way of life here, homes are single storey with only 1 or 2 rooms, dogs, cows, horses and chickens roam free, and there's nothing a Fijian would rather do than sit with friends late into the night. And that normally involves Kava. Kava is a drink made from the pounded roots of the Kava plant, and is the Fijian alcohol. It is drunk at any and all traditional ceremonies, parties, or just whenever it possibly can be. I had my first taste in the Navolo village in Korelevu, and it was like swallowing a thin, watery mud.



On my very first morning in Fiji I hiked through the jungle to a waterfall where we swam and washed off all the sweat and mud under the cascading water. Our guide, Jiutu, took us to his village where his people were waiting, root in hand, to welcome us. The powdered root is poured into a bag and rinsed through with water, much like a giant teabag, and served in a coconut husk. The reciever shouts 'BULA', claps once, then drinks the entire bowl in one go. After passing the coconut shell back you clap 3 times to show respect. And then you chase it with water or beer or rum (Bounty rum 58% - That was a good night!!) or anything you have to get rid of the taste. Your tounge goes numb and your mouth feels like cotton wool. Then the dancing happens; the villagers sing and play ukulele while others pull you up, wrap their arms around you and dance. Then, just when you've got rid of the taste and the strange feeling in your mouth, another cup is presented...

I have done so much! I've swum in the ocean every day, snorkelled, kayaked and paddle boarded. I've had a traditional Fijian massage - and I can still feel the pain of it now! I've balanced on a slack line, spent a night looking at the stars from a hammock and sat around a fire on the beach. I've climbed a mountain and cantered across the beach on Billi. I've swum in a waterfall and pulled a leech off my leg. I've drunk the milk from coconuts that have fallen from the trees, then broken them open and eaten their flesh. I've survived a severe tsunami warning after the Chilean earthquake.

Today has been slightly unreal. I sailed to South Sea Island, a tiny dot off the coast of Viti Levu, the main island. The island is so small you can walk all the way around in less than 5 minutes. I paddleboarded around in 11. They say you can see the sunrise in the morning, turn around and watch it set in the opposite direction. The water is impossibly clear, so it is easy to see the coral reef that surrounds the island. But i wanted a closer look. So i went scuba diving.


It was INCREDIBLE!! It's suprisingly simple, and though confusing at first, i quickly got the hang of breathing through a tube. My instructor, Wesley, was either Irish or South African, or perhaps a strange mix of both. But he was great. We swam down holding hands, he gently pulling me around until i got to grips with the stange weightlessness that comes with  being underwater. There was so much to see, angelfish, starfish, sturgeon, countless other beautiful, beautiful fish, swimming beside me, in front of me, below and above. The parrot fish is stunning! But the best moment came maybe 10 minutes in. Just cruising, not even 10 meters away, SHARK!! A 1.8meter White Tip Reef Shark. He wasn't bothered by us at all so we followed him for a while until he dissappeared into the coral forest. Im pretty proud to say i was excited, and not even scared for a second =]

A meke performance greeted me when i surfaced. Traditional music and dance in traditional costume, including war dances and stick fights - though there's probably a better name for it than Stick Fight!

I have made some really deep connections with people here. There's Kurt, the Austrian kite sufer who is travelling the world kite surfing. Michael, from Germany who spent time living in a village and now has 3 wives... possibly. Monkey (Marcel) and Sarah (Annie), also German (there's a lot of them here!). Marcus, who i sat next to on the plane from LA, who will be doing the same orientation programme in Sydney, who just happened to be staying in a hostel right beside the second one i stayed in and turned up one night at Kava time!

So, in conclusion, Fiji = beautiful, welcoming and a lot of fun! But i can't deal with Fiji Time. There's a saying here. Fiji time, no worry no hurry. Basically, things happen when people can be bothered. Best example; i travelled to Sigatoka, the closet big town to exchange some money. I arrived at 8.50, the exchange was closed. A woman was waiting outside and had been for an hour - it was supposed to open at 8. At 9.15, eventually a guy turns up, takes 20minutes to turn his computer on and set up, and then finally serves us. Fiji time - when we get round to it.

the end of an age

It feels like i have been in America for an age. But it has only been a few months. And now it is time to leave. I fly to Fiji tomorrow for part 2 of my adventure. I have uploaded pictures from my trip to my facebook page because my tablet seems to have decided that the pictures i take on my tablet are not actually pictures, so i cant upload them. Clever 'eh?! So if you want to see what it all looked like, go to my facebook page!

And what an adventure is has been!

