Well, it has been a little while. Sorry about that, but the computer Gods decided to call our laptop on home. Never fear—my birthday, a visit by the Moyce kids, and my parents generosity all lined up to get a new laptop to us. Thank you to all involved, especially my folks. This thing is like a supercomputer—so sleek and fast. I feel like I could find prime numbers with this thing.
It is now July of 2010, one year after being sworn in and heading off to site. The actual day is July 23rd, but we will go ahead and call it one year. That means one to go. (We got here in May, but Peace Crops doesn’t count the training period as service and we signed on for 2 years of service.) It has also been almost 4 months since we have moved to our “new” site, which certainly isn’t new anymore; it feels like we have always been here. It’s strange how quickly one’s new reality just becomes reality.
We have had a pretty good couple of months, getting around a fair amount. First we went up to another Volunteer’s site on an island off the north coast of Vanua Levu to do a gardening workshop with the school on the island. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the energy of the kids, which is weird because I basically hate kids now (relatives excepted, of course). I know that you are supposed to go to developing countries and think that the kids are so cute that you just want to take them all home. Suffice it say, that is not happening with me. Don’t get me wrong, Fijian kids are just kids, but they have a tendency to mob anything cool and destroy it as fast as they can. That bugs me.
Anyway, after that, we headed down to Suva for our mid-service training and then to meet up with Bobby, Katie, and Madeline (Sally’s brother, sister, and cousin) in Nadi. We had a really great trip, even though they left after drinking more of our alcohol than they brought, an absolute no-no around here. Let that be a lesson to would-be visitors (I hope that you are reading this, Pamela and Melissa, especially Melissa.) First we spent a couple of days on the Coral Coast at a place we did not like (Mango Bay) and then a place we really liked (The Beach House).
From there, we spent far longer in Savusavu than we had planned, but we found a great deal at Daku Resort for a house right on the water with a pool and we could cook our own food. They even had a grill, which was they first of its kind that I have seen in Fiji. You name it, we grilled it. After a couple of days in the village where the only memorable was Bobby getting a bad case of Cook’s revenge (James Cook “conquered” Fiji), if you know what I mean. So, we headed back to Daku to round out the stay. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, no what I mean.
I do work around here too, but this posting is long enough. We are coming up on a visitor drought so there will be plenty of time to hear about what I do for a living!
