Our Fiji Trip

Well, when we finally made the flight to Fiji it was surely a relief. Gabriel did wonderful on the 10 hour flight. He slept for most of it and cooed and flirted with strangers for the last few hours of it. We arrived and waited over an hour for our luggage (not so fun), but were then greeted by Patrick’s dad and family. They took us to their house and fed and entertained us until we could check into the resort. It was nice to see them again and watch them interact with Gabriel. Gabriel just LOVED Grandpa Bal (Patrick’s dad) and Michelle (Patrick’s half sister).

It was nice to check into the air conditioned resort to take a shower and get to bed. The resort was fun and relaxing. We enjoyed swimming in the HUGE pool and taking Gabriel with us in his little floater. He really enjoyed the pool. We are also only a few minutes from the Marina, which offered shopping, a nice view, great (but expensive) food and entertainment. We checked out the Hard Rock Café, which was really nice, but we only checked it out once because it was VERY expensive. Lucky for us Patrick’s dad was only a 45 min drive away, so we were well fed and well taken care of during our week there. We also had a chance (while on the western side of the island) to check out Kula Bird Park, which had many lovely birds and lizards, and a hot, steamy rainforest full of beautiful, lush foliage and flowers.

After our week in the Western Side of the island we spent a week in Suva (3 ½ hr car drive to the east) with Patrick’s family. Most of his family is in the Suva area. Although this was my second trip to Fiji I met more family this time than our last visit. They all came to see the baby, and boy was he loved! He did really well with all the new faces and all of the love and attention he got. It was a lot of fun to see them even though most of them did not speak English.

In Fiji when greeting friends and family they shake your hand and sniff your cheek instead of kiss it. I had already been accustomed to this from my first visit, but we hadn’t met so much family last time. Some of the older generation just “sniff-attacks” your cheek, which is very affectionate, but sometimes caught me off guard and I couldn’t help but laugh.Patrick has a very fun-loving family and although I couldn’t really communicate with some of them I really enjoyed their company.

Coming home was not so fun. It was hard for Patrick to leave his family since it’s always so long in between visits, and for many of the older generation…especially his grandma you don’t know if you will see them again. So, we tearfully said our goodbyes and made our way to the airport.

Our flight home was a late-night flight, so thankfully Gabriel slept through most of it. For some reason this flight seemed to go faster than the last flight. We arrived with plenty of time to make it through customs and catch our flight to Salt Lake. But for some reason our flight arrived in Salt Lake late, and so we missed our connecting flight to Billings. Since it was the airlines fault they put us up in a hotel for the night, but it was still a huge inconvenience. The next morning we checked in for our flight to Billings, but had a four hour delay due to a snow storm in Salt Lake. We finally made it to Billings at about 3pm. We stayed the night at my parents and headed home to Bozeman the next day. After all that travelling it was sure good to come home.