Last week (3rd post)

   Hey guys, this is my third post!!!!😀  So far, we have been to the blowholes at a mini resort, hiked the newest island in the world, went to a cave with an underwater pool, and went to an island called Ha’apai for screenings (teaching kids how to brush and floss, and give them a check-up), and another one called 'Eua for my mom's birthday.

Cave

We went to a huge cave near the beach. this cave has an underground pool that you can swim in. here are some photos…

…and a quick video of dad jumping in 😄…

Bats

We went to see some bats that hang out on some trees bordering a cemetery during the day. They are the biggest bats in the world! Good thing they are fruit bats, though, huh?😝

Mini Resort

Yesterday we went to a mini resort for the afternoon called Keleti Resort. We had dinner there, and walked down to the beach. if you waded in the water for a few yards, you would come to the blowhole pools. We walked on the blowhole pools and saw some pretty amazing stuff. Here is some photos and another video…

and there was a cat there! active cats or calm dogs are my favorite type of pets (if they aren’t so grouchy)…

Trip to Ha’apai

We went to an island called Ha’apai and stayed at a resort at the tip of the island. (Click —>HERE<— for a link to google maps of the island)

we stayed at matafonua lodge If you looked at the map, you could see the tip of the island were we stayed. You would have also seen an island very near that tip. That island is uninhabited by humans and is so close to the tip of the island that snorkeling from the resort to the island is not too long of a trip! we were there once, and had an appointment with a school for some screenings in an hour. The owner of the resort drove this drone…

…with a note attached saying that it was time to get back!

This will give you a perspective of the resort…

…and here is our Fale {Fa-lay} we stayed in…

Each Fale has a number, and to show the number, they have a statue with the Fale number replacing the face! Here is a picture…

😃

Newest island in the world!

We went to an island called Honga, in fact it’s the newest island in the world! It formed by an underwater volcano that erupted in between two relatively close islands, and connected them (just barely, the only thing connecting them is a beach of black rocks) to form one new, bigger island. We left on the boat at about 9:00 AM, and got to the island 2 hours later. (long trip!)  We docked on the other side of the island, between the middle and right islands.

When we got out, we noticed that the sand connecting that island to the new one was not sand, but very light weight, small, black rocks! this extended to where the shore of the island would have been, with no greenery, nothing! just a desert of black rocks barely connecting the two islands.

video

We walked across the desert-like beach and hiked up the new part of the island. hiking up and down the new part of the island was pretty tricky, because there were huge canals cut into the weak crumbling sandstone with a layer of tiny black rocks that easily slipped under your feet. this is what we saw at the top…

>video<

                                                       _______  

                                               _                         _

                                         _           0                         _

                                         _                    0                _

                                         _           0                0       _

                                         _                    0                _

                                         _           0                         _

                                               _                         _

                                                       _______  

…and here is a banana plant that someone planted at the first peak…

…and some other cool pictures…

We started heading back at 3:30 PM. So do you remember when I told you that we went to see the whales, and that we tested out our snorkels near an island with some reef? that island is about 20 minutes from Tonga’tapu (the main island), which you could see in the distance if you were there. Since the ride there and back round trip was 4 hours, and the waves were resisting the boat a little, we ran completely out of gas approximately 1,000 yards from that island. Like literally puttered to a stop. We were stranded in the ocean for maybe 30-45 minutes and then someone delivered us 20 Liters of gas to get the rest of the way back home. This is how he filled it up. So imagine one cup sitting on a stair, and another one standing on the stair below it. A huge straw travels from the bottom of one cup to the other. The higher glass is filled with water. Then you cover the top of the cup (letting the straw stick out) and leave 1 tiny opening in your hand and blow into it. Then the water goes through the tube into the other cup! Cool, huh? I personally thought so, because I’m a science type of guy. I actually did this experiment myself.

I would say that that trip was the best thing we have done so far.

