Hi there and welcome to the marama vula blog! My name is Marissa and I work solo on this blog as a hobby and hopefully one day something more!
On this page I will just give you a simple run down as I go through commonly asked questions that I receive when people find out that I have a blog.
What is this website about?
As a writer, this blog is a combination of two main things.
- Travel posts of new discovered destinations
- Portfolio for my creative writing
Due to my mum’s job, I am blessed to be able to travel often. Not only that, but I have recently moved to Samoa, giving me access to a handful of new experiences. So I decided, that this blog would be a combination of the two things I love the most.
I post often about places I visit, providing informative and interesting articles detailing things like the cost, my personal level of enjoyment in such an area and so on. This is in order to bring awareness of what you might not realize is out there in the pacific!
At times I even meet and interview with lovely small business owners who provide insightful stories of their journeys. This is one thing I find most enjoyable since creating my blog. It has forced me out of my comfort shell, but also helped me learn things I would’ve never learnt if I never had those conversations.
Why did you start this blog?
This is probably the most frequent question I receive when I tell people about my blog.
I usually tell them the short and simple answer of: “I’ve always wanted to be a journalist growing up, but as I got older I began to realize that Journalism isn’t a lucrative field, so instead I turned to blogging so that I can carry that dream with me in my own way.”
While that is true, there is actually much more to that story.
I created this blog when I was 16 years old simply for one reason.
I wanted to be chosen.
You see, at the time there was this opportunity that had been plastered all over social media. It was the U.S tech girls program.
If you haven’t heard of it, basically they take three secondary school girls from Fiji and send them to the U.S for a STEM program that lasts about a month. These girls get to essentially learn more about technology with a diverse set of peers, experience the American culture through staying with a host family and network and connnect with people they would have never otherwise known.
This was a big deal for me. Obviously, I had to apply.
As I filled out my application and answered their essay questions, I began to research online on ways to make mine stand out from the rest of the crowd. That is when the idea of creating a blog came to me.
I realized that the best way for me to show them that I was the right candidate for the program was simply by doing something that aligned with the exchange. So, I decided to try my hand at website making. I created this blog and then copied its link into my application and prayed for the best.
Since then its been two years and I have continued working on the blog.
And hey, I think creating the blog was actually good for my application because afterwards I had scored an interview! However, maybe that was the part I bombed, because I didn’t get picked for the program but I was shortlisted with a promise that if anyone backed out, I’d be chosen.
Sadly for me, but unsurprisingly, none of the main girls chosen had backed out of such an opportunity. Dammit!
Why did you name it Marama vula?
This actually a really hard decision for me. It took me two weeks of jumping from name to name trying to find something that stuck. I can’t remember the other names that I had been floating around with, but the idea of it came from my dad. I knew I wanted to maybe use the Fijian word ‘Marama’ (Woman) in it because sometime along that year, the song ‘Marama Dina’ (genuine lady) by Marama had come out and I was obsessed with it.
I remember sitting in the car with two of my friends and we were bouncing ideas around when my dad, who had been quiet in the driver’s seat simply said “why don’t you call it Marama vula?”.
I liked it because Vula means moon. It sounded good. Marama Vula as a whole meant lady of the moon. Vula is also my grandmother’s middle name who passed away only a few months before creating my blog.
-Marissa Wong.