I have been awful the last several months about getting up here, but I did want to post one more entry to say that I am currently in the process of closing my service here is Fiji and will be returning to the States in the very near future. I leave in a day or so to begin a shortish trip (about a month) to the south island of New Zealand, Thailand, and Cambodia (if anyone knows people in these places feel free to pass on that info...). I return to the States on Sept 13th or so where I will be meeting up with the Bickel's in Arizona for a mini reunion. I then return to Cincinnati to see the rest of the fam on Sept 26th where I will continue looking for further employment (if anyone knows of any opportunities there please share as well). I've already applied to several vacancies, but it appears that this may be a couple month process, so I have yet to hear anything concrete back.

I have had a great experience here in Fiji and in many ways I am sad to go. However, I am excited for the trip, seeing everyone at home, and figuring out what my next step is going be.

Thanks for reading....

Monopoly in the hospital (She had rat-lung worm! -look it up: http://www.cdc.gov/NCIDOD/dpd/parasites/angiostrongylus/factsht_angiostrongylus.htm)

On swinging bridge in Taveuni

Natewa Bay

MH burning (courtesy of Fiji Times)

Well, here we are in March, and life is moving here in Fiji. I was just talking with someone the other day about the difference between this year and last year around this time. My first year I always felt like I had more time than I knew what to do with and was begging for enough work to fill up a day; now my general feeling is that there isn't enough time in a day/month/before I leave to get done everything I would like. I am getting ever closer to finishing my tree planting endeavor in Labasa. It has been a long time in planning and getting appropriate approvals and the like, but we will hopefully start this weekend, which is very exciting. I have been sitting down with people over the last couple weeks to plan the renovations of the children's park we are working on. We still have sometime before work can begin, it is usually advisable to wait to start construction until after the rainy season (late April, early May), but there is a surprisingly large amount of planning that needs to go into something like this. [If anyone out there knows anything about building playgrounds shoot me an email...you might just have earned yourself a life long friend...] National Youth Day is coming up on March 23rd, and I have been asked to speak at the event they are holding here in Labasa about climate change and Fiji's environmental issues. It is exciting, but a little daunting; working out a 20 minute talk that encompasses all of that while giving people things they can do individually to mitigate these problems is going to take some work, but it is a rare opportunity to talk to a large audience of young people and I'm trying to make the best of it. My environmental group is also gearing up for another round of waste management workshops with local women's and youth groups as well as organizing environmental movie nights with local schools.

Rachel and I are shopping around a proposal for a poster campaign to encourage sustainable catch sizes. We have the poster essentially designed, we are just looking for funding for the printing and the transportation to do the awareness work that will accompany it. It also looks like I will be going down to her side of the island to do some of the marine protected area monitoring trainings she will be holding in several villages. Looking forward to that, as it's been awhile since I've been out on the water.

Track season is also in full swing. We had our interhouse meet last week (which is essentially tryouts) and we have started official practices this week. It actually looks like we have some good distance runners this year (as opposed to last year when we only had 1 come out for the team), which is exciting. Not that I take issue with coaching short distance runners, I just feel I know a bit more about the LD training work. Our first meet will be in April, and the national meet will be held in May.

I had a reasonably interesting birthday. A couple people were in town and we decided to do a brief tour of the bars here in Labasa. As we were sitting and eating a lateish dinner at our fourth or fifth stop the waitress came up and told us that their was a fire on the main street and we ought to step outside to see it. Initially we wrote it off, finished our dinner and prepared to move on to the next establishment. We stepped out onto the main street to find more people than I have ever seen on the streets of Labasa watching the largest supermarket here completely engulfed in flames. It was one of the crazier things I have seen here. The local fire department did a surprisingly good job at containing the fire (the building abuts a couple others and could have easily caught half the town on fire). The full story can be found on the Fiji Times website here: http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?ref=archive&id=115672 ...sometimes they move their links around, so if you would like to track it down manually it is in the March second edition under the title: Inferno, an all-night fight to save a town.

That's about all of the big news for the time being. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with all my leave. Again, it figures that I have all this vacation time at the same time that i have all this work to do. I'll maybe be planning a diving trip in early April, but with the rest I am still looking for options. [If anyone knows of a not obvious way to get cheap flights to New Zealand, Australia, Vanuatu, or anywhere else around here they may also be become my best friend]

Pictures from "Clean-up Fiji Day"

I swear I more energetic that morning that I look...

If you don't ask me where this picture came from I promise not to lie

Well, here we are 2009. I haven't written up here since October, and I apologize. Call it a New Years resolution to do better through the next several months. Instead of covering the last 3 months of things that have happened, I might just skip up to where we are for brevity sake.

On second thought, maybe a bit of what has been missed: The holidays were great. I spent a good deal of December on vacation. Rachel had a friend visit at the beginning of December, so I went down with them to Viti Levu, did some diving (which was fantastic, lots of eels and sharks..) and did some outdoor type stuff. I also ended up accompanying them to Taveuni, where we did some camping, some snorkeling, and other forms of merriment.

I went out to Viani village for Christmas, then back out to Taveuni for a large new years celebration (there were about 20 volunteers that came out). Had a really good time, despite aquiring some food poisoning that kept me from doing the diving I had wanted to do. After I got back I spend a couple days here in Labasa then had to go down to Suva for a training. It was supposed to be a three day deal, but while I was down there Fiji was hit by several tropical depressions in a row which caused wide-scale flooding (particularly in the west around Nadi, Ba, and Sigatoka and in the North around Labasa). As such, many of the roads in these areas closed, boats weren't traveling across the strait, and all the airports were closed for several days. This prolonged my stay down there on the order of a week or so. By the time I finally made it back up to my house it felt like I had been gone for a month. The last couple weeks I have been working on getting the house back in order and getting back into the swing of things at work.

There are plans for several projects this year. We are trying to get some trees and things planted on the main street of Labasa. It looks like we will get final approval on the placement and the monies in the next week or so, and the planting should be finished by march (my fingers are crossed). We are also still working on renovating a couple parks, which will hopefully start in the next several weeks as well. There are new people in charge of fisheries, the labasa town council and the provincial office, so I am hoping to sit down with them and work out a plan for this year. Hopefully these guys will be a bit more sympathetic to the work I am trying to do here than the last group. Track season starts next week as well, which is exciting. We're hoping to get more of a head start on it than we did last year and build on our succeses.

Otherwise, I am starting to think more and more about what comes next after Peace Corps. We were just given the dates of our closing conference (mid april), which really woke me up to the fact that I do not have that much longer here. So the search is on for the next place. It's a daunting task, as I feel there are several different avenues and options to consider. I'm trying not to stress too much about it, but July (my completion date) is looming and I think I have been asked somewhere on the order of 5-6 dozen times what I'm going to do when this is over. Patience is called for.... or something like that...

I'm going out to a friend's village this weekend, and then I am hoping to find someplace to watch the superbowl on monday (go cardinals...).