It looks a little something like this;
Newark, New Jersey - Lake Morey, Vermont 317 miles
to Milford, Massachusettes 172 miles
to Bethesda, Maryland 418 miles
to Chesapeake Beach, via Washington DC 44 miles
to Virginia 67 miles
to Knoxville, Tennessee 473 miles
to Nashville 180 miles
to Memphis 212 miles
to Oklahoma City 476 miles
to Albuquerque, New Mexico 541 miles
to the Grand Canyon National Park 394 miles
to Phoenix, Arizona 323 miles
to Los Angeles 101 miles

And that comes to somewhere around 3718 miles. Not including the travelling to cities where I just spent the day, Anapolis, Boston, Baltimore and Flagstaff. And my flight here was another 3452 miles. So i guess, what you can take from that is that I am a long way from home!

I've done so many things I thought I never would.
I've survived a camp load of kids with boundless energy. I've slept outside in the wilderness with the star as my blanket. I've swam in the lake in the moonlight. I've driven the whole way across the country, without once going to a fast food place. And on that note I've eaten a lot of mexican food, a lot of breakfast burritos, eggs and tofu! I've attempted to help build a 50ft monolithic cement dome. I've hiked down into the Grand Canyon. I've survived LA without a car,  a phone, wifi or another human being. And I've met some of the most beautiful people that are in this world. And been endlessly amazed at their kindness and generosity.

Road trippin' across America

My journey across to LA is shaping up to be EPIC!

Faryn and I are driving her hybrid Prius across America, to the tune of Mumford and Sons and the buzz of air con, because it is HOT here!

Stage 1: VIRGINIA
I met Faryn at the airport in Virginia as I left my lovely family as they caught a flight to go back home to England. A big part of me wanted to go with them, but I'm sticking this out.
Faryn and I stayed at her Grandma's in Fairfax, Virginia, and then we hit the road.

Stage 2: VIRGINIA to KNOXVILLE, TENESSEE
A 7 hour drive and 500 miles later we arrived in Knoxville and at our home for the night,  the student digs of Julian and Harry. Exploring the local area showed Knoxville to be a real cool hip town. We ate while watching a free improv comedy show at a bar called The Scruffy Town Hall.

Stage 3: KNOXVILLE to NASHVILLE
A short 3 hour drive, in which we time travelled and gained an hour, and we arrived in Nashville. We stayed at Further Farms which is a pretty hippy community who brought 110 acres of land and are building huge monolithic concrete domes for a big festival they are holding next month. It was incredible! They were all doing serious manual labour, hauling huge bags of concrete around in the crazy heat. But what an amazing place and an incredible vision! I would love to go back in a year or so and see what they have created!
http://www.furtherfarms.com/

Nashville has an insane music scene. we spent the evening in town, walking from bar to bar seeing incredible band after incredible musician. And back at base camp we slept wild in the woods under the not-so-starry-more-sort-of-cloudy sky.

And now it's breakfast on the morning of stage 4 and we are heading to Memphis. Watch this space...

Post camp part I

Camp Dartmouth Hitchcock was amazing. I spent the majority of my time at the ropes course, working for DH, family camp, National Guard camp, and Polaris, a freshman orientatation programme for Pennsylvania college. It was great to see the kids who really struggle with their joints get to the top of the climb tower, or take a length around the rope course and come down the zipline =)



I lived in a cabin for the week, with a few great girls, Emily, Miriam, Faryn and Laura. All staff members, no campers - they were looked after by the volunteers, so I had a lot of free time! It was a very social week, with a lot of hanging out round a fire or on the docks at night. And nights UTH; Up The Hill. Every night there is a big fire UTH at Lanakila where councilors from all camps can go and hang out and have a few drinks and socialise. The best night I've had so far is ever more to be known as The-Night-That-Was-Meant-To-Be-Up-The-Hill-But-Ended-Up-In-The-Castle-Instead. I drove the huge truck up the ridiculously steep dirt track with 2 big containers of water for putting the fire out. And could not find the spot. Normally the fire is lit and the you can see it through the trees, but we could not see or hear anything. So we drove down again - which was lucky because we found the water coolers on the track; the truck no longer has a tail gate! Refilled them and filled the truck bed with 6 people and headed up once more to discover there was just nobody around, so we turned around (again) and headed to the castle and sat in there for most of the night instead.

It was sad to say good bye to Lake Fairlee and Aloha. And so much harder to say goodbye to all of the people. It's been an incredible summer, and I've made the most amazing memories . It's strange thinking back to the me who stepped onto a plane just a few months ago. I feel like my confidence has grown, my independence,  my creativity, my ability to Fake It Til You Make It, to make the best of things - Take 24 kids instead of 12 with 1 less member of staff? Sure. Jump out of bed at 7 after a 5 hour meeting that ended at 11:30? No problem. Homesickness kicking in at 3 in the morning, every morning? Piece of cake. Be in 2 places at once? I got pretty good at it.

