One month. That is how much time we have left in the village. Approximately. We leave the village on something like the 15th of July. Then we have about a week in Suva while we close up Peace Corps business en route to our July 21st flight to Bali via Darwin via Brisbane. That will be one long day of travel. For now, we are actually really enjoying the village. This was supposed to be a painful time lame-duck session of waiting until we leave. But quite the contrary, Sally and I are both good and busy and having a pretty good time in the village. Part of it for me is the realization that our days of near limitless free time are coming to a close. I am not sure that I would rather have regular water and electricity than free time like this. I’ll take seeing my family and friends over them both and that is why we are ready to head out.
It has been a pretty fun couple of months. We were on the road for almost all of April and May. In the beginning of April, we did some new site development with some of the Peace Corps staff on Vanua Levu so got to travel around our island a bit more. Good to see the island but pretty long days and lots of village meetings. Soon after that, we headed to our Close of Service conference where we learned about how to be Americans again by staying in a really nice hotel, eating nice food, and talking about how depressed we are going to be 
upon return due to “culture shock.” (Seriously, I guess that last part is a pretty big deal. Sort of like when soldiers come back from war, only replacing the grisly images of death and destruction with beaches and coconuts.)
Anyway, after the conference, what’s left of our group all went to a little island for Easter where we could make lots of noise and stay for a song. 
It was a good time. From there we headed back to Nadi to pick our good friend Gina for a little visit. We took her straight up to our village and had a lovely couple of days there before hitting the road again. We fly back to Nadi where we stayed with our dear friends (and fellow PCVs) Chris and Nan for Nan’s birthday at a hotel called Tokatoka. They have the best slide this side of the International Date Line. In the morning we picked up a few more friends: Brian and Heather Coffman and a little miniature version of themselves that tags along with them now. They call her Juliet.
So the whole gang of us (Brian, Heather, Gina, Heather, Sally, myself and mini-Heather/Brian) all got on a boat and headed out the Yasawas—specifically to Waya Island where we stayed at Octopus Resort. It is a pretty sweet place and we had a great time although after almost two weeks, we may have worn out our welcome. Mostly Brian and I dove. The girls lay in the sun and chased the baby. Sometimes Brian and I took over the baby-chasing. There was also some Frisbee and volleyball and hking, but we tried to keep the exertion to a minimum. The diving
was good/great but not incredible, which after three trips is now what I believe the diving to be in the Yasawas. Pretty good.
Gina left after a couple of days and then Sally and I left the Coffman clan after a few more days. They stayed behind refusing to leave but Sally and I had a meeting in Suva to prepare for the incoming group of new volunteers. That’s right another group, which means that I have officially been here for two years. Yikes. Anyway, we had our two-day meeting and then Sally and I just never left since we were doing some trainings with them right after they got here—Sally on health maintenance and me on farming as well as generally helping out at their 3-day orientation. Finally, in the last week of May, we went home. Here. And I am glad to be here. The weather has finally made the full transition to the “cool/dry” season which is neither cool nor dry but it is both cooler and dryer than the “hot/wet” season. It does mean that we get these nice ocean breezes again which are absent during the hot season.
So now the homestretch. As I said, we are actually pretty busy. Sally is on her final push to get the literacy program/library at the school able to be left. She developed a curriculum that all teachers are going to be trained in this year where the kids are tested and then leveled for reading. All of the books in the library are also leveled so that in the rare case that a child reads, they are reading at their level. Sally is also working with the community to get the parents reading to their kids at home and with the teachers to make better use of the library. There is a lot of buzz about that right now. Nice work Sally.
I am working on a project that I thought was doomed to fail: a seaweed farm. Weirdly it is going really well. Evidently the Chinese pay a lot of money for seaweed for a number of pharmaceutical and industrial uses, only they can’t grow it as fast as we can in tropical waters. So, it gets a good price. The trick is that there is quite a bit of work that
goes into getting it set up before the money starts rolling in. That is usually the death knell for a project in Fiji. If it doesn’t produce results immediately and easily it usually falls apart. But for some reason, I have a committed couple of guys who are really into it. Right now we have our nursery going for our planting material and sometime in the next few weeks 
we will be ready to plant our first crop. After 6 weeks they will harvest that and then sell it. So, we are well on our way. Even the chief has started going out with us to clean and check the seaweed since it is good exercise. He has trouble with his knees but moving in the water is much easier for him.
That’s it for now!