Anyway, I hope all is well out there. If you have emailed or something and I haven't gotten back I apologize and assure you I will get too it. I'll get back up here reasonably soon.

Natewa Bay, taken not far away from Viani

Councilor Paulini and Rachel in her Kindergarden

A few of us at Ms. Extravaganza 2008

PC Fiji, all of us after out beach cleanup in Nadi

Again I have to apologize for allowing a month or so to go by without posting anything up here. I have been traveling a lot, which accounts for some of it. In September I piggy-backed on an NGO's trip out to Viani village (which happens to be Rachel's village) for a voter education/constitutional rights workshop they were doing for the community. I went out there with one of the Labasa Town councilors and we took the opportunity to check up on a Rotary International water project being done at the primary school and to see if there was anything we could do to help Rachel along with the Kindergarden she has started in the village. The workshop went well and it was nice to get out of town for a few days and visit a village I had not had a chance to visit yet.

During the first week of October all 57 of the volunteers here in Fiji were brought into Nadi for our annual All Volunteer conference. Immedietely following my group stayed in Nadi for our Middle of Service conference. These two conferences have not traditionally been run consecutively (in the past All Vol. was done over Thanksgiving), but due to budget cuts back home and the depreciation of the dollar in conjunction with rising transportation costs have forced us to tighten the belt a bit and combine trips; the result was all of us being in Nadi for about a week. It was good to see some of the volunteers I do not get a chance to that often, however I'm not a huge fan of Nadi (international airport is there as are several of Fiji's larger resorts, as such it is expensive and tacky; not to mention seeing the sterotypical tourist from our country that comes to Fiji, spends two weeks at a resort that they never leave and is strikingly similar to one they might find in Virgina Beach, and then goes home feeling like they got the Fiji experience bumms me out a bit), and I truthfully would have rathered spent my time elsewhere. That being said, the conference was one of the better run ones we have had since I have been here and it is good to see out post growing up a bit and improving as time goes by.

This past week I spent three days in my province's chiefly village, Naduri. The first two were for our bi-annual provincial council meeting, and the third was for the annual Macuata Day celebration. The council meeting lagged on a bit as I was not involved in it as much this time around, but the Macuata Day celebration was a pretty good time. The main purpose of the event is for the provincil office to raise the 40% of its operating budget that comes from the communities they serve. In that sense it was quite successful in my opinion, the final figure I saw was $65,000 raised, which I believe to be a significant amount. Each tikina (think county) set up a stall on the village grounds that their representative delegation sat and drank kava in throughout the day. Each tikina also brought local dishes for a shared lunch and preformed a meke (a fijian tradition dance) or other item for general entertainment. Aside from the tikina that illegally brought a dozen sea turtles for the feast, it was a nice event and it was great to see people from all over the province celebrating together.

My work on the park here in Labasa has stalled a little bit. The Town Council is in the process of reconfiguring their lease on the park's land, and they have asked us to delay our renovations until they have finalized that (which will probably take about 3 weeks or so). We did however receive some more funding from the Festival Committee and are in the process of panning some other environmental/beautification projects around town.

We have had some funding and transportation problems over at the Ministry of Fisheries office that have kept us from getting out into the field as much as we need to. We have about half-a-dozen fish ponds that are ready to be harvested, so hopefully that will all rectify itself here in the next week or so and we can get back out there. I am trying to set up a better working relationship between our office here in Labasa and the local resturants and hotels so that we have a fixed market for the tilipia the local farmers are producing. I am also working on creating a manual that the ministry can use to help train interested communities on small scale aquaculture. These have kept me busy, but it's mostly office/town work and I'm itching to get in the field more.

My big success for the past 7 weeks or so has been my garden; it is starting to get pretty respectable. I have 4ft high long bean plants, a couple rows of broccoli, 3 rows of spinach, a couple nice squash plants, about a dozen good looking tomato vines, and a mint plant that is getting out of control. Those added to the preexisting papaya, mango, lemon, chili, and coconut trees on the property are working to make it a nice little oasis here in town. I hoping to get some more beans in this weekend along with a few other things. I am a little concerned on how some of these plants will fare during the upcoming raining season (about a month away), but it is still pretty exciting to walk back there everyday.

Thats about all I have for the time being. I will do all I can to get up here next week. I hope all is well...

It has been a pretty busy month, and it has unfortunately kept me from writing up here as often as I would like. The organization that has been funding my environmental group had their week long festival here at the end of August, which has kept me a bit preoccupied. For being run only a week in a small town in Fiji, the Festival of the Friendly North raises a pretty substantial about of money; we grossed this year about $125 thousand (net is expected to be around $100 thousand). All of the money that is raised goes towards community projects in the greater Labasa area. Through the past couple years they have constructed new wings for an elderly nursing home, dormitories for a local school for the handicapped, aid to flood victums, a fitness center here in town, and contributed towards several other smaller projects (including the town beautification that I am currently assisting with). The funds raised this year are planned to go towards building a mortuary in a rural town a couple hours east of Labasa and continued beautification work. It is a great organization and I have been very happy to have been a part of it. The Fiji Sun did a short write up on the beautification project (I'm kind of a big deal here, I own many leather bound books...people know me...), and it can be found here: http://www.fijisun.com.fj/main_page/view.asp?id=5472 . They miss quoted me a bit, but the general idea still came through I think.

The pictures above are from the Festival parade where some of the members of my environmental group (H.O.P.E. Labasa) along with some of the other volunteers in the area marched. They gave me a night to MC the entertainment program and a small amount of time to speak on the final day of Festival about our beautification/environmental work. Between these I think we got a decent amount of awareness out to the area about our group and what we are trying to accomplish. We received quite a bit of good feedback and have started getting some new support since the Festival, and we seem to be gathering a bit of steam as we go on.

As scheduled, we began work on the park here in town midway through August. The Labasa police came out and joined members of H.O.P.E. to start the clean-up of the park, and we are looking at begining construction here in the next couple weeks. We have been asked to aid in the creation of a children's park around the new fitness center that the Festival funded, and we are hoping to do some youth education work with some of the new funding that should be coming in now with the completion of the Festival.

Otherwise things are going well. I have started working about half the week over at the Ministry of Fisheries. They have several projects they are juggling, and right now I am going around and trying to figure out exactly where I can best fit in. I have been taking it a bit easy this week, as with the Festival and everything there have been a lot of visitors and late nights. It looks like (keeping my fingers crossed) that we will be starting the reef surveys in a week or so, which will keep me busy and traveling for awhile, but I'll do my best to write back up here soon. I hope all is well with everyone.

Pictures from our trash can painting

I feel like I start off a lot of these posts this way, but I apologize for being a bit derelict in posting recently; it has been a crazy month or so filled with several projects, several visitors, and several new responsibilities for me. I am really going to make a better concerted effort to get back to the once-a-week posts.

