HEFY trip - Fiji

Savannah and I had the greatest adventure this summer.  We joined the group HEFY and traveled to the South Pacific and helped out a school on Fiji and built a house for a family on Tonga.  It was an incredible experience that lasted 3 weeks.  We met some of the neatest people and made such good friends.  We worked really hard and played just as hard!  I would recommend it to everyone.  The group consisted of 19 teenagers from ages 16-19 and two parents (me) and Larry (a dad from Canada) and the two college aged counselors.  We all met in LA and took a 13 hour plane ride to Fiji.  You loose a day when you travel that far.  So we left on Tuesday and it was Thursday when we arrived in Fiji.  One of the kids Birthday was on that Wednesday, so he missed his Birthday all together.  Such a weird thing.  When we arrived, we were took a 1 hour boat ride to an island off the coast of Fiji.  It was called Waya Lei Lei.  It was beautiful.  While in Fiji we did some Crazy things.  First we hiked to the top of the island.  Parts of that hike were straight up and many times there were cliffs on both sides. Our Guide was from the island and wore flip flops.  Crazy!  The next day we went snorkeling.  It was so beautiful!  We headed out in a boat made for 20 - we had 35,  they didn't have enough snorkel equipment for everyone so you shared :) Germ aphobes will love that!  hahaha    We were out in the middle of the ocean, it was so beautiful and then as we are snorkeling our guide catches a fish and with his knife slices it open and SHARKS start swarming the area!  It was CRAZY!  Our guide is picking up these reef sharks and throwing them out of the water and riding them!   It was UNBELIEVABLE!  Sharks would brush up against your leg.  It was nuts!   After that grand adventure we went over to a school out and played with the kids and donated books we had brought to help their school.  All the kids live on that island or  surrounding islands.  If they don't live on that island they stay in a dorm for the week and then go home for the weekend.  These are small children just in elementary school.

We had to sleep with mosquito nets because there were tons of spiders, lizards, bugs crazy things!  Mitchell (our cousin who came with us)  was not feeling well the whole time we were in Fiji and continued to be sick for a few more days until they decided it was best for him to go home.  When he got home he ended up with Pneumonia and stayed pretty sick for a while.  Poor kid.  We left on Saturday night for a 2 hour flight to Tonga.  Fiji was beautiful and very kind people.

Our boat that took us to the island

Notice the gas cans.  That is how they run the boat:)

Waya Lei Lei

Great view of our island

This boat should not have this many people on it I am sure!

view from our island

This is part of that CRAZY hike

The view was worth it!

Sleeping with  lizards!

Snorkeling 

Beautiful water  with sharks!

The guides on our boat were catching lots of fish while we were snorkeling that became our dinner that night.

The kids at the school

Savy reading one of the books she brought

They were so cute!