From Tahiti with Love

As I start writing this blog, I feel completely inadequate to even begin to convey/share what this trip meant to me... With that in mind, here is an attempt at it.

To start off this entry, here is the video I made on the experience, hopefully it will help paint a better picture of the experience, even though I really don't believe it still does the people of Tahiti justice.



In just the two weeks I was in Tahiti, my entire perception of people changed. COMPLETELY! I will always look at those two weeks as a very strong turning point in my life/career when "the bigger picture" came much more into play.

I think generally when people think of Tahiti, or any island for that matter, they assume that it is just a vacation on the beach... HOWEVER, if this is what you go there for, you have completely missed something SO MUCH STRONGER of an experience, and that is the people!

The people of Tahiti, I will forever love. They have left a permanent imprint on my heart, and knowing what I know now about the love they had towards me... my life will never be the same. And of coarse, for the better!

As we were leaving Tahiti, one of the people I was with, Nikki Mozo, we were talking about the whole experience, and she said something to me that I had never had someone put into words. And as simple as it sounds... It is 100 percent TRUE!!!

As we were talking about what made the people of Tahiti different then anyone else we had met, it kept on coming up about how genuine these people were. Nikki shared the idea that the only true way that someone shows love is when they do things out of complete inconvenience, and with no motivation but to help the person in which they drop everything for. It doesn't sound very profound the way I wrote it, but the way Nikki worded it, it was for sure one of the most profound things I've ever heard :)

For me this summed up completely the love I had personally felt by the people in Tahiti.

For example, when we were leaving at the airport, the family we had stayed with the first week, the Tautu family.. they lived on the complete opposite side of the island... And not only did they not have a car, but they didn't have access to borrow a car to wave us goodbye. So what they did was use the little money that they did have, and get a rental car. They did all of this just to wave goodbye to us at the airport, and hug us goodbye.

PLEASE keep in mind that neither of us spoke a common language, we spoke English and they spoke French and Tahitian. So everything we did was based off of body language.

At the end of every day staying with the Tautu family, the father would come sit next to me as I uploaded all my photos/videos to my laptop. He would just sit there with the biggest smile on his face, and observe me. Even though we didn't speak once again a universal language, by his body language alone I could sense something much great. A sincere love, a love that I really have never felt by just meeting someone for a couple days.

I'll never forget the gentle smile of the father, of there family, whenever I saw them.

I think we as humans generally want to be loved, and with the people of Tahiti, that is something I felt by everyone I came in contact with... Out of all the places in the world I have been, I HAVE NEVER FELT/SENSED that sincere love before. Almost to the point that it even brings you to tears.

There is much more I can say about my experience in Tahiti... I could actually go on and on... but for now, I just wanted to do a blog on the people of Tahiti, and the love I felt from them! They will forever be in my heart! And they will always be considered my Utuafare (family).