My friend Jessica just completed her visit to Fiji last week. She was in for 8 days or so, during which we spend a few days on Viti Levu around Sigatoka and Suva, then the rest of her time up here in the Labasa region. It was a good little break from the grind, and it was nice to see someone else from home out here; I hope to get some pictures from the trip up in a couple weeks or so. Jessy attended one of the meetings for the Marine Protected Area project I am helping WWF up here with, and in the process found her way to making an appearance in the Fiji Times, one of Fiji's national newspapers. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can see the picture (jess is on the far right and I am sitting next to her obstructed by the man in front of me) at the following link: http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=96136

I have been doing quite a bit of work recently with the environmental group I helped to form here, H.O.P.E (Helping Our Polluted Environment) Labasa. We just completed out first project, which was organizing the primary and secondary school children around town to come out and help us paint the new trash cans places along the main road. We received a write up in the paper for it, which can be found at the link here: http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=95729 We are now in the process of renovating a park here in town. It has been pretty exciting, as we have received several donations and quite a bit of free labor for the endeavor, and it looks like we will be "breaking ground," so to speak, in a week or so. Labasa is glaringly lacking any green areas in town, and we are hoping that crreating this park will be a stepping stone to creating more awareness about environmental issues to the population here as a whole.

I also just started to officially work with the Ministry of Fisheries up here. It's looking like I will be focusing on their aquaculture program, which I am really looking forward to as it has very good potential up on this island and there seems to be a healthy amount of interest and funding. They are also the lead organization on the spat collection and seaweed farming projects I have been trying to promote, so I stand to be able to continue with that as well. I feel like I am finally at a point between my work with the environmental group, the provincial office, and the ministry of fisheries that I have full work days, which may sound a bit odd, but it comforting to be busy....

Three new volunteers just arrived here in Labasa; all female and all working in the health sector. It's really good to have some new blood up here; they have all come up being pretty energetic and motivated, and it's brought some new life up here which is great.

Thats about all I have for now, I'll get back up here in a week or so.

It's been a couple weeks since I've gotten anything up here, but in my defence, I've been doing quite a bit of traveling. The first training session I did with the new group went really well, and during that week I was able to get some good meeting in with WWF and a few other people to line up some future work. I took advantage of the long weekend (June 16th was the Queens Birthday observed holiday) and spend some time traveling around the big island. I spent a couple days over in Sigatoka (on the Western side of Viti Levu) and actually got in a bit of diving. It wasn't the best that I have ever done, but it was nice to just get out there in the water again. That side of the country is pretty difficult to get over to on any regular sort of basis, so it was nice to see some of those volunteers and hang out for the weekend. When I got back to Labasa from that trip I had a meeting with a some local stakeholders and officials about the environmental issues that we are facing here in Labasa. I didn't get as many people out as I had hoped, but the meeting went really well, and looks like it is going to be a group that gets together regularly. We discussed several different things, but we layed out a framework for addressing some important problems (like litter control and waste disposal). It was just an initial meeting, but I'm excited for the direction it looks to be heading. Last week I was also in Suva for a couple more training sessions with the new group. It's good to see some new blood coming in, and I am excited for those volunteers that are coming up here to do so. I just got back on Saturday, and am trying to get back in the groove.

During the next couple weeks the group that came in before mine will be departing. It only reinforces how fast the past year has seemed to go. It also looks like I will be invloved with starting a youth organization in the area. A local NGO (Save the Children) is looking to expand a branch of one of their programs up into my provenence, and they are planning on using my position here as a facilitation point to make it happen. It should be a good project; it deals a lot with empowering children and young adults to take leadership rolls and such. I don't have a whole lot of experience with these kinds of things, but I'm looking forward to the prospect of it. I go back down to Suva in a couple weeks for another training sessions. The new groups finds out their sites in July 4th, and we are all eagerly anticipating it to find out which of the new volunteers are coming up to our area. I have a few other things going on here and there, but I should be able to get back up here next week.

Snorkeling in Savusavu

Picture of participants at WWF workshop, see if you can win the "Where's Aric" game

Fun at Labasa airport (in case there weren't enough bad pictures of me out there)

I am getting ready to make a trip down to Suva this week for the first training session that I will be helping to facilitate for the new group. I go tomorrow to meet with some people from WWF and Wildlife Conservation Society to talk about some future work and get a few things set that can’t be done long distance. Another volunteer is also holding a poetry competition there in the big city that I am hoping to attend, and which I expect to pretty fantastic (not nearly enough events like there are held in Fiji). This weekend is a holiday weekend here (the Queen’s birthday, observed), so we have Monday off work. As such, after preparing for my training session on Saturday, I hopefully plan on getting some diving in. On Tuesday I have a doctor’s appointment for a nagging ear problem I have been having, then my training session is on Wednesday. I fly back up next Thursday, then am off to a meeting in a village outside of labasa for a day or so. It stands to be a bit of an exciting week. Not a whole lot going on up here the last week or so. I am working on getting a meeting together of local Labasa leaders and other stake holders to discuss the environmental issues we are dealing with in the city and strategies we can look at to solve them (or at the least mitigate them). The impetus for the meeting is figuring out the best way to use some funding that is available for projects working on these things, and the hope would be to bring other organizations that are trying to do the same kind of work into the fold so that we can pool our resources and do something a bit bigger than we would be able to accomplish on our own individually. So, going into all this we have some good ideals, let’s hope we can keep that legitimacy and come out of it with something good. If I don’t get back up here next week it is because I’m going to be kinda all over the place. I will do my best to post something soon after.

