Early Show Transcript
May 30, 2004
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MARIO: Okay guys, thanks for all the questions. There's a ton of them here, and I'll do my best to slog through as many of them as I can (without being too wordy). But then again Mario and wordy go together like Drew Barrymore and double-stuff Oreos.. so I'll do my best to keep this to less than 962 pages.

On a side note, thanks to Amy Twieg for editing and organizing every one of the players' Early Shows this season. She's done a ton of work behind the scenes and never got any credit for it at all. So thanks a lot Amy! And if there are any typos in my Early Show, blame her. She should have caught them. :-P


Amy's note: I catch most of the typos, but don't ask me to correct Mario's grammar and punctuation! He's got a style all his own, so let's go with it.






QUESTION: What was the most difficult thing about hosting?

MARIO: Ugh. Babysitting. Without a doubt that was the single most annoying aspect of my job. And that's not babysitting in the traditional sense. "Babysitting" is just my all-purpose term for having to look after the cast and keep them in line for purposes of the game/story.

The rest of it I could handle pretty well: The long hours writing, the logging of chats, the forming of storyline, the posting of daily tasks, etc. But the fact that I had to POLICE people and keep them in line, well that was just a mental exhaustion I would never want to undertake again in my life. As I usually phrased it during the game, "I have a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old at home. I don't need it here as well."

And I'm not trying to single out specific people. It was just an overall feeling of my cast not always working with me for the good of the story. It was just a bit demoralizing to realize that very few of the players actually had the same goals or priorities that I had during the game. Once I realized we weren't always on the same page... it made the project much more draining than I originally anticipated it to be.

I'll give five examples of this off the top of my head: David and Amy keeping secret chats behind my back and not telling me... Michelle and the Kamiyas borderline cheating over and over by re-reading and summarizing their chats to one another in purposes of fooling their Sato hostages... Beth trying to exert influence by complaining to her friends that she didn't like or agree with the way I was writing her... the jury all talking to one another in private during the final Tribal Council (even after I asked them not to)... and Henry and Hogan (among others) "accidentally" leaking spoilers to friends outside the game, and having them both come back to bite me in the butt.

All of those are examples of the players not having the same priorities as I did, and it made me feel quite alone in trying to make this thing a realistic (and accurate) simulation. It reinforced to me over and over that few of them really "got" what I was trying to do. And it ultimately made Okinawa much more work than it really needed to be at times.








QUESTION: What was the easiest thing about hosting?

MARIO: Sitting back to let the players take care of the story and the drama. This was such an amazing cast (and so diverse) that any early fears I had went away very quickly. I was worried the story might be dull but these guys were so interesting (and so dynamic) that they did most of the hard work for me. All I had to do was report their story; I didn't change much of it in editing at all. The drama and the intrigue and the emotion... that was all them. All I did was document it.







QUESTION: Looking back at it, would you have done anything differently?

MARIO: Well there are lots of woulda, coulda, shouldas. I try not to dwell on those too much, because it's pointless to debate choices you made in the past. But if you want a few mistakes I made... off the top of my head:

1. I wouldn't have let Kamiya work together on their Midterm answers. Ugh, that was a horrible mistake.
2. I would have come down harder on Kamiya to not coordinate their attack against Matt, Beth and David. They really did borderline cheat at times ("Hey guys, here's the email I'm gonna send to Beth. Look it over and make sure you memorize what I'm going to say. Anything you want me to add?") and I should have taken Isabella's advice and laid the smackdown on all of them. The reason they made it look so easy in the story is because they all bent the rules a little bit to make sure everyone was on the same page. They just never did it blatantly enough for me to kick them out (but they would stop for a while when I warned them.)
3. I would have placed Danielle on Sato.
4. I would have given Beth, David and Matt immunity at their first Kamiya Tribal Council.
5. I wouldn't have let Beth carve the wooden penises.
6. I would have had less contact with the cast after the game ended (so they wouldn't think they could control the editing).
7. I would have stressed the importance of NOT SPOILING THE FINAL TWO a little better, since more than one of my cast members blabbed the final two to their friends almost immediately after the game ended.

And though that looks like a lot of things, I would say that only #1 and #2 on the list above were major mistakes. Otherwise I am pretty happy with how it all worked out. Okinawa was a lot of work, but a lot of the problems were inevitable and a lot of the issues were unavoidable. I tend to complain a lot, but in reality I am happy with most all of what happened. Everything happened for a reason, just like it was supposed to. It was an experience few of us will ever forget and it was a project that Survivor fans will be talking about for years. As an online fantasy project, I doubt Survivor: Okinawa will ever be topped.











QUESTION: Which character was the hardest to write? Which character was the easiest?

MARIO: The hardest ones were the ones who didn't trust me. They were the ones who either hid their true nature from me, or tried to be deliberately mysterious for the purposes of the story. Ryan and Mike would be the two best examples, as I never had a clue what either one was up to in the story. I either had to invent their motives in the story, or just leave out motive altogether and make them seem like non-entities.

Another obstacle was people who presented me very one-dimensional characters. Lance, Elisabeth and David were very good examples of this. Their character had one dimension and it was never going to deviate. With some (David) I don't think it worked well in the story but for others (Lance) I think it worked great. Once Lance found his niche in the story, he was as valuable as anybody else in Okinawa. But at times I doubted anyone would ever care about his character. There was just no arc to it.

The easiest characters are the ones with real emotion. They are the ones who are up... and down... and happy... and sad, and everything in between. They are the ones who come off like real people because they PLAYED the most like real people. Examples here would be Amy, Michelle, Joni, Christopher, Matt and Henry. They were all a piece of cake to write for. I would add Beth to the list but as we'll talk about later, she and I had quite different ideas about how she was going to come off in the story.

The overall easiest character for me to write was Amy. She had the most emotion, the most arc, the most vibrancy... plus I probably knew her the best anyway. Writing her was almost second nature to me by the end.

Isabella was easy at times (because I knew her and we were friends) but also difficult (because she comes off like a robot and was very bad at showing me what her plans were). I was on and off the fence with her, but I feel like I wrote her about as well as anybody could. She just doesn't like people getting to know her and I knew that was going to be a problem.







QUESTION: When you were hosting Okinawa, which episode was the most interesting for you to watch unfold?

