Big Blog

5/24/12

Blogging is a funny thing. A lot of the time people pick a topic and just blog about that. The problem with living in Fiji is that...well, I live in freaking FIJI. I can think of and compose 15 different blog entries with in a 24 hour period and with limited internet use, I end up leaving out A LOT that I want to include. So this blog is for that, for catching you up on...everything. Hopefully.

Accept not Expect. Before Ivy went to Suva she shared a very short part of a letter her mom had written her before she left. The timing of her finding and reading it was eerily perfect. Mom's are pretty perfect that way. The line was "accept not expect". It's their family motto. It was awesome. I have adopted it as mine.

Animals: Geckos live all over our house. Which is awesome, because we'd rather have geckos than mice. They generally stay on the outside of our house and come out at night. They come in all sorts of colors, but usually some sort of limey pastel version of green pink or yellow. They make creepy chirping noises at night and one time Spencer and I were trying to catch one in a box and we saw two fight. It was kind of cool. Geckos always seem so lazy and chill, who knew they fought? There is one Gecko that occasionally is seen in the house. We named it Richard. We also have some colorful anolie-looking lizards that scitter around in our yard sometimes --- black with red, yellow, orange , green and purple stripes. There are mongooses that have been seen by some, but I haven't made any sightings personally. The mongooses are why there are no snakes on this island. They ate all of them. There are frogs here, they look like toads. They are mostly boring. You've heard about the giant cockroaches, tonight we came home after being gone for two days to find a rather large brown recluse in our wash basin. Rather large is roughly the size of a silver dollar. A little bigger actually. He didn't look very nice and sense he had the capability of killing us all and seemed a bit aggressive, he died. I had to leave the room. I really am NOT a fan of killing stuff, sense it was so big we didn't really know what to do so Spencer, who seems to be the designated kill guy, sprayed it with raid. It was awful. Hopefully it wont happen again. I can't even describe the sea life here. I've now snorkeled twice. SO cooooooool. Fish of every color, size and shape. On the beach there are fish that skip across the water like Jesus...pretty sure Jesus walked on water, not skipped, but you get the drift. Besides, fish don't have feet, skipping is the best they can do. There are hermit crabs all over the beach. Sand dollars aren't even fun to find anymore. They are everywhere! We've even found some live ones. Crabs, same as the fish, ever size color and shape. We found a black one with a giant bright yellow pincer. He was my favorite. BAH! And fruit bats! Giant fruit bats! They are awesome! Snorkeling is so cool. Eels, giant clams, parrot fish, clown fish, cuddle fish, star fish, so many fish! I found a star fish that was so small it could sit on top of my pointer finger, with room. We’ve also seen sea cucumbers and sea anemones and sea slugs and snails with little siphons on the top of their heads.

Witch craft and Wizardry. Actually, more just witch craft. Matt is a little concerned about the house we live in. It’s in a "new subdivision" which means it’s one of maybe three new houses. He said that we can't be sure of what happened on our land before our house was built so to be safe, because of witch craft and stuff, we need to shower with our panties on because there may be ghosts. He was completely serious. No laughter. At all. And this was coming from a serious jokster. We didn't really know how to respond, soooo we didn't. It was funny though. We still don’t understand why that would be important.

Short Shorts. OH MAN. Women here wear knee length skirts the majority of the time. But the Men! oh goodness the men! They wear short shorts. They STRUT short shorts. And ya know what? They look amazing. I am in no way encouraging short shorts for men in the states, for some reason those pale moon legs wouldn't be distracting in the same way that the Fijian ones are. I think it's so funny how different the culture is here when it comes to men and women. Not opposite, but different. The Men here are not shy, but they aren't tricky either. They couldn't be even if they wanted to I don't think. On the way home from Raki Raki the other night we stopped for gas in a little town along the way. There was a group of young men across from our van. They immediately started trying (and succeeding at) getting our attention.” Hey! Call Me! Hey!” They were singing to us! I kid you not, dancing for us! breaking it down right on the street corner! It was soooooo funny. I'm so mad I didn't film it. They blew us kisses and laughed and giggled. The boys are not afraid to giggle here. They do it every time we give them any attention. I've thought about buying a fake wedding band just to wear round when I'm working because it can be distracting.

The Zumba Virus. A lot of us have been hit with this little virus. As focused on health the World Health Organization is, it's now spreading that virus all over the south pacific. We have been going to a training in RakiRaki. When our meetings ended each day right before afternoon tea time, they insisted we do 20 minutes of Zumba and it was AWESOME. Just imagine twenty to thirty large Fijian and little indo Fijian men shaken their hips and LOVING it. It was THE best zumba class I’ve ever done. The trainings were so good. I can now put on my resume that I have been trained by the World health organization as an educational consultant. Yep. Weird. We help schools in the Ra area put together health promoting school plans for each of their school districts.