Stewart + wheelchairr = wheelie

So when Adaline arrived home from her surgery, one of the elder missionaries provided a wheelchair for her. About 2 weeks after she got it, Stewart had learned to do wheelies in the wheelchair. (truthfully, Stewart uses it more than she does. Adaline hasn’t touched it for about a month or two.)

Tree in the back yard

That tree in our back yard is raining down flowers, especially because it has rained recently. A missionary dropped by for some business, and mentioned those flowers that had recently fell in great quantities due to the storm would make a great Lei. (you pronounce it: Lay) And my mom made just that…

Shyplant

What is Shyplant??? Here is a video…

This is occasionally found in a small flat patch in yards around here. Cool, huh?

Trip to ’Eua 

So for my mom’s birthday we went to an island called ‘Eua. (It was my dad who actually wanted to go though.) The plane trip there is the shortest commercial flight in the world! This is how long it was on the way there…

We rode on the same plane with the same pilot as we did flying to Ha’apai there and back. After we landed in ‘Eua, he mentioned that he had seen us a lot, and wondered what we were up to. We told him that we stayed in Liahona (the name of the school campus) and he said that he was married to someone related to the Steak president or something like that. It’s a small world!

When we arrived, the Stake President for the church there picked us up. He was actually our tour guide! First stop, our resort…

Our Resort Room in ‘Eua

(our sleeping there was not to pleasant. As there were no fans, and the walls were solid, it got so hot that we didn’t get a lot of sleep.)

After we dropped off our stuff, we went to some tourist attractions…

Huge old tree

the first place we went to was a huge tree, about 800 years old. Some of its branches grow down from the trunk into the ground, with is why it looks the way it does.

Next stop, Ahu’ahu sinkhole. there is a story about this sinkhole. Once, 2 brothers were wandering around it and both fell in. A rescue soldier repelled down the sinkhole 180 feet (about 51 meters) and found one of them laying on a ledge. The other one was not in sight. The sinkhole kept on going beyond where the first boy landed. the soldier purposefully dropped a lit torch to see how far it went while he was still in the sinkhole, and it disappeared. It didn’t clatter or anything. Kind of spooky, huh? Still, no one knows how deep it is. 👻

Then we went to an overview of the ocean. here is a glimpse…

and then we went to the “rat cave”…

Then we went to see some wild horses, but I couldn’t capture them because the camera I had can not zoom. near by, another bigger version of the hole in the rock was there.

>picture<

On the way there, there were trees with peculiar looking nuts on them…

And the time for the flight back...

And yeah. that was ‘Eua.

(sorry for being so brief, trying to get in another post.)

Other Random Stuff

Some interesting facts:

Most people here have never seen a squirrel or a worm!!

The phrase: Tapu (like in Tonga’tapu, the name of the main island in tonga,) means “No Entry” in english! The islands in tonga were not always unified, and did not used to cope with each other that well.

So yeah, there’s the update. on the way home, we are planning to go through New Zealand to LA. and we are going to disney land! yay. we will stay there for a week, and then head home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can’t wait!!!!!!!🤗

Week 8 (2nd post)

  Sorry the post took so long. I made some videos with copyrighted music in it. I tried to get permission to use their songs and post it but they said no. (the album is Night Visions from Imagine Dragons) So if you know me and want to see them, you will have to see me when I come back.

Anyways…

  This past 2 weeks we moved into a new apartment, swam with whales and dolphins, had coconut water straight out of the coconut, saw a chicken cross the road, and went snorkeling again. And someone told me the coolest and  silliest trick I’ve heard of. And I’m just going to say that a camera doesn’t capture some scenes to well, and definitely can’t capture the experience. And, without further ado, I will proceed to the first subject…

New Apartment

   We moved into a new apartment. We think it is altogether better with the exception that there is no internet here, so we would have to use the dental clinic’s wifi. (we were using it before at our old place because we were adjacent to the clinic.) Here is the new video…

we haven’t seen but 2 roaches in the past 2 weeks here, and hope never to see one in the future. But there is plenty of ants.😀  When you are using the shower and someone else is using hot water, the shower water gets freezing cold.