MARIO: Ooh, good question. Probably the one where Isabella turned on Kamiya. The one where she voted out Ryan (ep7). That one was just majestic to watch. I can't tell you what a thrill it was to see a surefire Pagonging (yawn) suddenly turn itself around, simply because Isabella wanted to mix things up and give herself a challenge. That was amazing, plus it happened at the same time my Wheel of Fortune twist hit (which I knew would kick them all in the butt anyway). So between the wheel, the merge, and Isabella's power play... that was by far the most fun to watch unfold.

The worst ones to watch unfold were the Chris episode (nooooo, I don't want to lose Chris or Amy!), the Joni episode (If you guys blindside her, I'm gonna kill you) and the Danielle episode (the proverbial puppy on the train tracks). As a host, sometimes you just want to step in and stop a plotline from happening, and it was incredibly frustrating not to be able to do so. Especially with Joni and Danielle, where I had to just sit there and watch them walk unexpectedly into their fate. Neither of them saw it coming at all. Yuck.









QUESTION: Which do you enjoy more, playing or hosting?

MARIO: Playing. I would play again, I would never host again. Hosting is fun once. But playing starts to sound exciting every three months or so, depending on my mood.

Hosting is just too much work. Anybody would be nuts to try to do this on their own. Because you have to remember it is a two part project. Part one is the game, and part two is the story. And each one is a MAJOR project, too. The game takes a ton of work, a ton of organization, and it never lets up. You can't take a day or two off, otherwise the chats start to pile up. But then the game finally ends... and the story starts up! And then you have a second massive project right on top of the first. So... yeah... playing is much more fun. It's not even close.







QUESTION: You've said many times that certain people were placed on the wrong tribes (Joni on Kamiya, Henry on Sato), looking back, how would you have wished to make the tribes?

MARIO: Well, a lot of it was based on which skills they had (Kamiya needed a builder so they got Mike) and necessity (Joni and Elisabeth knew each other so Joni had to be on Kamiya). But if none of that were a consideration... if I just wanted to pick the teams based on personality and a better fit...

SATO would be Amy, Joni, Elisabeth, Danielle, Mike, Matt, Lance, Hogan

KAMIYA would be Christopher, Ryan, Murtz, David, Henry, Michelle, Isabella, Beth

The only one who really wouldn't fit would be Beth on Kamiya but I like that Sato eightsome very much (that's my good guy team!) so I wouldn't put Beth there over any of them. Kamiya would pretty much just be "the eight of them who weren't my Satos." I always felt Sato was the more important tribe for casting anyway. The good guy tribe is the key to the whole story. It always is. Kamiya will hate me for saying this but ANYBODY can be a bad guy. All you have to do is play dirty. But it takes a special blend of charisma to pull off being the good guy. So I would cast Sato first and Kamiya would get everybody else. In a perfect world, anyway.








QUESTION: What would be your ideal tribe of 8 from Okinawa?

MARIO: Storywise? Or gameplay wise?

Since I always think in terms of the story, I'd give you the eight I think would be fascinating to read about:

Amy (no brainer)
Joni (junior Amy)
Michelle (most forceful, alpha female)
Isabella (always delivers the goods)

Christopher (most charismatic)
Lance (say what you will, but he was a wonderful character)
Matt (comic relief)
Murtz (unforgettable)

Those eight wouldn't be the eight best players, but I could write them all pretty well and I bet I could make them all stars (if given a good enough story).








QUESTION: Mario, what would get you out of retirement!

MARIO: Money. And I'm not being a smartass, that's my actual answer. I love to write, I love to do Survivor stories, but it's gotten to a point where it's almost like a job now. I spend so much time writing that it starts to take over my life. And since I already have a 40/hr per week job as a programmer, that's the issue. I would LOVE to write for a living, but writing pays squat next to programming. So if I could make a career out of doing this? Sure, I would do it in a second. But since I've never made a cent off of any Survivor story or article, it's more or less just a part-time hobby at best. It's something to do when I'm bored at work. And as the demands for my writing grow more and more, it's just at an impasse now where I can't devote the time or effort to Survivor that I need to keep up my level of quality. The job always gets in the way. So long story short... if someone wanted to hire me as a writer and help me pay my mortgage, I'd gladly start a career in writing. But for now I'm a programmer, not a writer. It's time to get back to the real world.






QUESTION: If you could, compare each Okinawan with a player that they resembled from the Survivor television series...

MARIO: Hmm... I've done this before. But here goes:

Elisabeth- Lindsay Richter
Danielle- Christy Smith
Henry- Peter Harkey
David- Brian Heidik
Murtz- Rob Mariano or Lex van den Berghe
Christopher- Brandon Quinton
Beth- Jan Gentry (she'll disagree)
Ryan- Greg Buis
Matt- Tom Buchanan/Matthew von Ertfelda (he's their love child)
Hogan- Dirk Been
Lance- Colby Donaldson
Joni- Neleh Dennis is too easy so we'll say Amber Brkich (Australia, not All-Star)
Michelle- Deena Bennett
Amy- Tina Wesson
Isabella- Rob Cesternino (or as Isabella herself likes to say... "A Rob C. in a Jenna M. body.") Personally I always compared her more to Brian.
Mike- Rupert Boneham









QUESTION: You ran the game to write a story from it. Did you end up getting all the elements you consider key to a good story, or did you have to fudge a little (or a lot)?

MARIO: Great question. For the most part I got what I needed. I mean, the story worked as a whole... so any nitpicking would just be me tweaking it because I'm a perfectionist. But if you want a few elements that would have made the story better...

A) Sato would have been more of a "good guy" tribe. They bickered and fought too much to really be the heroes of the story. Plus Amy's vendetta against sweetheart Elisabeth and Henry's overall divisiveness really hurt them as fan favorites. Had this been fiction I would have made them much more of a Rotu or Chapera "love tribe." The readers picked up on this too. At the beginning a lot of readers told me there were no players in Okinawa to root for (and they were right!) So I had to fudge the beginning a little, just to make Sato more fan-friendly. I never had to touch Kamiya, they pretty much did what they were supposed to do. I just made Sato more likeable and more tight-knit. I pretty much forced you to root for them, even when they were at their lowest points.

B) Mike would have been much easier to relate to and root for. Obviously it's a writer's ideal to have a winner that everybody will be cheering for, but that's not always the case. And like I've said before, it has nothing to do with Mike's gameplay, he was a great player. But as a fan favorite (or a villain) he never really fit into a role. He was too emotional and sappy to be a villain and too mean to be a hero. There was literally nothing I could have done with him, either way. All I could do was make sure you at least understood and respected why he won.