Kids at the Lagi Kindergarten brushing their teeth

Aerial view of Labasa

Ok, so I have gotten a lot of flack about keeping the person who visited me unnamed. I tried to respect said person’s right to privacy, but this was apparently not needed (in some people’s cases unappreciated). So, with unneeded building up, Mary Margaret Popelar, famed Long John Silver’s company rep, UD grad, and Wasigo resident came to visit me a couple weeks ago. We had a great time. She came up and spent a week or so in Labasa, during which she piggy-backed on some of my work trips around the area and did some work with the Salvation Army kindergarten here in town. We then spend a few days in Taviuni, where we finally saw some sunshine and relaxed in one of my favorite places here in this country. After Tavs, we spent a couple nights in the big city, down in Suva, then made our way back west on the main island so she could catch her plane. When she first planned her visit I though 17days was such a long period of time, and that we would have ample time to do everything we wanted. But, I caution anyone else planning to make the trip out, that those 17days went so fast, and I couldn’t believe it was time for her to go when it came. It was really good to see someone from back home though, and it was nice that she was here for my year anniversary (which took place on the 23rd of May). It’s crazy to think that I have been out here that long; it doesn’t feel like it’s been a year. Which is good I imagine; it probably means that I am having a good time out here doing the Peace Corps thing. Mary left on Sunday the 25th. Afterwards I came back to Labasa and jumped straight back into work. WWF held a workshop in Naduri (the chiefly village of my province; it is about an hour and a half from Labasa). They brought representatives from the 37 villages in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) network that I work with in to the village to look at how the network has worked out so far, and if there are any changes that need to be made. It went pretty well I thought, and there were several big decisions made. Together, we redrew many of the MPAs and worked on starting some freshwater and forest reserves. They are really trying to take an ecosystem based approach to the conservation up here, which I think is the right mindset to have because (especially in as small a place as Fiji is) the activities that go on upstream in rivers and on the land greatly influence the status of our marine areas. There is still quite a bit of work to be done, but I think that the organizations working up here are moving in the correct direction. I have also been doing some work here with a local organization on some beautification and environmental friendliness work around Labasa. They run a festival up here every August and use the proceeds from it to do community projects in the area. One of their areas of emphasis this year is to better the look and environmental impact Labasa has. In this capacity, they have asked me to advise them and too look into a suitable project for them to work on in these areas. It’s kind of exciting, as they actually have a bit of money and quite a bit of motivation to do some of this work. So far it is going well, and I am getting some good suggestions and involving some good people to look at all this. It has the potential to be a really good start for the area. Two weeks ago the new group also arrived. So the office has been busy recently with their training. They have asked me to come in and help facilitate four of the training sessions for the new group over the next 2 months or so. It’s kind of a strange feeling now being on the other side of the training deal. I remember being in their place last year and thinking that all these people knew so much and had so much that I could learn from, and I guess I just don’t feel like that large of a resource as I built the volunteers I met in training up to be. Interesting how life moves I guess. So, I will be making several trips back and fourth to Suva in the next couple months as well as having another visitor (Jessica) coming out at the end of July. I also have a bit of a line on some scientific diving taking place up here in August that I might be able to jump on board for (keep your fingers crossed for me). All this coupled with normal work and the beautification work look to make these next few months pretty busy. I took a bit of a brake in there, but I will do my best to post something again next week. Hope all is well.

Road to Savusavu

Kid with a killer mullet

I missed a week in here somewhere, but I have been busy, so I don’t feel too bad about it. I have a visitor from the States in now, which has been great. Before she got in last week, I had been doing a bit of research on beautifying the town area of Labasa. I have recently found myself working with the executive board of the Friendly North Festival here, which is an annual festival held in Labasa; the money from which goes towards civic projects here in town. This past year they raised money to build a new fitness center here (which will be completed in a couple months) and to do a beautification project here in town. The board has since asked me to help them to choose and organize the beautification project. So, I have been running around talking with the town council and chamber of commerce and others to see what we might be able to do with the money they have set aside for this work. It has been an interesting endeavor so far, and the way people talk, it might be something that many different groups can get behind and really work on to change the face of Labasa (and in doing so make it a bit more environmentally friendly). In this regard, we are looking at things like putting in new trash bins (the few that exist are pretty sad), creating a children’s park, re-landscaping some main street areas, etc. There is a lot of potential between all of these things to be really good for the area.

Friday, I went down to the Fiji Institute of Technology campus here in town for their clean-up day. We cleaned up the campus area then walked down the main street picking up the trash. There were maybe about 50 people, and I think the event went really well. There were several people along the way who stopped and asked the students where they were from and what they were doing, and I feel that it worked well to help raise awareness about the trash problem in the area. It is certainly not sufficient to change much, but it at the least showed the town that the youth would like to see a better Labasa. After the clean-up, the students did some of their traditional dances and participated in sports events for the rest of the afternoon, which is a great way to run an event like this; everyone works in the morning, then goes out and has fun in the afternoon. I was very happy with the way they pulled it off, and especially with the beautification work we are talking about, it brought to light some very good issues.

The last couple days I was out on Mali Island, just off the coast of Labasa. One of the villages out there asked me to go out and talk to their people about the spat collection (juvenile oyster’s collected to sell to pearl farms) project that I am trying to promote in the area. I ended up speaking with two villages on the island about the project, and I think it went pretty well. One of the villages is interested for sure, and we can go on to the next step with them and the other is going to discuss it this week and get back to me. I have been trying to find a community to try this project out since February, and it is exciting that one may have signed on yesterday.

I have some more work to do on the beautification project to do the rest of the week. I think my guest and I will travel out to Taviuni and maybe down to the main island middle of next week before she has to leave, so I may not be able to write back up here for another week or so. But, when I get back I should have some good stories.

I just got back on Sunday from the national track championships in Suva. It was great. We took 21 students, 3 coaches (me included in that number), and 2 other teachers. The kids did fantastic, we finished with three medals: a gold in girls shot put, a silver in the boys 400m, and a bronze in boys shot put. The boy who received the silver missed the gold by 3 hundredths of a second; he ran a 48.91 400m, which looks like it is going to be good enough for him to run in the Fiji National teams 4x400 relay in a upcoming international competition. It’s the first time the school has won a gold at the national level in over 10 years, and bringing home three medals is a huge achievement for our area. There was only one other school from our entire province to win a medal (and it was a bronze at that). Needless to say, we are elated at our team’s performance, and especially excited about the prospect of one of the students qualifying to be a Fiji representative at the international level. It was a good trip, the meet was exciting (made me miss the sport a lot…), and it was good to see some of the folks from the other island and spend a little bit of time in the big city. There is a potential for the next couple weeks to be busy. I have a couple meetings this week concerning some possible work projects, one of which is with someone who may be interested in starting pearl oyster collecting and is particularly exciting. Next week, assuming it is approved by the big wigs, I am planning on going out to another volunteer’s site to work on some composting toilets being built there. If you are not familiar with them, composting toilets use no water, and as the name suggests compost the human waste into usable soil. They are fantastic for areas that have limited water supply/poor sewage disposal (the latter characteristic encompasses just about all of Fiji, and most of the world). I actually think they should be used much more often in the states, and may start a campaign to increase their usage when I get home (if you are interested shoot me an email and I can forward you the building plans for one….). We also have our biannual provincial council meeting next week, and I have my first visitor arriving next Friday!! Which is way exciting, and due to said visitor I will most likely doing quite a bit of traveling here in May. That’s about all at the moment. I’ll write back up here next week, and will hopefully have some good news about work projects.

Savusavu

Children from a village up here

So, some bad news; I found out late last week that the race I had been training for (scheduled for May 17th) has been canceled. This is a bit disappointing as I had been training for it (not including some injury time) for about 30 weeks and had made some travel plans around it, but I’ll have to roll with the punches I guess. There is a triathlon or two coming up on the horizon that I imagine I can continue training for, so all is not lost.

Work has been a little slow this past week. The village visits that my office has been planning have continued to be delayed (it’s now been about 15 days since we were supposed to start), and unfortunately not much else had been planned for this period of time. I do have the national track meet coming up next week (we leave on tues), which is exciting. The two day meet is going to be shown live on television in 12 pacific countries; I’m told it’s the largest secondary school track meet in the world (but these claims have a high probability of being over inflated); at the least, it’s the largest in the pacific. The kids and the school are starting to get excited, and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the energy. We’ll be in Suva for about 5 days, so it should be interesting traveling around the big city with twenty-one 15-18 year olds.

That is about all that has gone on in the last week. There have been a few people in and out of town, so the place hasn’t been too lonely. The dog is growing quickly and starting to test his boundaries; it’s an exciting time for the little guy. Otherwise all is well. I’ll get back up here before I leave next week for Suva. Take care….

