{"id":213,"date":"2012-04-10T19:00:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T09:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ddixon.me\/?p=213"},"modified":"2012-04-10T19:00:47","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T09:00:47","slug":"monday-9th-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/?p=213","title":{"rendered":"Swam with a turtle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ddixondotme.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/04\/green-turtle.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ddixondotme.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/04\/green-turtle.jpg?w=300\" alt=\"\" title=\"Green Turtle\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-296\" \/><\/a>When I was small my mother and closest aunties called me &#8216;fonu&#8217; right up until they passed away, which in the Niuean language means turtle. The name fonu became so commonplace, that I just don&#8217;t think they knew my real name.<\/p>\n<p>My mother spoke the tiniest bit of English and being the eldest, I was her translator for a great deal of the time. She spoke to me in broken English, and I replied back in broken Niuean.<\/p>\n<p>The reason for being called fonu was never explained to me, so I&#8217;m wondering whether it was the way I moved when I was a hatchling. Or, perhaps there was no adequate translation for the name &#8216;David&#8217; and they thought, &#8216;what the heck, lets call him turtle&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>I would like to think, that it&#8217;s symbolic for being ahead or beating something even when it looks like the odds are up against you.<\/p>\n<p>Today, I snorkeled at Black Rock, Maui and came very close to a Green sea turtle. It must have been close to 5&#8242; in length and glided past me en-route to the ocean. I could not even attempt to describe this experience.<\/p>\n<p>This will forever be one of the highlights on this trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was small my mother and closest aunties called me &#8216;fonu&#8217; right up until they passed away, which in the Niuean language means turtle. The name fonu became so commonplace, that I just don&#8217;t think they knew my real name. My mother spoke the tiniest bit of English and being the eldest, I was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37,38,72,81,83],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-to-cancer-and-back","tag-green-sea-turtle","tag-hatchling","tag-sea-turtle","tag-travel","tag-vacation","post_format-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dixon.one\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}