C) The Kamiyans (in a fiction story) would have all met nasty fates or some sort of deserved comeuppance. It happened to Ryan... but after that Kamiya actually started to grow into good guys. Michelle and Mike in particular switched their personas around in an attempt to come off better in the story (either that, or Michelle just chilled out). So another thing missing was the comeuppance for the characters you weren't supposed to like. I mean, Michelle got a hero's exit! She was actually the hero of the story at the end, how on Earth did that happen?

There are lots of little things like this but those would be the main three. But for the most part everyone gave me exactly what I needed, even if I would have done things a little differently in a fiction story.










QUESTION: Did you ever feel like the work wasn't worth it/like quitting?

MARIO: Not worth it? Well not in those terms. I mean I always knew this would be a big story and something to be proud of when I was done. I wanted to set the bar high and ruin it for anyone else who planned a game in the future, so of course I always saw the big picture. In that sense, it was always worth it. It sucked, but it was being done for a reason.

Did I feel underappreciated and overworked and taken for granted? You bet. But that's because nobody saw how much work I put into it, so nobody could relate. That's just the crap you have to deal with when you work behind the scenes. You're on your own, Skippy. Better deal with it.

Did I ever want to quit? Never. After what Rafe did to us in Tonga, there's no way I EVER would have pulled the plug on Okinawa. Sure, I wanted to check out of it, mentally and emotionally, many times. But no way would I ever have quit the project. Okinawa never would have happened if I hadn't felt so shafted with Tonga, so there was always a driving force there; I wanted to show the world what they had missed with our story. I wanted to show it actually could be done... and maybe stick it to Rafe a little bit in the process. (Sorry Rafe!)








QUESTION: Who was the biggest handful? Who required the most maintenance?

MARIO: Well, most everyone was a handful at some point. In fact I often joke that the hardest player to deal with was a 14-way tie: Everybody but Ryan and Lance. But as for most difficult? Well... I could make a case for Henry (a STRONG case)... I could make a case for Beth... I could make a case for Murtz... I could make a case for Christopher... I could make a case for Amy... but in truth I'd have to say Isabella. Let's just say Isabella liked to second guess almost every game decision I ever made. She preferred to send in challenge stats and daily tasks right at the cutoff deadline (This always drove me nuts). She also waited to send in her confessionals until the very last minute before I posted the episode... either because she's a slacker or because she was trying to control the way she was edited. That was her M.O. in Okinawa and that was her M.O. in Tonga. In short, she was an enormous pain in the rump.

So as to who gave me gray hair the most in Okinawa, it would be Isabella without a doubt. She's a micro-manager and micro-managers don't always work well with me. We're good friends but we could never work together again. She drove me nuts on a daily basis. Plus NOBODY was more concerned with their own editing... which was another thing I heard about from her quite a bit. Simply put, if Isabella looked good in the story, she didn't care if anybody else did. If she hadn't made the final two I doubt she would have even followed the game at all.

But on the plus side... Isabella was a wonderful spy to have within Kamiya. I was a big fan of having a spy on each team... somebody who could report back to me if people were cheating, or people were bending the rules, etc. And Isabella would always squeal to me if Kamiya was fudging the rules. She kept me up to date when they would bypass me in emails, when they would coordinate their attacks on Beth, when they would share answers, and when Michelle would summarize all the info she got from Sato. So having a micro-manager was great in that sense because Isabella hated cheating and would go out of her way to rat out her alliance-mates if needed. I always appreciated that. It would get her stabbed in prison, but I always appreciated it.

And despite all this, Isabella is still one of my best friends in the cast. We just don't happen to work very well as a team, but we get along and I think she's great.








QUESTION: How many hours a day on average did you put into running the game? How many hours a day did you put into writing the story?

MARIO: Okay, brace yourselves. This is going to be ugly...

Running the game was the worst. It involved me reading every single chat, summarizing them, putting them in folders, and keeping a running diary of how the game was going. This was a daily activity and took AT LEAST 2 hours per night. Everything had to be carefully documented to save work down the road. And keep in mind, this was every night for at least 2 months. You can't take a day off or the work will start to pile up.

Doing daily tasks was also a pain in the butt. I had to summarize everybody's camp activities and post their camp output each morning. This took about an hour to ninety minutes, depending on how detailed you wanted to get. This was originally Anna's job but she decided really quickly that she wasn't up for it. She had created all sorts of formulas, rules and ratings that she used for daily task results and it became too much work. So when I took over, I just made up camp task results and it took maybe 30 minutes. These "daily task posts" originally took place every 2 to 3 real-life days (at the start of the game) but by the end we were doing an Okinawan day per real-life day, so I was putting in 30 minutes per day on this.

Every so often I had to write up challenge results or treemail, and that was just added writing time. Luckily I could usually do it at work and I write pretty quickly, so most of these writeups would take 15 minutes to 2 hours, depending on what needed to be written. So if I wasn't a fast writer (and could write acceptable first-drafts) this part of the project would have killed me.

That was just the time spent on the game. The actual writing of the story was a lot different. That started December 27th and... on average... I would say most episodes took 10 days to write. And that means about 7 actual writing days (of 2-4 hours each) so I would say each episode took about 20 hours to write. I would write for seven days, take three off, then start over. Around episode four, I increased it to 14 days between episodes (just to save my sanity). But I would say each episode took around 20 hours to write... and most all of that writing was done late at night, after my wife and kids had gone to sleep. You see, I have a rule that I won't let my stories take over my time with my family, so I usually start writing at midnight. I pulled a LOT of midnight-4 AM writing shifts since January, most of them on worknights too (where I had to be up for work at 7 AM). So I was routinely getting 3-4 hours sleep per night for the past five months of my life.

So if you're wondering why I always sound tired... and why I seem happy that it's over... well, that's why.








QUESTION: Approximately how many Words Per Minute can you type, anyway?

MARIO: Good question. I've never taken a typing test but I've been told I type very quickly. I also type with two fingers, a fact that always amazes people. Anna once guessed I typed around 50-55 words per minute.








QUESTION: Did anybody in the game surpass your expectations of them from the beginning?

MARIO: Definitely Michelle. I had no faith in her getting far, simply because she talked too much and was extremely volatile. But you could make a case that she was the best player in Okinawa by the end. I would also add Joni to the list as well (who I nicknamed "dead meat" before the game even started).









