The temple ceremony was Thursday, but the Tevutevu wasn't until Friday afternoon. So after the temple Talei came back to us and stayed with her family until Friday night. The Tevutevu is the traditional fijian wedding ceremony. The bride's side brings mats, blankets, masi, pillows, bedding, mosquito nets, and other various things to the groom's home and they present the bride to the boy's family sealing the match with the traditional presentation of the tabua (whale's tooth). For days prior to the Tevutevu family from all sides brought piles and piles of gifts to the home. It was an amazing process to watch. My favorite gift was the waiwai (homemade coconut oil) Inoke's mom was kind enough to hook me up with a bottle of the sweet smelling oil to take home to Hawaii.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Fiji Two
Next on our trip was the temple. I will never forget Talei's wedding. We rushed and rushed around to be there for the ceremony at noon. I was yelling at Inoke all the way up the steps that we were going to be late. He just kept telling me to relax, it was Fiji Time. When we got there the Temple Matron told us to relax Talei and Jona went to town to get the marriage licence. Uhh small detail. So we sat and waited and waited talking story with the temple matron. Finally Inoke, Wes, and Sami got tired of waiting and decided to leave to go get some food. Only in Fiji. Talei returned licence in hand and we got started at 3pm. It was a beautiful ceremony and Inoke's dad was able to officiate. The rain even held out for a few pictures afterwards.
Fiji One
First major stop on our trip was to our niece Halani's School for her birthday. She turned 7! I remember holding her in my arms as a little baby, and now she is such a beautiful little girl. Finau sent down lots of little goody bags for all the kids and every kid in her class got a Happy Meal from Mc Donalds. We will just say that she was the Queen of the Class... it was so fun to see all her class smiling from ear to ear and all the other little kids from other classes peeking into the classroom trying to score some Mc Donalds. We had a great time. I especially liked watching giant Inoke maneuver around the classroom serving cake to all the class. It was quite comical to watch the small little boys get up the courage to approach Inoke for a second piece of cake.
I'm Back.
For the few who read this, it has been a while since my last post. The last two months have been crazy. Hopefully I am now on the upswing of things and life is getting better again. In a nutshell I had surgery in Sept. It was supposed to be an easy in and out thing but with complications... it became 9 days in the hospital and a cut from sternum to just below my navel. Not so cool. Inoke was a super nurse/housekeeper/chef/husband. Seriously when they say if this doesn't kill you it will only make you stronger.... that was us. I couldn't lift more than ten pounds, and for the first 5 weeks I couldn't even sit up without help ( funny how much you use those stomach muscles to do everything) I spent six weeks trying to recover enough to go on our trip to Fiji. The doctors weren't going to let me go all the way until three days before we left. So when I finally got the green light for travel I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to figure all the things we needed to pack. Dressing an open wound in Fiji requires serious supplies. We did it and I survived our trip very well. (More on the trip to come). So that is my lame excuse for not blogging in a while...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)