Pre-semester pause in the South Pacific
We went to Fiji on vacation but it was really a beautiful, relaxing, layover; strategic, slightly indulgent, and oddly timed and on the way to something else. I am moving to Australia for a semester abroad, and the idea was to pause before the real transition began. Just six days with my family, floating between lives.
Getting there wasn’t glamorous. We flew from Seattle to San Francisco, then boarded the long-haul to Nadi. I don’t sleep well on planes, and by the time we touched down, I felt like I’d left my sense of time somewhere over the Pacific. One of those long-haul itineraries that steals an entire day and hands it back in fragments. But it made sense: you don’t land somewhere remote and quiet without going through something first.
We stayed in two places: Musket Cove and Paradise Cove. Musket Cove was more accessible, the boat ride was shorter and the resort was more built-up, more like the version of Fiji you'd see on a tourism site. It was good! Familiar in that curated-resort kind of way. But Paradise Cove, tucked farther out, was different. It felt like stepping outside the framework altogether. The bay there was absurdly calm. The water was clear in a way that made depth hard to judge, and it stayed warm late into the day. I’ve never been a huge fan of salt water or sand, and I have a healthy fear of the ocean, so the fact that I genuinely enjoyed swimming there says a lot.
I didn’t snorkel much. Not because I couldn’t, but because I didn’t really want to. I’m not someone who chases adrenaline in water. But one afternoon, we caught sight of a sun ray, not a metaphor, the actual fish. Smooth, elegant, and totally unbothered by our presence, it moved like a shadow in slow motion. It was surreal to witness something that quiet and alive that close.
The rest of the trip was quiet. I read three books in six days, which is more than I’ve finished in the past year. I forgot how much I missed getting pulled into a story, how good it feels to turn pages without checking a clock. The books weren’t groundbreaking, but the act of reading itself felt like something I’d lost and was relearning. That felt personal.
Now I’m in Australia, slowly settling into what will be home for the next few months. Fiji feels like this strange little pocket in between things, a quiet breath before the rush. And I needed that. More than I thought I did.