QUESTION: Did anybody in the game fall short of your expectations of them from the beginning?

MARIO: Well, there would be a few obvious ones, like Elisabeth and Danielle. In fact Danielle was ranked #2 on my pre-season power rankings (Isabella was #1) and Anna had Danielle at #1. So obviously we expected big things from her. A lesser one I expected more from would be Ryan. He just never came off in print like I hoped he would. It was partly the way he spoke (the Latin stuff) and partly how he hid his plans from me during the game. But he really was a non-entity in the story and that surprised me. He never really found his niche.

Christopher was an early boot but he was so dynamic during his time in the game that there's no way you could say he fell short of expectations. He packed 39 days' worth of drama into just 18 days in the game.

Most everyone else came off about as well as I expected. Nobody was really a super disappointment or anything.









QUESTION: Did some people make it difficult for you to write them?

MARIO: Yeah definitely. They did it in two ways. Number one (first and foremost) was people trying to hide their plans from me. Ryan and Mike were the big two, though Isabella and David also fell prey to this at times. They tried to keep things from me (either that or they had too many options available and didn't like to commit). But hiding things from the host is the biggest no-no. Those are the characters that come off the most one-dimensional.

A second thing was the problem I had with Beth (and a few others at times). And that was that she didn't like the way she was written, she didn't think it was her, and she did everything she could to try to get me to change my mind. I can't even name how many times I heard through the grapevine that "Beth doesn't like this" or "Beth wants to be in the story more" or "Beth is hurt that you don't show more of her game." So that was definitely one of the bigger annoyances, though she wasn't the only one who did it. A lot of people were more interested in their own story than the overall story, and that was always a problem I had to deal with. You have to remember that we're all narcissists, otherwise we wouldn't play games like these! Everybody wants to be the star. But as a writer I had to remember that the STORY was all that counted and I had to ignore people's individual requests on what to include. If it wasn't important to the story, it wasn't going to be included. If you were irrelevant in the story, it's because you were irrelevant in the game. And I think that stance didn't always make the cast members very happy.

And of course Isabella withheld a lot of her confessionals and voting comments until... oh... about one day before the episode was actually posted. That made it a bitch to write her character, because I had to leave it open ended in case she actually got around to sending me stuff. But since her stuff was usually so good, I would let it slide for the most part. As long as she delivered in the long run (and she always did), I tried to just let her march to her own specific pace (for example, witness the delay in her Early Show).









QUESTION: Mario, Did you have fun?

MARIO: In October... the game started, and it was all new and exciting. So... yes.
In November... Anna quit, Amy and David made me realize that I had to control this cast rather than work with them. So... no.
In December... the game finally ended with a ton of last-minute work and a 4 hour long final TC. So... no.
In late December... it was all over! Excitement abounded, and it was time to start looking ahead to the story. So... yes.
In January... the first few episodes came out, and I was able to handle a one episode per week pace for a while. So... yes.
After January... the story became a behemoth, while at the same time I was trying to write a weekly column at S-C. Plus my wife and I were spending a ton of time shopping for a new house. So... no.

I haven't have a whole lot of fun since January. Frankly I'm just kind of relieved that it's done. But it was definitely an experience worth remembering. Fun? No. But rewarding? Yes.








QUESTION: Which cast do you feel had better players? Tonga or Okinawa?

MARIO: Okinawa. It's not even close. Okinawa was planned very much as an "All-Star Game." It was supposed to be the cream of the crop. Keep in mind that Isabella waltzed over everybody in Tonga. She barely even broke a sweat until the F2. But in Okinawa she definitely had her work cut out for her, and she was in very real danger at times. So nothing against the Tonga cast (It's not like I won or anything) but Okinawa was like Tonga v2.0. It was the upgraded version.







QUESTION: And which do you feel had a tougher game, Okinawa or Tonga?

MARIO: Again, Okinawa. Simply because I'm more evil than Rafe. I put these players through hell. I also remember just coasting through parts of Tonga (F8 through F4) where I didn't feel like I even had to log in. The game was set in motion and it actually got boring for some of us. But I doubt the Okinawans were EVER bored. I always kept them on their toes.








QUESTION: Which Tongans would have done well in Okinawa? And vice versa?

MARIO: Oooh, good question. Well... Tenzil would have made an excellent Sato (and he was the glue they actually needed!) One Tenzil could have won Sato this game. Anna would have done well on Sato (a nice cross between Amy and Beth). Lindsay would have kicked butt on Sato. I assume Kathy would have done well (though I didn't really know her in Tonga). And CJ would have been a kickass Kamiyan. Taylor would have done okay but I think Sato would have gotten tired of him just as fast as Tumu did. And we can't forget Jenne, who (like Tenzil) was the type of player Sato really needed.

Vice versa, I think most of the Okinawans would have done well in Tonga. The ones who got along with their tribe, anyway. The ones who got on peoples' nerves (Henry, Danielle, Murtz, etc.) probably would have met the same fate in Tonga as well.








QUESTION: What was your favorite challenge? As a side note - I loved the one that NewSato won (the hand holding relay with the glass balls & random people being sat out).

MARIO: Thanks! That's actually a challenge I used in All-Star Hawaii. I just ripped it off and recycled it for Okinawa. It was always one of my favorites (along with Sled Dogs and Canoe Wars in Alaska).

My personal favorite challenge in Okinawa was Kendo Wars. That one was just made for a story like this. It was also the first one I came up with for Okinawa (along with Ice Breaker and Log Jousting). But Kendo Wars I think was the defining challenge in Survivor: Okinawa. The Jewelled Egg one was pretty cool too (where Amy broke her egg and was disqualified).







QUESTION: Did you feel any of your challenges were duds? Just not all that interesting to you or the cast?

MARIO: Yeah, the obstacle course races never come off as interesting as they had been planned. Just too many people doing too many things at once. I try to avoid those if at all possible. The pillbox break-in didn't work as well as I had hoped either, it was just hard to describe in print. And there was one challenge at the end that was supposed to be 40% cooking, 40% dexterity, 20% running. Those were the stats Anna figured out and for the life of me I couldn't think of a challenge that would fit that. I actually had a challenge in mind where you grabbed hot daggers out of a pile and ran with them without burning your hands. But the day of the challenge I didn't feel like writing that, so I just made up "tzusho nuts" on the spot. That was the one where you retrieved tzushos from a tree and popped them in oil. That was never my favorite challenge, it was totally invented, and there's no such thing as a "tzusho" anyway. And I think you can tell from my writeup that my heart really wasn't into it.

