I finally made it home after 20 hours of plane rides and airports. . . I'm missing Tonga like crazy, but it's nice to be able to talk to friends and family again. The last couple of weeks have been a blur. We had a lot of fun before we left, with goodbye dinners and picnics at the beach! it was really great. Saying goodbye to everyone was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced, but I know I will see them again. I really couldn't believe three months had already passed when I left, it seemed so short. My project went really well and I'm glad that I got to learn so much about the Tongan culture, but I feel like there is always more to learn! Basically Tongan families are centered around respect and love and have more love than I can comprehend for everyone in their community. Everyone talked about how much they were going to miss us and how they were sorry they had nothing to give to us to show us their love. That always made me cry because I knew that they had given me more than they could imagine by just showing my so much love and kindness. They are the greatest examples of humility, strength, charity, and respect in the world (I might be biased, but I'm pretty sure I'm right).
We spent 10 days in sydney and new zealand which was really fun, too! Basically we hiked around beautiful mountains, saw a lot of beautiful scenery and beaches, black water rafted through caves, walked on a 3 foot ledge around the tallest building in that hemisphere, cuddled with koala bears, saw kangaroos, and hung out with some cool people. It was a great time! Nothing compares to the beautiful vava'u though!
I agree, saying goodbye was so hard. It's interesting because we're supposed to be these unbiased researchers, yet we got so attached to the people and made so many friends that I can't understand how any researcher can be.
ReplyDeleteI especially liked the ending of this post and how even though Australia and NZ were amazing, nothing compares to Vava'u after spending 3 months there. I'll never forget those apologies for not having material goods as gifts, but feeling their sincere love with just a few words. Its funny to think when we wrote our proposals we referred to Tongans as people we would interview and many of them actually became good friends.
ReplyDelete