I left camp exhausted, with clothes that smelled of sweat and camp fire. I had too much stuff to fit in my pack and shoes that were worn through. I had laughter, tears, memories and friendships that are going to last the ages, no matter how far away we are.

But on to the next part of the adventure.

I drove to Massachusettes with the hilarious Molly, and that journey taught me one vert important thing; don't leave Molly alone to lock up the car! We spent an extra while sat on the curb waiting for the AAA to come and retrieve the keys from the cup holder (sorry Molly, i refuse to let you live it down). We stayed with another camp friend Matt (and by that i mean a friend from camp, not that he is camp!) and his family who were incredibly lovely and welcoming. We spent the next day exploring Boston before continuing our long drive down south to Molly's home in Bethesda, Maryland. The next day was Baltimore which is a really cool city. We went to the National Aquarium where we saw a lot of cool stuff including a beautiful giant sea turtle with only 3 legs, sharks, lots of jellyfish and a dolphin show.

And then to Washington DC. I met up with some girls from camp amd we spent the day exploring the city. Its very beautiful, lush and spacious the roads are very wide and the traffic is a bit crazy, but every one seems pretty chilled out which I was not expecting. All the museums are free so we spent a long time cruising around them taking in cool exhibitions amd learning lots. The best was the Museum of American Buildings that had an exhibition called The Beach. It was a giant ball pool where  we spent a good couple of hours pretending to be kids again.


I met up with my wonderful family in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, and have been here for the last few days. It's complete madness around here, with the 4 Virdee sisters and their families all squished into one (very large) house. There's Dan and Jag (sister #3) and their daughters Alex and Simran; we're at their house. Then Rupi (sister #2) and Gurch (#4), Deepie (#1) and her kids Anoop and Ajooni, and her neice Mia and mother in law Momaji. And then there's Mommy and Daddy bear. And me. That makes 14, and thats a lot of people to co-ordinate. We spent today at the beach. Its a private one for all the people who live in this neighbourhood. It's crazily hot too, hotter than it was in Vermont. It's currently 69°f and its 10pm, earlier it was 82°. Would have liked to have spent more time in the water, but there's a lot of jellyfish around. Not a problem, however, when you are on a jetski.

Dartmouth Hitchcock

My time at Aloha has passed so quickly,  but at the same time it feels as though i was there for ever. I met some great people and we ended Aloha 2015 in style, with a banquet, pretty dresses, awards (I won't even tell you what some of them were for! !), a big fire and a hell of a lot of cleaning!

For some reason I can't upload pictures right now, and it hasn't let me for a few days. I will add them at a later date, so you can see all the pretty places and people, but right now there's too much more to tell you to wait.


It's full steam ahead and into Camp Part II. I spent a day at Aloha's 110th reuinon weekend where campers and councilors of the past returned. And then I moved across to Lanakila which has reverted to it's year-long name of Hulbert Outdoor Centre. I am now working for Dartmouth Hitchcock camp. DH is a camp for 8-18s who have JRA; Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Its a much smaller scale, with only 46 campers, but the individuals are far more diverse and their needs and personalities are very different. There are 10 members of staff, including me, and 20 volunteers who are nurses, doctors, students and people who were at the camp before.

DH is only a week long, but for many of the kids it is the highlight of their year. And it's easy to see why. Already there is such a great atmosphere here, full of noise and excitement and positivity. The condition affects them all differently, but modern medicine means there is much greater control than there used to be. 10 years ago the majority of campers were in wheelchairs with 2 personal carers looking after them. Now it's hard to tell that most of them have any problems at all. And it's great to see how open everyone is, because they are somewhere they feel at home, and somewhere they don't have to try to fit in.

I'm excited to see how the week plays out!

Coming to an end

I'm currently in the library at Dartmouth College.  Yes Mom,  you'll be able to say that your daughter went to an Ivy League School. It's the equivalent of England's Oxford or Cambridge. The trick is to walk in like you belong there and nobody will stop you.  Nobody will stop you taking a tour around either if you look interested enough.
It's my final day off before the end of camp. The 2nd half girls leave on Wednesday and then it's clean up before Reunion Weekend. This year marks the 110th year of Camp Aloha and all the girls/women who have ever been at camp have been invited for the weekend. Then there's a further week of different camps,  National Guard, Family amd Dartmouth Hitckcock. And then my time in Vermont is over. Which is sad, but it's time to move on, too much to see to stay anywhere for too long!