Side note: Anna loved that challenge. She actually was so intrigued that she went to look up "tzusho nuts" on the internet, and she was baffled when she couldn't find any into on them. Well I had to finally tell her that I just made them up. There's no such thing as a tzusho nut.

Side note 2: There's also no such thing as "the thirteen steps of the Samurai." I just made that up for the story, to get the players dressed for the final challenge. But I bet I fooled a lot of people, I'm usually good at passing B.S. off as actual history!






QUESTION: Most shocking moment to you as the game played out? Like... what just totally hit you unexpectedly?

MARIO: As a host you see most everything develop ahead of time, so very few things truly surprise you. But that being said... I NEVER saw Christopher and Joni's attempt to throw that F6 challenge coming ahead of time. That came right out of nowhere, and I never understood WHY until Chris 'fessed up what Michelle had said to him. But for the longest time I just didn't understand that at all. A second thing I didn't expect was Hogan and Joni's "relationship" and how angry Hogan was when he was voted out. Keep in mind the two of them rarely sent in their chats. So not only did I NOT know they were close, I didn't know they even talked! I had no clue they even knew one another. So that little melodrama came from out of nowhere on my end. I was also surprised that Michelle took the dagger at F4. I mean, I can see it now in retrospect, but at the time I didn't even think she liked Mike. She just didn't seem like the type who would take the hit for somebody. Michelle was the last person I would have expected to do something like that.










QUESTION: Did you ever feel as a writer, that there was a boring part of the game? Did you have to write around it?

MARIO: Yeah, Kamiya will hate this but pretty much everything that happened on Kamiya between day 6 and day 21. Once they outfoxed the twist, it was inevitable. They were gonna vote out David, Beth and Matt and there was no way I could make it suspenseful. The only way I could make it interesting was to either show the Satos putting up a heroic struggle to save themselves... or the Kamiyas as the biggest assholes on the face of the Earth. I could either set the Satos up as plucky heroes or I could set the Kamiyans up as villains badly in need of a comeuppance. And unfortunately the one event that really could have helped me (Beth getting blindsided) backfired because she started waving around dildos and cursing at anyone who listened. In a perfect world, that was the ONE Kamiyan event I hoped would be interesting to the reader. You have nice, sweet Beth... she gets blindsided... she gets blasted at TC... and she leaves with her head high and tears in her eyes. That would have been a GREAT moment in my mind because the audience totally would have turned on Kamiya and we would have had some real genuine heat in the story. It also would have been a "Gretchen exit", which is my all-purpose term for a nice character who doesn't deserve what they get and the audience gets pissed about it. In my mind that would have been the single most important event of the story. That was the event that would have pushed Kamiya over the edge.

But as I said before, then Beth started losing it and wanted to go out with a bang. And that was something I should have vetoed. In fact I did veto most of it. She and Matt had a whole list of stuff they wanted to do. They wanted to burn down camp, they wanted to burn luxury items, they wanted to sabotage Kamiya, ruin all their food, etc. And I basically said "um no, guys." I advised them that the better THEY look, the worse Kamiya would look. That was really all I cared about, that Kamiya would look bad in all of this and the audience would hate them (that's again my priorities as a writer interfering with the priorities of the players). So I said "you're not burning down camp, you're not pulling any of that crybaby junk. You're gonna go out with your heads high and it will totally make Kamiya look like crap. Take the high road on this one, please."

But for some reason... I let Beth get away with the carved penises. I don't know why I allowed it. I vaguely remember thinking "Okay fine, you can do that. At least that's kind of funny." But when I wrote it up, Beth wanted her character to tell Michelle and Isabella "You f*cked me, so now you can go f*ck yourselves." And immediately I realized... uh oh, that's going to be a problem. Because Gretchen wouldn't say something like that and that ruins my Gretchen moment. Gretchen Cordy didn't start handing out dildos and cursing out the Tagi alliance. She actually went out with some dignity. So at the time I told myself "The carvings will go in for now, but I'll cut them out for the actual story because I want Beth to look good."

Well... the problem ended up being that I couldn't cut them out. Beth handing out the penises turned out to be very important to the story. You see, when the tribes merged, that was the ammunition that Isabella and Michelle used to get Joni to come back and join Kamiya. That was one of their key arguments as to why Joni should come back and join her old alliance. "You should have seen what Beth did! She was such a crybaby and a poor sport that she cursed us all out! And she gave us penises and started using the F word! Joni, it was awful, what kind of people do they have over at Sato? What kind of immature people would do a thing like that? So anyway... it's good to have you back! We were stuck with Beth for fifteen days! And it's so good to have an actual grownup around to talk to instead!"

Anyway... so yeah, the Kamiya soap opera/passion play was dull and uninteresting and I was afraid the audience wouldn't care. It may have seemed clever and entertaining to the Kamiyas but from a reader perspective... who cares? And the one event that could have made it valuable (Beth's mistreatment and blindsiding) was pretty much ruined because she gave them enough ammunition to blame her for bringing it all on herself. Joni came back, Kamiya won the game, and they all got off pretty much scot free. All because of the damned carved penises. In my mind those carvings were the single lowest moment in Okinawa.








QUESTION: Similar question: was there any castaway or alliance that you struggled to make interesting?

MARIO: Well I certainly struggled with a few Satos at the start of the game. If you read my daily summaries you will see that Sato didn't have a whole lot that was story-worthy in the early game. Every character pretty much boiled down to "How do they interact with Amy, and where do they fit in with her?" And you hate to say that but it was true. Beth's storyline was that she was Amy's sidekick and was jealous of anybody else who wanted to be Amy's sidekick. Matt's storyline was that he had a crush on Amy and always tried to make her laugh. David's storyline was that he wanted to vote Amy out and blindside her (and he was the only one who could have done it, too). Henry's storyline was that he and Amy didn't get along. And this reliance on Amy is even more apparent when you see which Satos DIDN'T have much of a storyline at the start. Henry, Lance and Elisabeth didn't have much going on in the story for a while... and guess which three Satos weren't a part of Amy's inner circle?

That wasn't a coincidence.

