Great week at Dolphin Bay Divers Retreat near Taveuni

OMG - what an AWESOME week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!     

Definitely one of the best weeks on my trip – and I’ve had lots of good ones

http://www.dolphinbaydivers.com/

I spent one week at Dolphin Bay Divers Retreat and had a fabulous time there! I flew to Taveuni last Thursday and after a 20-minute bus ride and a 30-minute boat ride arrived at Dolphin Bay Divers Retreat in a small bay on Vanua Levu in the Somosomo Strait. They have 4 tents and 4 bures and I ended up staying in one of the bures. It was lovely – there’s NO electricity in the bures and so you use gas lanterns. It really feels like paradise there

I had a great week with the owners Viola (from Germany) and Roland (from Switzerland), Stephan, an old friend of Viola’s, and Bianka, his mum, and various other guests who either left just after I arrived or arrived shortly before I left. Everybody was so nice, the atmosphere very relaxed, the dinners a lot of fun, the food really good, and the SCUBA DIVING simply PHANTASTIC!!!  I saw so much on every single dive: small fish, big fish, lots of white-tip reef sharks, one (unfortunately injured) leopard shark, one grey reef shark, turtles once in a while, lots of nudibranches, anemonefish, garden eels, triggerfish, trumpetfish, boxfish, cute pipefish, pufferfish, porcupinefish, fire dartfish, shrimps, a few banded seasnakes and moray eels, etc. I saw so much it was amazing! I went scuba diving every day, except Sunday (no diving on Sundays); usually we did two dives in the morning. I went diving first with Jone (divemaster from Fiji), then with Roland, then with Geri-Sue (divemaster from California) and then with Jone again. They were all really good and Jone is quite charming I must admit   We did the great WHITE WALL, the PURPLE WALL, Rainbow Passage, Jerry’s Jelly (twice), the LEDGE, Jacks’ Place, Cabbage Patch, Sam’s Place and Annie’s Bommies – all dive sites on the Rainbow Reef in the Somosomo Strait and all great

http://www.divetheworldfiji.com/taveuni-diving-sites.htm

Furthermore, we did two amazing trips – one to Kioa island where  people from Polynesia (from Tuvalu originally) live and one to the Viani school where the children performed various “meke” for us. A Fijian “meke” is the name for a traditional dance of the indigenous people of Fiji; it is a combination of dancing and repetitive rhythmic chanting/singing telling stories of everyday life in the village. Both trips were absolutely touching and amazing!!!

I had a truly wonderful week – thanks to Viola, Roland, Jone, Geri-Sue, Stephan, Bianka, Apex, and the wonderful staff at Dolphin Bay Divers Retreat :)  THANKS A LOT FOR EVERYTHING!!!

PS: And Rainer back in Dornbirn – thanks for recommending this place!  And Gabriele – thanks for recommending Rainer!

Visiting a school in Huay Xai, Laos

In the guesthouse I’m staying at I meet Marion, a girl from France (different from the Marion from France I met yesterday!), who has been traveling in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and I get a lot of useful information from her. Her boyfriend (also from France – they met while traveling) is sick so we have lots of time to talk while watching the Mekong river flow by from the balcony of our guesthouse

At 5:30 pm I visit the SCHOOL where I stopped by yesterday – I’m going to watch some English classes. First I join Mr. Lat’s class and instead of watching it, I end up teaching it. Then the same happens in Ms. Chansy’s class. It is absolutely LOVELY!!! The kids are so polite, curious, and nice! It is truly amazing!!!

After school Chansy invites me to her house and I meet her parents and her younger sister. Then she takes me on her motorbike to a Lao restaurant where noone speaks a word of English and the food is unbelievable cheap. I don’t think any tourist has eaten here before. They have no menu and only one type of soup – Chansy tells them not to put any meat in mine. It’s delicious Then we go back to her parents’ house and watch TV. I don’t understand much, but it’s funny.

Arriving in LAOS :)

So I crossed the border from Thailand into LAOS with no problems – it was really easy in fact: walking to the border, getting an exit stamp from the Thai emmigration office, taking the “ferry” (actually a longtail boat) across the Mekong river for 40 baht ($1), walking up the stairs to the Lao immigration office, filling out two forms (visa application & arrival/departure form), getting the 30-day-visa first (forgot how much it was, I think around 1200 baht/$35 + 1 picture) & then the entry stamp at the next window, changing money at the next window (they take baht and dollars, but not euros) and then walking up the hill to the main street looking for a guesthouse. I check out a few guesthouses mentioned in the lonely planet but am a little disappointed. It seems once gueshouses are mentioned in there, the prices go up and the service down. So I find a new way about picking guesthouses: as there are so many, I just check out the ones NEXT to the ones mentioned in the lonely planet. They are often better and also cheaper So I stay at the Huay Xai Guesthouse: for a room with TV, private bathroom and hot shower I pay 50.000 kip (= 1 euro, a little more than $1). There I also meet the quiet couple who didn’t talk to anyone on the bus yesterday: Marion from France and Lee from the UK; they are really nice and later I end up having dinner with them