God. That's the subject more or less, not me taking His name in vain. Satan is a real jerk. He's been hounding me pretty hard as of late but I think I finally lost him somewhere over that Pacific Ocean. He might be scouring Provo or LA still trying to find my trail again, If you do see him, do me a favor and don't refer him to this site or let him know of my where abouts. I'm enjoying my time off. Not only does it help me stay more focused and be more productive, but it lets me feel God's presence so much more, and more often. We stayed the night at a resort in RakiRaki in some back packers housing. There was a place by the beach where there wasn't very much lighting. It had been a breath taking sunset that was followed by a crescent moon that hung low. The sky still had a purple glow to it, but a very deep purple-black glow. There was a sand bar that we walked out on in the dark and it was crazy. It went out pretty far and pretty soon the shore and island melted into the darkness and the stars lit up the sky like that was all there was and the sound of the small waves kept a lullaby beat against my legs and the shore somewhere behind me.  It was like I was floating in the sky. I felt so very small and so very big all at once. Me being me, I prayed. My biggest question was "What on earth am I doing here? Why am I seeing this? Feeling this?" And there it was, Love, Peace and a very clear answer. One I hesitate to share here because of what a sacred and personal experience it was to receive it. I felt very much like Abraham did in the pearl of great price when God shows him all of His creations and I was viewing not even close to a million trillion bagillionth of the creations shown to him then. I quietly walked back to shore after the others feeling humbled and God manifested to me His great sense of humor. Fell off the sand bar. Yep. If there is something to fall off of, don't worry, I got it! I made my way back in, we celebrated a birthday for Tacy (20) and then went back to the sea shore to sit and be. One by one the volunteers left. Spencer and I didn't want to leave so we just stayed. We mindlessly tried to fill up a seemingly bottomless hole in the sand that was emanating some sort of heat while we talked about basically everything there is to talk about. He has a best friend that is almost a mirror image of Dan and I's friendship. It was sooooo cool to talk to him about things I have felt and thought and experienced over the years with someone that I was so confident had experienced the same things. I didn't feel alone. Which is a big deal for me right now. We talked about plenty of other things too, God, the beach, Fiji. It was a very good night for me. I felt nearer to God under the southern stars than i have in a very long time. We could see the milky way and shooting stars. The moon made an exit long before we did. We watched the stars rotate in the sky two or three times before heading back to our room with the other volunteers. Everyone was sleeping.

Tacy’s birthday is worth writing about I think. We had dinner and paid for Tacy’s of course. She got two free drinks (virgin) and we were able to get some really good American meals. Some of the volunteers are food sharers which is awesome because we will order different things and then switch around so that we can taste more things on the menu. The World Health Organization guys came to eat with us too. They are so fun. All Fijian. Benny, Sola, Takiko and a third guy whose name escapes me right now. It was fun to see them in a social setting. Especially Benny. He is a HUGE Fijian. Fijian come in two sizes. smallish and HUGE. Benny is probably 6’5”, booming deep voice, broad shoulders, all ma and all married. He is so funny. There are these cookies out here called “tim tams” and there is something that is popular in Utah called the “tim tam slam”. You bite off two opposite corners of the cookie, suck milk through it and then eat the milk soaked cookie. It’s actually really really good. As volunteers, we tim tam slam instead of drink at the bars. For Tacy’s birthday we made a tim tam cake….it was as awkward as it sounds, but it was really fun to eat because we all did the tim tam slam…including the World Health guys! Benny’s face was priceless the first time he did it. It was very “holy crap that’s weird” there was tons of laughing. He did it again and Kylie started chanting “Suck! Suck! Suck!” Benny started laughing and in his deep Fijian accent said “shut up!” and then apologized through laughter for telling her to shut up. It was so funny. It really did look like a drinking scene from a movie. Everyone was having a good time, but we were doing it with cookies and in a way that we could remember it the next day. The best word to describe it was “happiness”. After a couple of “hits” Benny turned to Candice, our country director and said, “Have you tried the tim tam slam Candice?” Candice just made an awkward noise and shook her head followed with a small, “oh no I don’t really…” Before she could finish Benny said “No?! fill up a cup!” Candice” Oh nononono” Benny “Yes Candice you must! Fill up a cup!” She Slammed it. It was awesome.

5/27/12

Haven’t been able to get back to this til now. We went to Cia husband’s rugby game on Saturday. It was really fun. Yeah. We have a friend in fiji that we are close enough to that we watch his games. It feels good. After the game I met Tasleem in the market. Her husband didn’t want us walking around town by ourselves so he sent “bodyguards” to follow us around. Mostly to make it look like we were with them. quick side note - - - The is a really handsome man at the internet café that I’ve just been avoiding all together to make sure I don’t get myself into trouble. Sooooo we walk around the corner after Tasleem explains the extra company and just my luck, one of the guys is the handsome man from the internet café. Awesome. Yep. So his name is Mitchy and he’s really nice, which makes him even more handsome. Lame. It would have been sweet if he had smelled funny or was really weird or distasteful. Then I could have an excuse not to like him. No such luck. We got an AWESOME cake and surprised Tacy with a little birthday party. Tasleem even bought her some earrings for her birthday. It was so sweet. Tasleem and her son, Cia, peter and Cia’s husband and Matt came over and had cake. We put on some music and had a dance party. It was fun and we were all tired out by the end of the night.

Today has been great. Cia and her family came to church with us and invited Kylie and me over for Lunch. It was so nice to be able to get to know them better without anyone else around. We talked to them about their childhood and their famlies and they tried to teach us fijian phrases and we butchered them. We walked away feeling so…loved and local! We looked at each other and were like “dude. We have friends. We watch their rugby games and have parties and eat lunch at their house. “ We love it. We also saw Tasleem on the way home from church and waved as we walked by. Happiness.

Moce

Also --- Today Spencer wore his sulu. Yeah. Men wear short shorts and skirts. And they look fantastic in both. Although men in the states should not wear short shorts. They should definitely start wearing sulus.