As a writer you HATE to give so much story power to one character (Amy) but the fact remains that it all started and ended with her. Had Amy been voted out on day three or six, Sato would have been in a world of hurt thematically. They just didn't interact that much and when they did, it never led to anything substantial. For example, a Lance-Hogan convo on day two might have been a nice bonding moment... but it wasn't going to affect the story any. So yes, Sato as a whole I had a hard time making interesting for a long time. All I can say is... thank God for Henry and for the fact that Hogan talked about his bowel movements a lot. Do you realize Hogan had no other storyline except his daily B.M. for the first few episodes of Okinawa? That's all I had for him for a while!

Conversely, all the alliances in Okinawa were pretty interesting, I could make any of them readable if I felt they were important. The Three Amigos (Mike, Ryan, Murtz) would have been tough to sell though. Especially because two of them (Mike, Ryan) hid their plans and ideas from me and the other (Murtz) tended to talk endgame and F2 combinations waaaaaay too early to ever do any good. So them falling apart didn't really make me all that sad, because I felt the other alliances (Joni's Angels, Amy's Fanclub) had more going for them, thematically.

And like I said in the last question, anything that happened in Kamiya post-twist and pre-merge wasn't all that interesting. Though I'm sure it didn't feel that way to the Kamiyans at the time.








QUESTION: The switch seemed designed to see if at an early point, teams would mix & match. Since that didn't really pan out (with Joni returning to Kamiya & Sato reuniting), do you wish you'd had it a little later? Did you ever (pre-game) consider having it later? When would that have been and who do you think would still have been standing by that point, based on challenges & alliances?

MARIO: The twist actually worked out quite well on Sato. They really DID mix and match. You have to remember that Amy-Hogan-Joni-Christopher was a pretty solid foursome for a while. Things only reverted back to normal when Chris and Joni threw the challenge and Amy was forced to pick a side. So the twist DID work as I expected it to with Sato (because they played it straight). So no, I don't regret the way it was designed at all. My only regret is that Kamiya didn't play it the way I wanted them to.

I would have never done the twist later in the game. The plan was always to have an early twist, simply to keep people from coasting by on early alliances. Hell, I would have had the twist on day two if it wouldn't have clogged up the first episode so much. But having it early was always a priority. My only concern was to keep people from having lazy games. I just wanted maximum stress, and I wanted it early.

And had there been no twist... who would have been standing at the merge? Well clearly the Angels would have taken out the Amigos (Murtz, Mike, Ryan in that order). And Sato would have taken out Henry, Hogan, Lance in that order. The dominant alliances (Joni's Angels vs Amy's Fanclub) would have had a showdown at the merge.

Also remember that the Tea Twist was never that important in my mind. That was always just "the other twist" in my planning. It was the lesser twist designed to throw the players off and keep them off guard for when the biggie (Wheel of Fortune) hit in Episode 8. I wanted people to remember the Wheel, not the Tea Ceremony. The Wheel was supposed to be my legacy as a game designer. So in other words I didn't put a whole lot of planning into this twist. It was just a quickie designed to break apart alliances and cause maximum stress early on in the game.










QUESTION: Did you ever consider a second switch during the planning phase (most of us thought one was coming)?

MARIO: Nope. I'm not a big fan of multiple twists. They are too confusing to the story (remember, I was always thinking in terms of this as a story). I just wanted it to be easy to read. The only twist I really cared about was the Wheel of Fortune. But I wasn't gonna let people COAST up to the Wheel of Fortune, so I threw in the Tea twist just to mess with their heads. But there were never plans to have another twist. Two is by far the absolute maximum I would ever do. I usually prefer one as the max.

Note: For some reason the cast was always referring to "all the twists" in Okinawa. I remember in their chats they were talking as if we twisted every episode. I think they were referring to all the times I messed with their heads (Jeff hinting at twists that didn't happen, the Shinto statue reward that led to a headstart in the immunity challenge, the punishment for not competing in a challenge). I think the players felt we had like five or six twists... but in reality we really only had the two. And only one I really cared about anyway.








QUESTION: Knowing what you know now, what would be the tribal breakdowns? Would anybody not have been cast at all? And (for those applicants who are sad they didn't make it in), who would have been cast in their place?

MARIO: Well the castaways that I felt didn't really fit in were mostly females (Danielle, Beth, Elisabeth). And there were only two females I cut overall, so that renders that part of the question pretty much moot!

In general, I have no problem with any of the cast. I would cast them all again, they all did a great job. But the castaways I was sad to cut were:

Matt Brown (one sadistic, evil mofo. Ryan Rebez took his place).
Nathan Hogan (Christian missionary teenager. Hogan Miller took his place).
Geo Gorfinkle (all-around normal nice guy. Lance McHale/David McDaniel took his place).
Sean McGowan (another evil type. Again, his spot was taken by Ryan and/or Christopher).
Tilghman Schraden (a funny, quirky 18 year old. He lost out to Matt Carter).

Those were the five semifinalists I was most sad to lose. They all would have done a great job too.

As to the tribal breakdowns... switch Mike and David. Switch Danielle and Beth. Switch Joni and Henry. That's what I would have done. Not that Beth is a prototypical Kamiyan... but Danielle is less of a Kamiyan than Beth would be.











QUESTION: Was there ever a point in the game post-merge where nobody really had very good stats for the challenge at hand, and watching it in real life would have been comical?

MARIO: Not really. All the really good players had pretty balanced stat charts. The only skill that was really lacking (building) was covered pretty well by both of our two finalists (Mike and Isabella). That was the only skill that was underrepresented among the cast as a whole.










QUESTION: I remember at one point (and don't kill me for bringing this up) you said that the game could have played out like 78 different ways, and that in every one of them Murtz & Henry would have been gone pre-merge. Was this something you had a feeling about pre-game, or was it developed after seeing them in action?

MARIO: If Henry had made the merge... something would have gone wrong. I can't even fathom how he could have made it past seven votes. He was lucky to make it past one. Same with Murtz. Murtz's head was on the chopping block before anyone else in the game. In fact, Murtz and Mike annoyed people faster than anybody else in Okinawa (even Henry). Any of the Kamiyans can attest to that.

But no, I didn't expect that ahead of time. I knew Murtz would be hardcore but I had no idea how fast he would polarize his tribe. It's just not something you can plan for ahead of time... he just hit the wrong note with his tribe and he really had no way to recover. It surprised me, especially with how fast it happened. Murtz turned into John Raymond, the know-it-all strategist who people just didn't want around. He very easily could have been the first one voted out.