After checking into my guesthouse I walk around the small town – first checking out the GIBBON EXPERIENCE. This was recommended to me by Louise whom I met on Ko Phi Phi and it really sounds amazing: you stay in a treehouse for 3 days and 2 nights and during the day you go zipping through the jungle. I’m SO up for that!!! I LOVE FLYING, so this is going to be a lot of fun for me

Later I stop by a school and – you know me – curious as I am and being the teacher who I am I can’t resist to take a look: there are a few teachers and the principal sitting in the courtyard. Talking to them I find out it’s an elementary school during the day and a private school teaching English in the evening from 4:30 pm – 7:30 pm. I tell them that I’m an English (and Math) teacher, too, and ask them whether it’s possible for me to watch one of the classes. They are really nice and invite me to come back tomorrow at 5:30 pm. I will! I’m excited

On the way back I meet Adam, whom I met at the Gibbon experience office earlier as we both signed up for the same trip on Wednesday. He’s having dinner and I join him. He’s from the US (West coast) and seems like a decent guy. A little later Marion and Lee walk by and join us, too. It’s unbelievable how easy it is to meet travelers and to have company for a meal. I hardly ever have a meal without talking to someone (mainly other travelers)! It’s really nice At the beginning of my trip I used to think that I’ll just write in my journal while waitng for a meal, but now I barely ever get to write in my journal in a restaurant because I end up talking to other travelers… Southeast Asia is a really nice place to travel for so many reason

“Almabtrieb” and happy cows in Austria :)

On the radio today I heard that some of the roads in Vorarlberg (Western Austrian Alps) have severe traffic delays because of the yearly ”ALMABTRIEB”. I had to laugh when I heard this because I remember when I told my students in New York City about this they didn’t believe me at first! I explained to them that an “Almabtrieb” takes place at the end of the summer and it means that the cattle are brought down from the mountain pastures – where they spent the summer – to the valley where they will spend the fall and winter. For that day the heads of the cows, goats, sheep, etc. are decorated with leaves, flowers and ribbons, and they also carry big bells around their necks. It’s something fairly normal in the Alps that happens twice a year - at the beginning (Almauftrieb) and at the end (Almabtrieb) of the summer. It often makes me laugh when people from different parts of the world have a hard time picturing this “Almabtrieb” ;-)  I remember when I discussed it with my former students in my high school in East Harlem; they were puzzled and asked me WHY Austrian farmers do that - why not keep the cattle in the valley all year long. When I replied that it’s nicer for the cows, goats, sheep, etc. up there and because the grass and air quality is better up there, resulting in higher quality dairy products, they couldn’t stop laughing  Eventually, one of my students said: “Yo, Miss, I wanna live in Austria, too! You even care about your cows! You want happy cows! Yo, man, that’s crazy! Happy cows in Austria!” From that day onwards the happy cows in Austria were a recurring joke in the class And whenever I now hear about an “Almabtrieb”, I think about this conversation with my former students in East Harlem

Missing NYC a little bit these days…

Although I’m still happy and content with my decision to leave NYC after having lived there for the last 6 years, I must admit that ever since school started two weeks ago I think about NYC a lot! And I actually miss it! The students, my colleagues, other staff at MCSM H.S., and also some very dear friends who still live in the city. The more I think about the school, the more I think about the city and the more I miss it. It’s kind of weird not to teach, not to live in NYC anymore, not to speak English on a daily basis, not to be surrounded by my African-American, Hispanic and Asian students in East Harlem, not to stop by Veronika once a week, not to walk the streets of East Harlem and the Upper East Side, not to watch movies in English, not to go for a walk in Central Park, not to take each and every visitor up the Rockefeller Center (Top of the Rock) to enjoy my favorite view of NYC, not go to Brooklyn and walk over the Brooklyn Bridge towards Manhattan, not to take the M15 bus to school and back home, not to go to the little French cafe on 86th Street once in while, not to spend hours at Barnes and Noble on 86th Street, not to …  - Well, almost everything I got used to and was familiar with for the last 6 years isn’t part of my life now anymore; I guess that’s what you call a culture shock – even if it’s in your own country It’s interesting to see how much we are creatures of habit.