Small New Things

Coconut water

My mom bought a drinking coconut from the market (it has coconut water in it). 

  It seems more refreshing than water! We shared it at the dinner table one night. It wasn’t a surprise to me that it was gone soon after we cut the top off. the inside flesh of the coconut is what you use for coconut shreds, except this coconut was to young so if we attempted to shred and dry the coconut flesh inside, it wouldn’t make much, wouldn’t taste amazing, and would be stiff and rubbery. the coconuts are picked at a different stage of its growth for that. But, my mom decided that since it was so expensive ( even though at eagles eye view of this island all you see is coconut trees! ) she wouldn’t plan to buy any more.

Later that day, our new neighbors (who also just happen to be the people who work at the dental clinic with us) brung us a whole bag of them for us! They explained that some stranger that they worked on at the clinic gave the front desk lady a wad of money to provide lunch for everybody there. She bought a whole bunch of coconuts (like 15, 3 per person) for lunch. but all of the volunteers either skipped lunch or went home for it. All of the coconuts were handed over to our neighbors, and they delivered them to the volunteers who help at the clinic.

(update: my mom found someone who sells coconuts cheap. we get 6 coconuts every week now!😋  )

Creatures

   I have been wanting to take a picture of a bat, but the moment I pull my phone out, its gone. I’ll try to get a better photo of one, but this is the best one I’ve got. 

We had some elder missionaries for dinner. One of the missionaries used to be a principal at a school, and a lot of kids thought that he was pretty cool for a principal, witch I bet he was. One of the students told him a trick that he thought was pretty cool. Over where he lived there was a lot of bats in the sky during the sunset. The kid said that if you get some chicken liver, put it on a fishing hook, and throw it into the sky, a bat will grab hold of it, and you can fly the bat like a kite. 😂

(this is not about bats, but the same missionary said that when he was in math class in school and he was bored, he would do this for entertainment. A girl with long blond hair sat in front of him. He would ask if he could have a hair, and she would say yes. (?) He would then catch a fly, but not squish it, and somehow tie a end of the hair on its leg. then he would pin the other end of the hair between his finger and the desk and let the fly go. The fly would try to fly away but instead fly in circles! Somehow he still got an A in math!😂 )

Chip bag

From the title above, you might be thinking: “What’s so unique about a chip bag?” Well, even here in tonga, the chips are different. Here is a picture of one:

See what it says? It says: ‘Purple kumala chips’. I'm pretty sure that purple kumala is a type of huge long root. They kind of taste like potato chips except not as thin. And it’s made locally!

Adaline’s Butterfly

An Elder missionary who knew how to breed butterflies gave Adaline a butterfly chrysalis. it used to be bright green with just a couple of shiny, gold colored flakes on it. the first picture is what it looked like after a while, and (of course) the second one is when it crawled out of that cramped chrysalis. We didn’t see it hatch though because we were at church.

These missionaries lived in garner, a town nearby where we live at home. The sister breeded some butterflies for one of my aunts weddings on my dad's side a while ago! they moved to tonga just for an adventure after they retired, and got called here when they moved in for their mission. small world!

Weird Bread

We went to the bakery and saw some weird bread. rainbow bread…

and tank bread…

I’ve never seen anything like it. 🤔

Hole in the rock beach

We went to a beach to look for shells. this is what it looked like…

See where it gets its name? there were lots of shells there, but most all of them were occupied, and accidentally brung some hermit crabs home! 😄

Swimming with Whales

We went swimming with the wales last Saturday. Here are some pictures… 

Pretty cool huh? The Whale guide said that ocean was unnaturally smooth that day. I also broke my watch during the trip. : (

It was probably in the water when it broke. That's why it will not turn on. But my dad says that the 1 year warranty will cover it. lets hope it does. 🙁

Thursday Night

On Thursday, we went to ‘The Natural Land Bridge’ and then went to dinner at a resort, which started at 8:00 PM. Then we watched a series of native dances, including the fire dance at the very end. I’ll bet you will like the video!