Henry was a much bigger wildcard than Murtz. I had NO idea how Henry would play ahead of time. He could be charming, he could be annoying, he could be suave, he could be arrogant. I had no idea how he would come off in this type of social setting. I expected him to fail, but held out hope that he could surprise me and charm his teammates. He certainly expected to. But alas, once the game started I quickly realized that his charm wasn't going to work. Henry was best in small doses... and 24 hours of Henry proved to be too much for any of the Satos to take. It's kind of what I expected to happen, but you never know unless you see it for sure.










QUESTION: Did you ever find yourself sympathizing with Jeff if people were vague during TC? Did you ever worry that most of the TCs could be boring for that reason? As a writer (not as a worried host), was Danielle's Tribal Council golden?

MARIO: There's a special ring of hell for players who are vague in their TC answers. We'll just leave it at that.

And Danielle's TC was quite painful for me to read because I knew how she was going to take it. I was well aware of how afraid she was that she wasn't going to fit in. That was all she expressed to me before the game-- how scared she was that her tribe wouldn't like her or want her to belong. So no, I didn't enjoy that TC for a second. Frankly I wish that part of the game had never happened. You can say "as a writer, not as a worried host" but there's no way you can separate those two sides completely. All I knew about the writeup was that most of the Kamiyans were going to look like asses.











QUESTION: I remember that you & Anna placed winner bets pre-game. Who did you expect to see in the Final Four pre-game? Who did you predict would be an early boot, based on their app?

MARIO: Anna and I both picked a "champion" before the season. This was the one person we knew would do well, and we placed all our hopes and dreams on this person being a star. And as much as I hate this analogy... it was like medieval princesses hanging their scarves on the lance of their favorite knight. We both picked our champion and let them ride off into battle.

I picked Amy as my champion and Anna picked Christopher. Those were the two we knew would be stars and would both do well. So imagine our dismay when our two champions ended up jousting each other on day eighteen! Ack!

In my pre-season power rankings, my top four were: Isabella, Danielle, Ryan, Amy. Anna's top four were: Danielle, Isabella, Christopher, Amy.

Pre-game I would have pegged the early boots as being Hogan, Beth and Elisabeth on Sato (age extremes, not fitting in) and Mike, Michelle and Joni on Kamiya (Mike too old, Michelle too out of control, Joni too young). Of course, all three of those Kamiyans ended up being in the final five. Go figure.

Both Anna and I expected that Isabella would do well. I expected it because... well, because she's Isabella. I call her "Survivor Machine" for a reason. She is unstoppable. But Anna was never convinced that Isabella was that great a strategist. She always felt Isabella got lucky in Tonga and frankly, I don't think the two of them really liked each other all that much to begin with. So when she ranked Isabella high in her rankings, it was always very begrudgingly. She did it mainly just to humor me I think.









QUESTION: Did you have any twist in mind but didn't end up using it?

MARIO: Nope. It was always Wheel and Tea Ceremony. That was it. Although as a small matter of trivia... I ALMOST tried to push for Red Rover in Okinawa. I mentioned it to Anna a few times before we started planning. She didn't think it would work as well in an actual game. She always liked having control over what happened (whereas I liked leaving total freedom up to the players). But she talked me into dropping the idea so Red Rover was never really a serious consideration for the game. Oh well. Would have been interesting.









QUESTION: Mario, did you write any of your Okinawa characters similarly to the characters from your All-Star stories? For instance, you said you edited Michelle similarly as you did, Tammy. Any others?

MARIO: Um... in some cases. Michelle= Tammy was a good parallel though there was a lot of Helen in her too. Ryan= Greg Buis was a good one. So was Amy= Tina Wesson. And there was definitely some Stephanie Dill in Hogan's character. You could also make a case that Tanya in Greece= Isabella in Okinawa. Which makes sense... since Tanya in Greece was modeled after Isabella in Tonga in the first place! It all came full circle with her.







QUESTION: Did you feel that some players "played" for the camera? As in doing things to help your story?

MARIO: Sure, but the thing is that what they felt would add to the story wasn't always what -I- wanted to add to the story. Ryan and Mike would be the two best examples. Ryan was constantly trying to play to the cameras, and at times it didn't really fit with how the storyline was going. Like... Ryan would spout off how he was controlling Mike... and how he wanted to backstab Murtz... and how he would take Emma out... and how he would hook up with Amy...

And all the time the only plot was "Angels ready to backstab Amigos. Plus Isabella knows Ryan is a weasel." So he could play to the cameras all he wanted, but none of it really mattered to the story. Check out his boot episode (E8) for an example. Ryan is hardly in it! Everything he did for those three days wasn't all that important to the story.

Mike was another example. He was constantly trying to play up the gnome thing in the game, which was all well and good... but how do you translate that into a story? How do you make the gnome talk... or eat underwear... or flirt with the girls? It just didn't work in a realistic game setting, so almost all of it was cut. So yes, Mike and Ryan were two examples of people playing up to the camera to "help" the story. But in the end it usually didn't work. What I was looking for was actual emotion and actual storyline, and most of the fabricated stuff didn't really do it for me. I appreciated the effort though. I'm sure I did the same kind of stuff in Tonga.









QUESTION: And you once advised to only cast people that you would like to see win... did you do that? Could you have been happy with any of the 16 people that won? Mike? Henry? Murtz?

MARIO: Sure. I only cast people who I would have liked to see win. But the catch is that after day one or two, I had a pretty good idea of who the stars would be. And once the stars were established, those were the ones I silently rooted for. I mean, that's just common sense. If you have a star, you want them to stick around. Dynamic characters are the ones who make or break the story. So once the game started, I knew a few of them wouldn't win. And those were the ones I tended to write off in my head. Interestingly... Mike was one of the ones I originally wrote off. So I never really cheered for him until it got very late in the game...









QUESTION: My question is the first challenge (I think it was Kendo) that Kamiya tried to throw, Mike and Ryan were warned that if a challenge was thrown then the other tribe would get to vote someone off. But the second challenge they threw (the basket carry), Sato didn't vote out a Kamiyan at that tribal council. Instead they got to sit someone out for the first individual immunity. How come Sato didn't vote out the Kamiyan at that tribal council?

MARIO: You are looking at two totally different scenarios. Mike and Ryan didn't want to "throw" kendo wars. They didn't even want to compete in the first place! They wanted Kamiya to stay back at camp and not even bother to show up for the taping! And to me that's a HECK of a lot different than throwing a challenge. The big punishment (Sato votes one of you out) was reserved for if they were gonna be pussies about it and not even show up for the challenge. And I doubt I would have actually used it, but I wanted to make sure they knew I was serious about it.