The Dog's first time at the beach

Savusavu Bay

Rachel and I with the interim prime minister

It’s been a busy last couple weeks. Although we did not, as scheduled, start our village visits. Those are now scheduled to begin tomorrow, and I am hoping to catch a ride with the team that will be visiting all the coastal villages from Udu point down by boat. It’s a great opportunity and I hope it works out, but I have a few responsibilities to tie up here before I would be able to go, and it may be a on the wire decision as to whether I can. The track team I have been coaching ran in their zone meet (the equivalent to our regional meet in the states) two Fridays ago. We finished 2nd, behind a school that fielded a team 4 times the size of ours, and finished with gold medals in 15 events. We will be taking the individuals/relay teams from those 15 events to Suva for the national meet at the end of April (I believe the dates are the 25th and 26th). It’s pretty exciting, and I felt that our boys and girls had a very good showing. I am greatly looking forward to the national meet, which apparently a big deal is made of, and it will be an experience traveling and camping with the kids. There are a couple volunteers up here that will also be accompanying their school’s teams down to the games, so I can only imagine that some friendly competition will arise…. Last week was pretty granola, but I did make a weekend trip down to Savusavu. Several of us came in, and had a belated Easter and birthday gathering for one of the volunteers in town there. Our visit coincided with the current prime ministers visit, and a few of us randomly ran into him at one of the hotels there and promptly accosted him for photos and conversation. Consequently enough, I also brought the dog down (who is named after the prime minister……) and took him out to the beach for the first time. He wasn’t exactly all that excited about it, but he now knows that the earth is not covered by just land; and important lesson for anyone. I also say a bid of the Aberdeen Rugby 7’s tournament, and the U.S. team made it to the quarter finals! I know that very few of you (if any) were aware of this, but it’s kind of a big deal because the U.S. team is usually abysmal. All the people here in Fiji were quite surprised (as they are not used to the U.S. even making it out of pool play), and I was rooting hard for a Fiji vs USA final, but alas, it was not meant to be as Fiji lost to New Zealand in the quarters and USA lost to South Africa. Maybe one day…. Otherwise, all is well. I just sent in my expression of interest to be involved with the next group’s training, so hopefully one or more of my ideas will be accepted. I am also continuing to prepare for the race in May, which is quickly approaching, and it looks like I might have a state side visitor around that time, which is all kinds of exciting. If I make it on this trip I’m not sure when I will post again, but hopefully I will be able to find some time in the next week or so.

Good times in Labasa

After the long four day Easter holiday, things are working back towards normalcy. The weekend was good though, and it was nice to have the time to settle into the house and get a few out-of-work things taken care of. A local friend of mine got married over the weekend, so most of my evenings were taken up by those ceremonies (Hindi weddings have three days/nights worth of ceremonies around the wedding day). I unfortunately missed the actual wedding ceremony, but the other three nights were a pretty good time. It should be an interesting week. There are supposed to be several interested parties coming to see me at the office to go over some of the IGP projects I am working on, but we’ll see who actually shows up. This Friday and Saturday is also the big meet for the track team I have been helping to coach, which I am greatly looking forward to. One of the other volunteers works at a school up here, and he is coming with his school’s team, so there may have to be some under-the-table wagers on the outcome. Hopefully, some or all of the team will do well and qualify for the national meet in Suva at the end of April, which I would really like to make it out to. There are also several people up from the Peace Corps office in Suva doing some future site development visits for the incoming group (they arrive in May), so I should have a pretty full house of visitors this week. Coming up I should be able to get some traveling in. My office is going to be visiting every village in the province over the first three weeks of April, and I am hoping to catch rides out with them to visit some of the villages I haven’t made it out to yet. So, hopefully I hear back from some of these communities this week so that I can use these visits to do some of my own work around the province here. Again, we’ll see how that goes. Just as a reminder, this Saturday is Earth Hour sponsored by WWF. They are attempting to get as many people as possible around the world to turn off all their electricity between the hours of 8 and 9 on the 29th. Unfortunately, the only city in the U.S. to sign up for the project was Chicago; but that doesn’t mean we can’t all do our part individually. Fiji did sign up for it and will be the first country to turn their electricity out on the 29th (because of our time zone), so I’ll get her started here and I expect all of you back in the States to follow suit a few hours later. Otherwise, everything is going pretty well, nothing more to report this week. Depending on possible village visits, I may not be able to make it back up here next week, but I’ll post again as soon as I am able. Hope all is well…

I’ve been a bit derelict on posting up here the last couple weeks, but they have been busy and it has been difficult to find the time to write something up. Bill left early last week and, as such, the week before last was a bit busy with preparations for his departure and various goodbye celebrations. This was compounded a bit by me now moving into their house. They were living in a kind of “hub” house that contains the library, a bunch of Peace Corps resource materials, and in which volunteers from my province tend to stay at when they are in town; so they wanted someone to continue living in this house, and I was asked to move. I had to make the move before the beginning of last week, as I was in Suva the majority of it, so between all of this and work I did not have a whole lot of time for other endeavors. The move went well, and a proper send-off was given, and I now find myself at a new residence.

The week before last I started pitching my IGP project to the tikinas. I believe it went pretty well, although I would be lying if I did not admit to some discomfort in speaking to these large groups of people in my own special combination of Fijian and English, but all in all I was happy with how it went. There were a few interested parties, and most said they would contact me after the Easter holiday, so hopefully I will start to hear back from some interested communities around that time.

Last week Peace Corps had a conference in the Suva area, in which 13 of us attended with a youth from our community, to go through some project design and management training. I went with a 21 year old guy from here in Labasa that had been working for the Ministry of Youth and Sports. The conference went well, and we have worked out a plan to do some lifeskills workshops together (HIV awareness, reproductive health, STD education, etc.) with the youth groups in the province up here. I think it’s a great idea, and is certainly a need in many of the communities here. The only possible kink in the plan is finding a funding source. We have some leads, and some people to start talking to (of course after the holiday); so hopefully we can work something out.

The conference ended on Saturday morning, and afterwards a few of us went back out to our host villages for lunch and the afternoon. I was a little hesitant to go back, but I’m really glad that I did; it was wonderful to see some of those people again and it really made me feel like I had a family of sorts that I could visit there at any time. After spending the day out in the village, I met up with several other volunteers in Suva where we had a Fiji version of a St. Patrick’s Day celebration at a pseudo-Irish pub there. The following morning I returned to Labasa, and started the relatively painstaking process of putting the new house together (I’m just about finished).

It’s a short week this week (Monday was Prophet Mohammad’s observed birthday, and Friday is Good Friday), so there is not a whole lot going on. I had planned on maybe traveling over the long Easter weekend, but I have a few commitments here and a wedding invitation that may keep me at home. My best to everyone, and I should be able to get up here next week.

