I am crestfallen…

My trip to the volcano got canceled. I guess the roads on Tanna are flooded. What also sucks is my ticket to the Solomons on Tuesday is for standby, so there is a chance I could be stuck here another week. If that turns out to be the case, I will certainly make the most …

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Evri samting you wantem save long Bislama be yu fraet tumas blong askem*

First, I’d like to suggest the following to every college student who needs to satisfy a foreign language requirement to graduate but doesn’t really want to study a language…. LEARN BISLAMA. I was totally able to understand a conversation a man who was helping me had with a coworker. Only a few words were beyond …

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Port Vila Quickie

I’m alive in Vanuatu. I’m working on my arrangements for this weekend. I’m hoping to spend two days on the island of Tanna. Initial impressions: Obviously much poorer than New Caledonia – around Tonga/Samoa levels of income it seems. They have put much more effort into tourism than other countries I’ve seen in the Pacific. …

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Au revoir la Nouvelle-Calédonie

I’m sitting in the Noumea airport milking their free wireless internet for all it’s worth before my flight to Port Vila, Vanuatu. In talking to people online, most have never heard of New Caledonia….or Vanuatu. They certainly don’t know where they are and know nothing about them. I really can’t blame anyone for not knowing …

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High Dynamic Range

Over the course of my trip I’ve been playing around with a photographic technique called High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. Basically, it involves merging different images of scenes that have very dark and very bright elements into one photos. Today I went into Noumea to play around with it and see if I could take …

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A Tale of Two Kingdoms

Almost every night I get to tell the same story: the story of my trip. Most people I meet on my travels are just visiting somewhere for a weekend. Sometimes I’ll pull out my laptop and show them the Google Earth map and walk them through the places I’ve been and the places I’m going. …

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McFiji

I finally got the chance to visit a McDonald’s in Fiji. I had to look closely, but what I noticed was definitely a reflection of what makes up modern Fiji. The first thing to notice was that there were six different value meals available. Big Mac, double cheeseburger, chicken sandwich, fish sandwich, chicken nuggets, and …

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Moving on up to a delux apartment in the sky

When I started my trip I had originally planed on staying at a decent hotel once every one or two weeks. Nothing super fancy, but just nice. So far, I really haevn’t done that at all. My luxuries have been in the form of single rooms at the hostel. Well, I decided to go for …

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Je suis en Nouvelle-Calédonie

First, the airport here has free wireless internet. Even if it wasn’t a nice airport (which it is) that alone would make it the best airport in the Pacific. Once again, the French are the biggest sticklers at Immigration check in. I’m off to find a place to stay (yeah, I don’t have that yet. …

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