Day 2: Hanging with the Cruisers

Friday- Naveriaheights day 2: We woke up and enjoyed a lazy morning. We are sitting in paradise! I brewed a cup of coffee and we are currently sitting on our own private outdoor bed overlooking the ocean and gorgeous tropical gardens interspersed with palm trees. It's the definition of paradise, especially with morning joe. I hesitate to say it may even be better than Dunkin'! What I miss in ice, I get back ten fold in atmosphere. While I was typing this we just had a passing rain shower. The sound on the tin roof was incredible. Now we are waiting for a rainbow before we go have the healthiest breakfast on the planet:) We spent about an hour eating a delicious breakfast full of a myriad of Fijian fruits and homemade mueslix and bread with peach yogurt and coffee, of course! We forgot what it was like to consume a meal in over 22 minutes! We then lathered up and sat on the cozy lounge chairs out by our own private pool. We had the whole place to our selves. There are only three rooms here and we were the only guests. It was super hot, in about five minutes I was like deep Southern fried chicken. The pool was small, but perfect for two and brilliantly refreshing. Kasper, the boyfriend of the owner, hung out with us for a while and said, "ladies, what our your plans for today?" In unison, without a moment of hesitation we replied, "you're looking at them!" We had no plans and NOTHING we HAD to our SHOULD be doing. We reveled in that for a moment, not sure to do with that feeling. We quickly realized we were out of practice and that due to grad school for the last two years we had forgotten how to relax and just be. Between getting our masters and teaching we never had nothing to do. Teachers, you get it. Even when you are done with what you have to do there is always something else you want to our should do. A lesson to revise, a new project to create with the latest technology, a website to build, a pilot project movie to make, curriculum to update and redesign to be more project based, better differentiated, and student centered. I'm overwhelmed just typing it! So, we spent a few hours in and out of the shade, hammock, and pool. We read (yes, it's true), listened to music, and enjoyed the privacy and the view. We got to watch fiji go on without us. We could see everything from high upon the hill. It was like a Fijian soap, we could see the coming and goings and imagine the drama (or lack there of) of the people below. Doing all that nothing made us hungry. We decided to brave the hill again, this time forgoing fashion for practicality so we wore sneakers as opposed to our tractionless slip-flops. It was our intention to leave our personal paradise for an hour or so, split a lunch and a stubby and come straight back. However, when we passed the dock, we decided to radio our new friends Chris and Dave and take them up on their offer. The woman at the marina radioed the boat and Dave answered. Georgeann got on the radio and said, "it's Amy and Georgeann from yesterday." He immediately responded, "give me a minute and I'll boat right over." In three minutes flat he was at the dock in his dingy and brought us out to his yacht for a tour and some of his home brew. One turned into three as we shared stories of our travels. They have been sailing the world for four years now and have been to what seems like everywhere. They were fun and inspiring. They had even met the youngest girl to solo circumnavigate the globe in her sailboat, the guppie. We then went ashore to treat Chris and Dave to some apps and stubbies on land. The time had flown and we realized we needed to brave the steep track home to see the sunset from the hill. We only needed to rest about 10 times on the trek, luckily there were benches in the gorgeous gardens for us to enjoy the view as we caught our breath. We can't believe Sharon runs this! We made it and had surely burned off the apps we just had:) We watched a picture perfect sunset on our private deck and the enjoyed Sarita's homemade papaya, bean, and eggplant curry. We ate on the deck with Kasper, Sharon, and the Chinese couple who had just arrived to celebrate their honeymoon. Georgeann even enjoyed some papaya ice cream with raspberry sauce. We spent some time hanging out with Brendan and Dylan the two sons of the owner. They are incredibly friendly, polite, and so much fun to be around. They tried out the iPad and really got a kick out of Temple Run. The oldest had a DVD with rugby highlights. We asked questions about the sport and he and his brother demonstrated. Brendan was disappointed to find out that we were leaving tomorrow. He even wanted us to go to his rugby game where he plays as a kicker. He was happy to hear that we would be back for a night after our cruise. It was a great day!