The Natural Land Bridge

My plate (bottom one)

the plates are made out of a banana tree!

The Native Fire Dance

Bob’s Beach

It’s really not a beach. It’s another blowhole location. I’m pretty sure I posted about blowholes already. it seems that the water erroded a cut into the shoreline. Here is a picture…

Isn’t it picturesque? Like I said before, you just can’t capture the experience.

Well, that's all there is so far, folks. I hope I can keep up to this blog more often because we have less than a month here and I've only posted 2 times now. ☹️  But on a happy note, I've got this post done and i'm all caught up! we are supposed to go to an island called 'Eua (<-- link) by plane pretty soon. it's the shortest commercial flight in the world!

(ps 1 more thing, we FINALLY started turning on the ac! its like 80 degrees fahrenheit here (26.7 degrees celsius)my mom only lets us turn it on when it's humid !)

please follow for updates and see you next time!😀

Hayden

Introduction

Hi. My name is Hayden.

This is the first blog I have ever done, and it is themed on a 3 month adventure at Tonga. But before I start, I'll tell you a little about myself.

Name: Hayden
Favorite thing to do: Play electronic puzzle game
Favorite flavor ice cream: Chocolate chip cookie dough
Favorite color: Orange

And I'm a Mormon : )

So, now that you know me a little bit, let's get started.

Logistics

My dad sold his dental business, and my parents decided for the family to stay in tonga for 3 months. My siblings and I will be doing homeschool (which we have been doing for 3 years now) while my dad does charitable dental work. Now, you might be asking yourself, "where in the world is tonga?!" Most people don't, so you're not the only one.  ; )

Location

We are staying at a campus that has a dental clinic, a middle school, and near by a temple, all owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Click HERE for the main island of tonga and HERE for the High School Campus we are staying at. (Google Maps)

So it's kind of in between Australia and the United States (closer to Australia). We are excited! but the downside is that I will be somewhere where I are the only white guy there, and I will not be seeing anybody I have known for 3 months.  : (  But this blog is one of the ways I stay in contact with the people I know + the rest of the world ; )

The time zone here is the one of the earliest time zone in the world! Where I live is one day (not 24 hrs, about 12 hrs) behind where I am currently staying!

When you fly over, Tonga, coconut trees cover what looks like almost all of the land! Not that they really harvest the coconuts, although the coconuts here used to be very popular. Tonga made a law here to have them planted a certain distance between each other to prevent erosion, and the farmers plant crops in between.

this is where we are staying...                                                                                   Video of living quarters

                                                                               

<--- Building we're staying in




So in the video, I said that we don't have a dryer. Well, I forgot to tell you, we don't have dishwashers either, but I guess that's part of the experience here in tonga.

Sometimes it's hard to understand a native Tongan's english, so when they ask me a question that I don't understand, I say "I'm still thinking" or "Yes" and "No", not knowing if I unintentionally lied or not!

The local food here is GOOD! Like lettuce, bananas, pineapple, and peanuts (I have not tryed coconut milk or coconut water yet  ) :  They do look kind of bruised, but they're not, and they taste really good. Half the size, double the taste!

I will catch you up from previous days because we didn't have wifi for 5 days and haven't found a lot of time to do this blog.
And we still have fans instead of air conditioning. And yes it is expected to have air conditioning even here in tonga. All of the other housing has it but this one doesn't because this one is the only one that has not been refurbished yet.  : (  Anyways....

