MY OPENING SPEECH (PART 1)
Good evening Mike (Survivor8), jury members and other finalists. I'd like to start saying that this was NOT an easy game at all, anything I did inside of the game were only game decisions so please don't take anything personal as I enjoyed playing with every one of you.
To start off losing the first 3 challenges in a row was tough, I didn't think I'd survive if it wasn't for a tribe swap but to my luck, there was a tribe swap. I got into the same team as Will (original Nukunonu's) and we started winning challenges, but that didn't stop me from making side alliances and that's when Stuart tried to form a group with Dylan, Danny and myself and that alliance sort of stood by as we didn't need to vote any1 until the merge. However, I knew for a fact that many people outside of this game considered Stuart a shady player so I kept an eye on him all the time
Merge took place in a very uh clueless tribe as I didn't really know who was voting with who, and that was when Tim became the first person to tell me that he wanted Stuart out, I talked to Hali and she said she had the numbers to take out Stuart but she wouldn't give me names so that I could trust those other people. Later on, I got another offer by a majority group to vote out Tim so I jumped in and voted Tim to not open suspictions of who were the few votes against Stuart in the event he stayed. An idol was played, Tim was spared and Stuart went, my vote was to avoid suspictions but my main target still went so it was a win win situation for me.
By the way before I continue, JT, Will and myself always stuck together without letting people know we were still going strong. In the next vote, we tried to vote off Hali since she was clearly a power player but another idol was played and Danny went, I was a bit upset because he was someone I looked forward to working with when a merge happened but he didn't seem very invested so thats all we could do.
Once Danny left, things didnt change so much. Hali still had a huge target on her back, however thats when my Nukunonu alliance started to crack as JT and myself felt like Will was getting way to attached to Tim/Cedric/Hali so we decided to break that group one by one and take Will back to us. We eventually voted off Hali as I personally considered her the leader of that group and we started communicating with Will a bit more.
The tribe was definitely split after a few tribals, final 8 consisted of Tim/Will/Cedric vs Mike/Joel/Dylan/JT and myself. The challenge was AUCTIONS, so therefore things got a little heated with all these unexpected twists, Tim got sent to Exile and Mike won immunity while Joel and me got some advantages. At this point I realized that sticking to one side aka the majority will stop me from working with other people so I had to bring a shady Sergio into this game. When majority agreed to lock our votes on Will (one of my closest allies), I tried to sway the vote onto Cedric but I let it slide after Will told me he found the hidden idol with the clues he got in the auctions so for me that was a chance to vote with the majority but not get my vote through but still getting what I wanted which was to get one of the majority players out. Information of the vote was leaked through me and I used my advantage of being able to see someone's vote to be more secure about what ppl were doing. The vote went as I planned and even though Joel wasn't an actual threat to me, I considered him close with Mike which kept me worried, and he had an advantage also.