QUESTION: Which was easier to write? Okinawa... or the all-star stories that were completely fictional?

MARIO: All-Star is much easier. It's a lot more fun to write a story when you don't know the ending. Then it becomes a creative process for the writer as well as the readers. In Okinawa I was mainly just documenting things. It wasn't really me creating a story, it was me just fitting existing chats and confessionals into a storyline that would make sense to the readers. I wouldn't even call it writing. It was more like... organizing. It's like comparing apples and oranges. So All-Star is a heck of a lot easier... especially because you don't have 16 people who are concerned about their editing and how they are going to come off in print. It's why I always said I would never work with real people again. Just too many variables and too many egos you have to look out for. Give me fictional characters (and uncertain endings) any day of the week!







QUESTION: Um, any chance of an outtake reel?

MARIO: Go back and read Sato, day 1-6. That should do it. :)








QUESTION: What do you make of the accusation that Isabella had it easier than anybody else? Did she have an advantage because she had played before? And was it fair that you wouldn't cast any other Tongans?

MARIO: That's B.S. and I think most people know that by now. I was harder on Isabella than I was on anybody. The WHOLE game was designed around trying to negate her strengths and make it so that she would have to sweat things out. And she did, she had a hard time with Okinawa at times. She often accused me of persecuting her just to make a point and it's really true. I busted her quite a bit for missing deadlines, I was all over her case for not sending in chats and I generally held her to a higher standard than anybody else in the cast.

But the problem (as she predicted at the time) was that she won so many immunities. She didn't want to win immunity so much because she knew it looked bad for the story. It somehow looked like she knew the challenge formula. So she would always complain afterwards: "oh well, I didn't want to win but I guess I'll make the best of it." She knew it hurt her game and made her look lucky, she often talked about it with me and her concerns that people would accuse her of just coasting by. So yeah both of us saw that coming a mile away. But the simple fact remains that her skill chart (and the multiple immunities) happened to coincide with the challenge stats that Anna laid out pre-game. They all matched up pretty well, and it just happened to be a coincidence.

Isabella was helped to the end because of so many immunity wins and I know a lot of people held that against her. But it only saved her once, as there was only one time she was in REAL danger (right after the Ryan vote). Her multiple immunities just happened to hide the fact that she covered her butt very, very well. I wish more people would have seen that.

Another interesting fact is that a LOT of the cast think I gave her an advantage in editing. A lot of them think I prettied up Isabella and uglied up the rest of Kamiya. They seem to think that because Isabella was my friend, I magically turned her into the star of Okinawa. Well... it will come as a shock to a lot of people... but there was NOBODY who got a worse job in the editing room than Isabella. I cut and slashed her character worse than anybody, and it pissed her off. Because Isabella in the story is usually SO vibrant and SO alive that she overwhelms anybody else in the cast. When she is on screen, the story stops, because -she- is the story. She always knows what is going on, she's always right, and she's always pretty accurate in her remarks.

So what happened after the game is that a lot of the castmembers bitched about Isabella being in the story. "She doesn't belong, this isn't fair, this was our story, blah blah blah." And what happened is I pretty much HAD to tone Isabella down in the story, simply because my cast was going to revolt if I let her be the overwhelming star. So yes, this is the first time I will admit it, but Isabella didn't get favorable editing at all. I cut about half her confessionals... I toned down a lot of her jury votes... and I left out or ignored a lot of things she did to protect herself in the game. In short, she got SCREWED in editing and she's never been happy about it. I toned her down just so she wouldn't stand out as much, and it's part of the reason why she got demoralized and stopped contributing much to the end of the story. She really didn't get the hero edit at all. In many ways, she almost got the Darrah edit...

As for the last part... I didn't cast any other Tongans because they would have recognized Isabella in a second. They were all barred from casting for that very reason. Fair? Not really. But when you run a game, you can pick your own damn cast. I picked the players I did for a reason.










QUESTION: Were you expecting so much anger towards Isabella at the end?

MARIO: Oh god no. I expected people to either think it was hilarious or people to be impressed. Lord knows I would have been impressed. Especially since half this cast was Isabella fans to start with! I was absolutely positive she had this thing in the bag. But when Isabella announced her true identity... oh man... the cast came after me with a vengeance. I wasn't expecting that at all. Amy... Matt... Beth... Danielle... David... Christopher... Lance... MOST of them were pissed off that I had let her play again. And they were not shy in voicing this opinion to me either. I was a little taken aback, but at the same time a lot of the words they used were very telling. "This isn't OUR story anymore... this is now HER story... this isn't fair to US... now MY game is diminished...." Just stuff like that. And the exact phrase I think I used to my wife Diana at the time was "I guess narcissists don't like finding out that they might not be the star anymore." And my overall opinion hasn't changed all that much over time.








QUESTION: What do you make of the statement that Kamiya had all the real players and Sato had all the creampuffs? And that Kamiya had a much tougher game overall?

MARIO: Well it's true in some sense. Kamiya clearly DID have the more hardcore players. But at the same time... does that make the game harder for them? I mean which one of these is truly harder... having cutthroat players around you at all times, or having a bunch of passive players who offer you no help (or competition) whatsoever? I know how a Sato and a Kamiyan would answer it, but in truth it's a tough comparison. They are both unique situations with different challenges.

On one hand you have Ryan... who was a great player. He was a great player on a brutal team. He was chewed up and spit out by Isabella (an even better player) but it doesn't diminish the fact that he kicked all sorts of butt. And on the other hand you have Amy. She begged and pleaded with me all game if she could PLEASE have some help from somebody on her team. She would often say things to me like "You have Michelle and Emma with a full arsenal of help behind them! And I don't have anything but a couple of squirt guns! I'm doing this all on my own! Agh!" So which tribe was truly harder? I don't know. You'll have to make up your mind for yourself on that one.









COMMENT: As everyone else has been saying, thanks for keeping us entertained with Okinawa, Tonga, your All-Star stories, your columns, and everything else! I'll miss your work, indeed!

MARIO: Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed it, it certainly made the work worthwhile if people enjoyed reading it! Keep Okinawa alive, recommend it to your friends. It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for all of us. And yes, Isabella too. (We Tongans never got to read our story!)

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