Animals

Apparently there are supposed to be a whole bunch of pigs roaming around the streets in some areas, but I haven't seen any yet. There are also fruit bats here in tonga that have a wingspan of 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to 1.0 meters). You see them swooping and gliding near sunset. There are also a lot of dogs roaming the streets. They come back to their owner every night. Also, after the dogs are grown up, their owners EAT them!  : |

My brother Stewart chases the wild chickens whenever they are roaming around. Once he was chasing some, and this is what happened to one of them (imagine the car is not there)...

Narrated in words, the chicken ran into our neighbor's garage, bounced off into a tree, struggled to get out of the tree while squawking frantically, got out of the tree and scampered along the side of the house clucking as it went.

There is a bird that will not stop chirping and it drives us crazy. but it's song is cool. here is a video recording of its song...



In the place we are staying has Gecos that chirp every once and awhile, and we have been told that we shouldn't kill them because they eat the cockroaches. ( Not that we would if we didn't know, but some people do kill them, even when they do know.) Every morning, you find 1 or 2 live but dying cockroaches lying stuck on their backs.

My Birthday

My birthday kind of came one day earlier because of the flight to tonga. I was wondering what I would get for my birthday. My mom had let slip a while ago that I would get a phone for my 14th birthday. I was thinking though, they wouldn't have bought a new phone and bring it to tonga for me to open, would they? I have asked them though, if they got me a phone, if she would give me an old iPhone 4s that I set up into my account and use as an iPod. It was my Grandma's phone, and didn't have any cracks on it. I have dropped it flat on the ground without a case countless times, and it doesn't have a scratch, which surprises me. I wanted it because it has 64 GB, and I knew that my mom and dad wouldn't get me a new phone with that much memory. (the iPhone 4s is the oldest mobil Apple product that still gets updates to my knowledge.) The morning of my birthday (1 day after after we arrived), my mom gave me a Cheerios box, which kind of perplexed me. I opened the box and found Cheerios inside it. When I gave my mom a confused look, she said "look closer." I looked in between the cereal bag and the cardboard box, and the iPhone 4s was there. My mom said they would get service on it in America because the service here is hard to set up and expensive.

Since I had my birthday here, I will have my Ordination for the ___ priesthood here too (part of my church). It's kind of weird because I at the most hardly know the people who will help me with that.

Tonga Agricultural Fair

We went to the Agricultural Fair in Tonga. What it is is all of the farmers set up stands to display their products. Everybody looks at the items, but are not allowed to buy them until the king arrives and buys whatever he wants first. this is some of what we saw:

As you can tell, LOTS of fish were there. There was some weaving and wood carving too. I got a carved turtle, a fish hook necklace made with bone, and a tie made from tapa cloth (wood bark beat super thin).

Ocean

Blowholes

On one of the first days we were here, we went to the blowholes. They are basically geysers except they work differently, they are at the edge of the ocean, and the water is not super hot. couldn't get any decent pics. look it up.

 We also went snorkeling. Here is some of what we saw...

Change of Events

So, the first monday we were here, Adaline and stewart were climbing a tree, and Adaline fell and broke her femur. She had to fly to new zealand the next morning. here is her break...

My mom and sister were over at new zealand for 11 days, and got my sister's leg fixed. they put some type of pins in her bone to connect them, so she dosent have to wear a cast. she will not be able to get off her crutches the whole time we are here, which kind of stinks because this island is a polynesian culture. Me and stewart stayed and helped at the dental clinic. We came over to new zealand to join my mom and sister, and we were there touring for another week. we are back, and adaline is doing better every day.

Island day trip

One saturday we went to a nearby island for a day. we walked on the beach all the way around the island and found some cool shells. we had lunch, and then went snorkeling near a shipwreck. here is some of what we saw...

Here are some pictures that I did not put in the video:

It's been about a month now. Catching up takes up a lot of time because while you are doing it more things happen! the only reason I am done with this HUGE post is because things started to slow down and one day's events repeat the next day. I'll try to post every week. Next saturday we are supposed to move into a new house and go whale watching!