Pravine, Rachel, and I out in Suva

Well, it's been a busy week or so. The trip down to Savusavu last weekend went pretty well. I am going to try and work with a pearl farm down there to start spat collection(collection of pearl bearing oyster youth) in some of the villages up here. It has the possibility to work really well, as there is a large, unfilled market for them at the moment and the waters up here could support the endeavor well. It will be a bit of a delayed gratification type project, as it will probably take a year or so before we can start actualy collecting; but i'm excited none-the-less.

I also started helping to coach a local highschool's track team this week. So far it's going pretty well, and it seems like it will be a nice way to finish my work days up here. It's nice to be working back with runner's again, and I am growing to better appreciate all the work my coach's put in when I was that age, as it's a bit harder than it looks.

We start our rounds of tikina meetings next week, and I am hoping to start getting my environmentally sustainable IGP project information out during these, and hopefully I can begin working with a few villages on the first ones here soon.

There was some bad new this week though. The married Peace Corps couple up here is going to be returning to the states a bit early. The wife has been stuck in the U.S. for almost two months now having some medical tests done, and Peace Corps has decided it would be best for her to stay there indefinetly to continue the tests (nothing serious thankfully). So, the husband will be leaving here most likely next week. This is a bit disappointing as we have now dwindled to two volunteers here in Labasa from the original 5 that were here in August.

Otherwise, everything is going well. I am thinking of heading back down to Savusavu for the weekend to see a few people and have a little good-bye weekend for Bill. Hope all is well.

Savusavu harbor

Last week went pretty well. I got some good work done concerning my IGP project that I am working on, I made it out to the beach up west of here for the first time, and xavier continues it's winning streak. It was nice to get out to the water again this weekend, I find I miss it a bit being stuck here in town for most of my weeks. While we were there, Bill (the married volunteer here in town) and I made friends with a group of FEA employee celebrating one of their birthdays. I'm not sure I've made this clear on the blog here, but some of the music that makes it across the pond to Fiji is pretty interesting; some of the bands that are huge here are what I would call a bit unexpected. For example, Shania Twain is big, as is UB40, Shawn Kingston, and Celine Dion. As we walk over to party a bit with these guys, several of them are up and dancing (a bit intoxicatedly) to Celine Dion, which of course was playing at full volume. It was hilarious. To see 10 grown Fijian men singing at the top of their lungs and dancing to a 60 minute celine dion mix CD is a sight to behold.

This past week I have also been able to start running again. If you didn't know, I strained a ligament in my ankle that has kept me down for the last several weeks. So, it's quite nice to be getting back out there and training again.

I leave tomorrow to go down to Savusavu to visit their pearl farms. Apparently the Ministry of Fisheries is offering a program that will allow rural villages to collect and sell Spate clam young to their pearl farms. It looks to be a relatively lucrative industry for some of the small communities and I am anxious to get down there and get the details.

Otherwise, it's life as usual here in Fiji. I should be able to get back up here next week. Hope all is well....

View from Raviravi coastline

Rain coming to residential area in Labasa

Not much going on this week. I was supposed to got to Lautoka with my office, but it kinda fell through at the last minute. So I have been working at the office the entire week so far. Things are going well, and there are some good projects is the works here. One of our volunteers is builting some composting toilets out on here island, and I may be going out with them to aid in that endevor tomorrow or maybe friday. Bit of a short post unfortunately this week, but I imagine more will be going on my this time next week. The rain has stopped it's incesent pounding the last few days allowing me to finally get some laundry done and possibly making transport easier, so we'll see what happens.

Labasa bus stand

Rachel and I with Matt in his village

Morning on the coast

Road collapse due to rain near Seaqaqa

I just got back from a trip out to Kedra (pronounced Kendra) village up in Dogotuki, which if you know you fiji geography, is up near Udu point (the upper northeast of this island). The turaga ni koro (village headman) asked me to come out and look at a possible ecotourism site they are trying to develop up there. So, on Wen. last week I went up there and stayed with his family for a few days. They have a large waterfall that they are looking to built nature trails two and possiblily a few small camping huts for people to stay at. The site was beautiful, and they seem to be quite motivated to get this accomplished. During the visit, I also learned of their interest in some alternative means of electricity (solar and hydro, on very small scales of course) and some aquaculture. This all sounds great and will hopefully bring about quite a bit of work up in that area of the provence. The only issue with the area is transportation, which, especially during the rainy season, is a bit dicey. The buses has stopped going out that way due to bad road conditions, so my transportation back and forth from there was the tikina's truck (which is a flatbed truck that a thin frame was built over, a tarp fasened around the frame, and a couple benches bolted to the bed). Being the only method of transport for the region, I rode in the back of this truck with about 25 other people trying to get up there. The trip was long, about 4 hours, and the road was a muddy mess (we had to get out and push the truck 3 or 4 times, one of which a dumptruck had to pull us up a hill). It should bea bit better come April, but during the rainy season here it is a difficult place to work it. The last few weeks we have seen a ever increasing amount of rain. Even some of the paved roads have been made impassible due to mudslides and the such. A 100 meter section of the road between Labasa and Savusavu collapsed (pictured above), which halted mail, cargo, and personal travel by land to Labasa for a week or so. But this is supposed to be about the worst time of the year for these kind of things, and it will not be too long until things clear up a bit. Thanks about it for the time being, I enjoy everyone's updates, so please keep those coming.

Waterfall in Bouma Heritage parkI just got back this week from a trip to Suva for a workshop, and while there I was able to get my hands on the pictures from my Christmas/New Years trip. I didn't want to go over the trip until I got them, so i'm going to do a bit of time-traveling here and briefly go over my fabulous trip out in Taviuni. For most of the trip we were either camping of shacking up with other volunteers that live out that way. On our first day there we visited a volunteer friend of ours and went up to a "water slide" in the mountains surrounding his site. The term water slide is used loosely, as it is better described as 60meters of shallow rapids that you can rocket down like a slide. The locals are fantastic at it, going down head first and surfing their way down; my trips down weren't nearly as graceful, led to several bruises, and quite a few laughs for the fijian kids that were there. After spending the day there, we spend the night and the next couple days (including christmas) and a camp site towards the top of the island. The canadian dive instructor that had been living at the camp site for the last 6 weeks or so called it the best he had ever been to, and it difficult to argue with him. We made friends easily and had a peaceful christmas and boxing day there. We were able to finagle a decent discount, and went diving on Rainbow Reef while there, which was my first time diving in Fiji and was amazing(the picture below is from the dive trip). The following day we then went out to the west side of the island, hooked up with a volunteer living there and did the Bouma waterfall hike. The picture above is the lower falls (there are three).

