Tovu Tovu- Tovu Tovu was the first place we stayed. The first day we got there we went to the beach and relaxed. We had the BEST smoothies! The fruit was picked on the spot and blended together! The weather was absolutely beautiful, I was hoping the rest of the trip would be sunny and beautiful; unfortunately, we got lots of rain.  We also got to explore the town. Chase, Bora, Jameson, and I walked around the town taking pictures. We went to a cemetary, the beach, and up and down the streets. I met a friendly man named Rox. He invited us to come into his backyard and take pictures of the nice deck he made. He also wanted us to take pictures of him and his baby daughter. That night we had initiation to the National Geographic photography program. The second day we went to the big rugby tournament in a neighboring town. It was so exciting to watch the teams play rugby. I learned a lot about rugby. It was extremely special to me because I was able to watch the sport my brother, Parker, gets to watch and play all the time in New Zealand. This was our first big opportunity to take lots of pictures. I got to take some awesome action shots. I loved watching the crowds and seeing the difference between Texas football fans and Fijian rugby fans. An obvious difference was that the Fijians did not try to give the coaches advice. In Texas football a lot of times the fans will try to tell the coach what they would’ve done. Afterwards we went to a local town and bought our first sulu. Sulus are skirts-like things that men and women wear on occasion. It is more common for women to wear them however. After shopping for the sulus we left for the waterfalls. Unfortunately, because of all the rain the streets were flooded and we had to turn around. We were less than 5 minutes away when it got too deep for the vans. For dinner we went to a resort nearby and had an amazing fish dinner. We also had our first kava ceremony in which we sat around the kava bowl while singing songs and drinking lots of kava. Shoutout to Xavier Sua’Filo in Houston for perfectly depicting what the kava would look like and taste like. On the third day we went to church in the morning. It was such a great experience to listen to the sermon addressed by the pastor. The sermon was very powerful. He gave 5 ways to remember who you are. It was interesting to see the many differences between the church I attend and this church; Ex. at my church we do not say “amen” during a sermon, only at the end. After the service, we went to the waterfalls we were not able to attend the previous day. Bora taught me how to do really cool long shutter speeds and make the waterfall look amazing. We also went on a 5K walk to a waterfall. Rain poured on us throughout the entire hike. However, we were not going to let rain ruin our hike. Elizabeth, Claire, Jacob, and I sang songs the whole way. What made the hike even more fun was that everyone was slipping on the soaked wood and slippery grass. On day four we went to a beach and snorkeled. Brett, one of the National Geographic leaders, taught me how to dive. Although I was not able to get very far down in the water, I am excited to try next time to get better. After snorkeling we left for the village.