Merry Christmas Friends and a very Happy New Year!
Spending Christmas without my family and specifically in a
different country was very weird feeling. In some ways it feels like Christmas
hasn’t even happened and it is insane that it is already January (birthday
month!). The Tongan culture is even all about Christmas. Christmas music has
been playing since October, there are Christmas trees, and feasting, but not
having your family there takes away from the holiday spirit a lot. Lucky for me
I have a family here in Tonga and I got to spend my favorite holiday with my
counterpart, Meleongo’s family. It was so fun to stay with them for a couple of
nights and spend the holiday together. On Christmas I got to eat my favorite
Tongan food, ota ika (raw fish in coconut milk) and I even got some earrings
from Meleongo’s family; a true blessing to have them to spend the holiday with.
The next day we spent the whole day at the beach. Blessed.
After Christmas some fun Peace Corps from the main island,
Tongatapu came to visit the Sams and I and spend the New Year with us. We took
the friends on an almost 10 mile hike to Fangatave, which is a cliff and beach
area at the North end of ‘Eua. In order to get to the beach you have to very
closely follow directions from a tour book with have, otherwise it is almost
impossible to safely make it down to the beach. The directions go like: climb
over the locked fence, stay within 10 feet from the edge of the cliffs, look
for the tree that looks like a whale tail; once at the whale tale look to your
right and you will find a blue rope. It took us a minute to find the whale
tree, but I will say that the tree really does look like a whale tail. Once you
get to the rope you then have to do some small rock climbing down a couple of
cliffs, but conveniently there are ropes along the way for support. Once going
down about four or five cliff edges you get to the most INCREDIBLE beach I
think that you can even really imagine. This beach is on the side of the island
where nobody lives and since it isn’t the easiesit beach to get to it is
deserted and absolutely breath taking. We immediately ran into the ocean for a
swim. After cooling off in the water we had hot dogs and some other snacks and a
couple of Tongan guys with us even climbed a coconut tree for us so we could
enjoy a fresh coconut. YUMM! I can even open my own coconut now in three hits
and without spilling any of the water #boom and I am currently in training
(training as serious as training can get with the Sams to be able to climb a
coconut tree to get coconuts for ourselves).
The following day was New Year’s Eve. We brought in the New
Year by going to church that night at 10pm until about 1am. It is one way that
I never imagined I would spend a New Year’s Eve. During this church service
there were four sermons and a whole lot of singing and bell ringing. After
church the Sams and I introduced our friends to the wonders of Maxis (the dance
house mentioned in a previous post). It was a wild night of dancing and eating
ice cream that didn’t end until about 5am. Worth every memory!
With that being said I hope you all had such a wonderful
Christmas and New Year because I sure did.
New Year’s Resolutions
1.
Be able to climb a coconut tree.
2.
Improve my Tongan.
3.
Become more receptive.
4.
Take a morning walk for some meditation and
reflection time at least three days a week.
5.
Live in every moment.
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