I have had so much fun monkeying around. I absolutely love spending my days outdoors, and I feel so at home within the trees. I love how the kids really look up to me when they are climbing - yes,  sometimes literally - but they think the ropes course is the coolest place and that makes me the coolest person!!!

One of the best (but not most comfortable) nights was my tent family overnight. We hiked up the mountain to the treehouse, made a fire and cooked an amazing marshmallow crispy dessert that we ate hot out of the pan. Then we curled up in our sleeping bags and talked ourselves to sleep. It was awesome !!

Time Flies

At the weekend the first half campers went home. It's incredible that they have been at Aloha for 3 and a half weeks. Which means I've been in the US for 6 weeks. In a way it feels as though I've only just arrived, but then it also feels like it's been my life forever. The endless cycle of bugle playing reveille at 7am, breakfast (2 courses every day!), activities, lunch (always served with dessert!), more activities, dinner (more dessert), and an evening programme that changes every night, taps (kids bedtime at 9), and then all the staff had down to the counsellors room to hang out or head to one of the many after taps events. So far i have been hypnotised, danced in an 80s party and a kids sleepover and spent a fair amount of nights Up The Hill - at our brother camp where there is a huge bonfire every night.  

The fire on the 4th July was excessive! It was easily as big as one of the huge old 3 story victorian townhouses. We all went over the Lanakila for a funfair put on by the boys, dinner, fireworks over the lake and the bonfire, which was lit by the oldest campers in a Moari style display of flaming torches.

I've done so much since I've been here that it's hard to keep track of everything. Lots of climbing of course, and I've been running most mornings. I get in the lake when there's time - sometimes it gets so hot that you can't help but dive in. 

MJ's Mayhem was one of the best days. Instead of the regular schedule and activities, we went crazy with this year's marine theme. I was in charge of mattress surfing, which was ridiculously fun and also kinda painful! There was also lots of crazy stuff at the water front, like a run across upturned kayaks, and an upturned canoe slide. There were boat rides around the lake and sunbathing on Waikiki, our little stretch of beach. 

Meet Bri, one of my best friends. She is AWESOME! She is Australian so she talks funny, but she has a very beautiful soul. We are very similar and spend a lot of time together. We are planning our adventure after camp, as we have to get from Vermont to LA to fly out of. It's going to be an epic 3 weeks, we've already figured that much out, and the fun is going to continue in Aus!!

The actual Best Day Ever was when we both had the same day off. We headed to the Lake Morey Resort and spent the day lounging beside the lake. We went out on a paddle board and just sat out on the water looking at the incredible sights that surrounded us.

And then the coolest thing happened. Or thingS. Parker and Nick. They work on the waterfront at the LMI and we got talking - everyone talks to everyone here, it's really nice and also kind of weird at first. There was no one else going out on the daily pontoon boat ride so it was just the four of us. We headed out into the middle of the lake, stopped the boat and dived in. Climbed out and dived in again. And again.... We spent a long time underneath the boat, in between the 2 hulls which was really surreal. When we got back in the boat, the motor wouldn't start, so we had to get towed back to shore! And then, as it was getting dark, the boys had to go and find a family who had taken a canoe out around the lake and get them to start heading back. So we got to ride in the speedboat!! Then obviously the resort's pool and hot tub - because we just can't get enough of water.

We spent the day with the guys, and they've become good friends. We've got plans for the next day off to hang out again. Can't wait. Days off are rare, and though you want them to catch up on much needed sleep, there is so much to do!!!

Welcome to Pines. This is the unit I live in.

Not to brag or anything, but we've won Golden Broom every week! 

There are a lot of beautiful places around camp.  You can hike up the many trails into the woods and find something incredible around every corner. 

Father Gulick's Ravine

The Aloha story goes; Mother and Father Gulick were cycling round the lake, thought what a great place it would be to live, saw a for sale sign, brought the house and a few years later turned it into a camp. The camp began 110 years ago, and its history is very strong in everything that happens here.

Glenn's Falls is one of my favourite places to go. Its a short walk away, and when you're there you can be completely alone. As you walk further up the trail the falls get higher and more spectacular. I took my campers there and Lizzy and I (the sensible ones!) sat on the banks and watched while Delphine and Sidney went into the ice water.

I am now a woodland hippie! 

Winships is another amazing place. Named after the man who sold the Gulick's the land back in the day, its part way up the mountain with an incredible view. There are some shelters up there that you can camp in and fire pits where you can cook dinner.

My favourite place of all has to be The Bluff. Its a 45 minute hike up the mountain through the forest. There's an outcrop of rock where eagles used to nest that looks out over the lake and the mountains.