On our way to Rainbow reef

The view from my campsite

Rope bridge on Lavena Coastal walk

Some of the Lavena youth posing After a night in Waitabu village, we spend the evening in Lavena and went on the coastal walk to village has set up there. The walk takes you through the rainforest of the park there and end at a waterfall you can swim out to a dive off. After doing a bit of snorkeling out in the marine park on the westernside, we returned to the East. After spending the night in Somosomo village we got up early in the morning and hiked up the mountain to Lake Tacimocea. The Lake is surrounded by Fiji folk lore about it's origins, and is the only site where the Fiji national flower can be found (also called tacimocea). We spend the morning climbing the mountain (the picture directly below depicts one of the views on the hike up) and a couple hours searching for the flower and swimming in the lake. The village boys and I looking out from atop the mountain

The Tacimocea flower

After the hike (which took 8 hours give or take), we headed back to our previous campsite where we spend a very low-key New Years Eve with a few other volunteers and some new friends

New Years in camp We spend another day at camp snorkeling and enjoying a lazy New Years day. The following morning, on finding out our boat back to Vanua Levu had been canceled, we headed down to the Southern tip of the island (Vuna) for the night. There we did some pretty good snorkeling and such, then headed back home the following day.

One of the Orchid species native to Taviuni

Sunset in Vuna All and all it was a great trip, can't wait to make it back out there. Back to the present... My trip to Suva went well, the workshop I attended there was great. Now it's back to the grind here in Labasa for awhile. I have some meeting and a WWF workshop scheduled for the end of the week, so hopefully all goes well and I am able to generate some more work through this week. As an aside, one of our volunteer's dogs in Savusavu had puppies last week, and I think I have been talked into taking one. Since my roommate left the old house has been a little empty, so it may be good to get another living thing hanging around.Puppies! Hope all is well with everyone, and I hope to get back on here in a week or so. Send me updates and any ideas you have for Dog names!

Just a quick note to let you know I have a new address that will make my mail a bit more reliable. So, if any of you are inclined to send me anything please use the following address:

P.O. Box 2589Labasa, Fiji islandsIf you sent something to the other address, no worries, is will still get here, it will just take a bit longer. I write up here again in a week or so.

Buavou village Mikelle being a good volunteer and catching rain water during our "cyclone" scare We may have been going a little stirr crazy after being in the same house with 11 volunteers for 24 hours

I have great stories and such from my christmas vacation, but I want to wait to share those until I have the pictures from the trip to post (which should be by the end of next week), so check back in a few days for that. I got back about a week ago, and hopefully I can hit the ground running here on some work in the new year. This past week I made a couple of field visits to aquaculture farms in the area. One of the things I hear the most from villages in the MPA areas is that they have not found a way to supplement the income and food generation that they have lost due to setting aside some of their fishing areas to be protected. As such, I am working on traveling around to the villages in the Provence that have sustainable income generating projects, looking over their operations, identifying individuals in the community who can transfer these skills to other communities, and then trying to connect the dots. Theoretically it is a good plan, as there is some governmental money set aside to help some of these projects to get off the ground, but we'll see how it goes logistically. The visits this week have been good, and there is certainly a large market available for aquaculture product and for the communities that have a low supply, it is good protein source. I am also looking at communities that do bee keeping, pearl farming, and seaweed farming to visit in the next month or so. Hopefully after that I will have a small array of possible projects that interested villages can chose from based on their needs and community assets. Otherwise things are kinda slow here in Labasa. I've been the only volunteer in town (as the others are still finishing out their holiday vacations), so it's been pretty quiet. Next week i will be in Suva for a couple of work days and then a three day training at the end of the week (I was chosen to work in out peer support network here, and they are bringing the eight of us in to teach us how to support our peers). My plan is to get back up here next weekend when I return and write again. I hope every one's holidays here great, mine certainly were. I look forward to hearing updates from all you guys.

The winning team from our rugby tournament

lil' frisbee on the beach in Pacific Harbor

Some of the Labasa Crew on Fiji Day Weekend

View of the Labasa "skyline"

A view of the Vanua Levu country side from a nearby peak in Labasa

Ok, so it has become my new years resolution to post more on this. My new plan is to post once a week and just do short posts so that it is not such a daunting task to update you on everything that has happened over a couple weeks or more. This is to say, that I'll begin working on that plan once I get back from my holiday travels; another volunteer and I are going to be spending the holiday season in Taviuni (an island off the eastern coast of mine). Starting to get pretty excited about it; we should be able to get in some diving and a decent amount of hikingwhile there...hopefully I'll have some good pictures and stories after this adventure.

The last month or so has been busy. We were all brought in for a training and all-volunteer day, which was nicely placed on thanksgiving. Afterwards, I spend some time in the Sigatoka region visiting the sand dunes and such. We've been busy in the office getting together all of the end of the year reports and meetings that have to be held. I done some traveling around to Savusavu and a few of the surrounding villages. It's been difficult recently to get any of the projects/ideas I have off the ground, as everyone is either finishing up things that have to be in before christmas or preparing for holiday travel. As such a lot of my recent work has been laying ground work for projects to begin in January. I have, though, been helping WWF (world wildlife foundation) with some of their research up here, which is both fullfilling to a degree and takes up some of the holiday downtime up here.

Otherwise, everything is going well. The only recent piece of bad news is that my roomate here recently decided to go home, which is really too bad. It brings us down to 4 volunteers here in Labasa, me being the only one now from our group here. But, no worries, we're building a bridge and getting over it. I wish the best to everyone over the holidays, and I swear I will get something back up hear soon into the new year.

The indian boy next door teaching me how to make roti

rope swing at colo-i-suva

Team zissou

Chow eating contest (you may notice me pumping my fist in victory...)

Things degraded a bit as the night went on....

I just recently got back some traveling on viti levu. They brought all of us from my fiji entry group to a resort near sigatoka for our three-month-in meeting. This just happened to coincide nicely with the well known american holiday of halloween.... which we of course took full advantage of. Meghan, Rachel, Steve, and I went the team zissou route (if you dont know this reference, please do yourself and the world a favor and rent The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). We has a great time, as i'm sure you can tell by the pictures; we even got the fijian staff to dress up with us and participate in "traditional" halloween traditions (try explaining what 20-something-year old people do every year for halloween in a tactful manner to someone who grew up here in fiji), such as bobbing for apples and the ever popular chownoodle eating contest (think ramen fiji style). It was the first time we had all gotten to see eachother in one place since we were sent out, and it was too much fun seeing all these people again.

After the conference I took a few extra days down on the big island to get some work done in the capital and hang with a few of the people that were sticking around. I had intending on only being in Suva for a day two, then continuing my travels elsewhere, but the biright lights of the gem of the pacific had other plans.... We spent a day a colo-i-suva, which is a federal park just north of suva. It has several great hiking trails and some lovely swimming oppurtunities in the freshwater pools created by the river that runs through it. Pictured above is one that we stopped at with a relatively precarious rope swing. I was also able to make it out to the Pearl resort on Sunday (it is located on the coral coast between suva and sigatoka), which is a beautiful place in it's own right, and they have live jazz music on sunday afternoons! It was my first taste of good live music here, and it was a much welcomed reprieve from the normal island electric drum set, casio keyboard laden, pop music of fiji. Otherwise, I went to some nicer bars, ate some good food, and got a decent amount of work done.

