It’s been a long time since I attempted to compose an entire story with something as primitive as pen and paper. Letters, sure, but an entire story? I’m having flashbacks to a little piece of prose I tried to compose in middle school in my very best script handwriting (which was always too sharp and pointy and lacked the right curves in my opinion). It was a “short” story about a girl who played the cello on the Titanic, and went on for page after page because the story just kept coming to me all at once as I wrote.
March Fletch and I have found ourselves a wonderful little island paradise: Mana Island, Fiji. Mana is Fijian for “magic,” and it is indeed magic; it never rains here. The island is a long, narrow stretch of sand, with a ridge of hills down the middle to protect us from whatever storms might try to approach from the north. Our south side is protected by a gorgeous reef that is home to not even half of the dive sites we frequent. There are no roads here, and thus no need for transportation. There really isn’t even any need for shoes.
Warning: this post contains a plethora of cute kitten pictures. It was July 1, and Fletch and I were headed to our first rugby match. Two big teams from New Zealand were in Fiji, and so we were headed down to Suva to watch the game with the resort owner and all of his buddies, at least a dozen of them, all flown in from New Zealand. We were in the resort lobby, hiding from the onslaught of rain. It always rained in that corner of Fiji. Suddenly we saw a little kitten darting under one of the dining tables. So we
I'm usually a very sound sleeper. Nothing wakes me up. Nothing. Last night though, I felt the grunge every time I rolled over, the grunge from not having showered in three days and from sleeping on sheets that hadn't been washed in a month at least. I'm not a dirty person. My living conditions have just gotten a little too 'third world' for even my comfort level. In February, Fletch and I accepted a job running a little dive shop at a very secluded resort. We knew the pay wasn't great, but we were in it for the resume builder. 'Dive
On Tuesday Fletch and I woke up to a tremendous thunder storm. Thunder storms are a rarity in Palau. We get no end of rain, especially this time of year, but tiny islands out in the middle of nowhere such as these experience a saddening dearth of thunder. Something to do with the ocean surface not warming up as much as land does. So low-lying air cannot heat to the capacity that is crucial for thunder storm formation. (That science lesson brought to you by NASA). Who doesn’t love a good thunderstorm? We woke up to booming and banging and rolling