This past weekend (yesturday actually) we had the rugby sevens tournament put on by the committee I work with the raise money for their various conservation projects. It didn't work out exactly as expected (a common occurance here on the islands), but was pretty successful. If you're not familiar with the sport, seven-a-side rugby is a bit of a faster, shorter halved version of the normal 15-a-side version. Teams came from all over vanua levu, and a few even came up from viti levu; the games started at 8 or so and went all day, finishing around 7:30 or so....a full day of rugby and fijian vendor food...can't complain about that...there were even t-shirts! It was a good event, and raised money for a well worthy cause. That's about the deal for now. I will be traveling back to viti levu in a week or so for some technical skills training and for all volunteer day (stragically placed on thanksgiving), which should in itself give me a few more stories to tell. Thanks to everyone one who sent me updating emails and letter.... i swear i will get back to all of you as soon as i can.

A few more pictures to post. The first I had to put up because we look like such huge dorks; the village dressed us all up in matching outfits. The second is from the USP bookstore in Suva. The third is our little running group from training on the beach one morning. The third one here is from the recent EC conference in Nadi; these two ladies live pretty close to me up here in the north.

It's funny, i was just complaining the other day that I felt I was missing out on a bit of the cultural experience of being in Fiji because i was in a relatively urban area and not a true community...... well, ask and you shall receive. I just got back this week from a whirlwind tour of 21 villages that fall under the jurisdiction of the committee I am working for. We did this in five days, it was pretty crazy. It was a very welcomed repreive from being stuck here in the town for a bit. The purpose of the trip was to go around and ensure that all of the villages knew that the MPAs were again closed (some of them were opened for use during the Methodist Conference that was up here at the end of August), to inform them of the upsoming rugby tournament that our committee is holding to raise money for future projects, and to do some other surveying of several of the villages with the WWF. There were seven of us in the motely crew that made the trip: a driver (whom we hired to take us around in this pick-up truck with a covered bed), two gentelmen from WWF in Suva, two village headmen from the area, another volunteer, and I. The long and short of the deal was: I got to see a lot of beautiful places I hadn't yet made it to, drank plenty kava, ate some sometimes good sometimes awful village food, and met some extremely hospitable people whom I hope to revisit as soon as i can make it back out.

When I returned to Labasa, I was granted the oppurtunity to see a good juxtaposition of the two cultures that dominate Fiji. The night I returned I ended up, through a series of "people who know people," having drinks at the house of and later dinner (at Labasa's "finest" resturant) with one of the more successful indo-fijian lawyers in the area. Coming from all these villages where many do not have electricity or running water to having a cold beer in a beautiful house with satalite, HD TV and proper couches was a bit of a switch. After a relatively interesting evening I was awoken the next morning at 6:30 by the 16 year old neighbor boy, who was over inviting me to come over in an hour for his brothers engagement ceremony. This turned out to be relatively interesting, as I spent the majority of the day attending a traditional hindu engagement ceremony (they have a cermony when the couple is engaged, then the families decide when it is they can get married, from what i gather it is usually around a year), with all the music and food and the like....it was great.

Thats about all thats been going on recently. I am heading down to Savusavu tomorrow, which is supposed to be a beautiful place, so will hopefull have some good stories to post after. Hope all is well with everyone, and if you get a chance drop me an email or something to let me know what's up.

I was thinking about it, and i should include this photo; which is the beard competition guys before we styled for the event.

That is all

So, it's been a few weeks again..... i swear I will work harder to put a bit more up. But, hopefully the addition of some new pictures will make it up a little bit (the first is from this past weekend in lautoka, the next two are from the beard competition during training[the winner is on the left], and the third is sunrise from the beach next to my train village that I would run on every morning). I just got back from an emergency coordinator training in Nadi (they apparently feel that I am responsible enough to be in charge of other people in an emergency, wait until they figure out that mistake...), which was really great. They flew all those attending out there, and it was really nice to see several of the people I hadn't since we all split up in July. The training was Tues-Thurs, so on friday several of us spend the next day and evening in Lautoka, about an hour north of Nadi. The next day I went up to Malake(an island off the coast of Rakiraki, a city on the northern side of Viti Levu), where on of the other volunteers is stationed. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday there and had a amazing time. I am a bit envious of her site, as she is on this beautiful island in, this great village, and has the opportunity to spend everyday in the ocean. It makes the days I spend in the dusty city a bit more drab...but alas, I have to remind myself that I have a assignment that works best for me, I'll just have to start making more of an effort to get out on the ocean. Anyway, it was great to get out of the city for awhile, spend some time in a village, and see one of the best friends I have made here.

Speaking of work, when I got back on Monday I was scheduled to begin a 6 day, 37 village tour with the WWF and the committee I am working with. In classic island style, it was postponed at the last minute (leaving several of us waiting at a bus stop for several hours...) due someone being sick. I am a bit bummed, as I was looking forward to the trip, but they tell me it is to be rescheduled for one of the next upcoming weeks. This being the case, I have a bit of a void at work this week (as I was supposed to be gone until next Saturday or so), and am struggling to generate some work to do in the office. So it's been a bit of a boring last few days....

Otherwise, all is well up here in sunny Labasa. The weather is starting to turn (as "winter" here is almost over), and it is beginning to get quite hot and rainy. The five of us that live here have planned an event for the Fiji Day weekend (fiji day is Oct 8th this year) that I am pretty excited about. Just about all of the volunteers here in the north are going to attend (about 16 of us) in teams of two in a two day competition (think the olympics, fiji style, with a few oat sodas thrown in the mix). I should be all kinds of fun, and the first time for many of these people to come up to the city. We have even organized prizes....it'll be great, hopefully i'll have some pictures to share.

Thanks again to everyone that has sent me something recently. Dave in particularly, as i just received a package from him and have yet to get a hold of him to extend my proper thanks. I hope all is well with everyone, if you get a chance shoot me an email and give me an update on what is going on with your lives.... i would hate to come back in a couple years and have no idea what anyone has been doing. I'll do my best to post back up here soon.....

Ok, so I've been an awful blogger the past several weeks, and I apologize. I have been a bit busy getting used to the new job schedule and traveling a bit. I started work at the provincial office here at the begginning of August, and so far everything has been going pretty well. Most of the work I will be doing is in the field, and as such the few trips I have made out into the field so far have been really great. A couple weeks ago I began trips out into the province to generally introduce myself to the villages in the surrounding area. These trips have been good, and there is quite a bit of work to be done. Several of the villages have wonderful ideas for projects that I really hope can get off the ground; there is one that is very interested in doing some small scale prawn aquaculture, another village has plans for some pearl farming off it's coast, and another wants to start a diving/kayaking/surfing ecotourism venture. I also made a trip up to the Namuka tikina (a tikina is a group of between 4 and 10 villages that work together for governing purposes, the equivilent in the states would be something like a county) for the opening of one of their marine protectect areas. They have had their MPA in place for three years now, but are openning it to fishing for a week to help prepare for the national Methodist Conference that will be held in our province this year (methodist is the predominent religion in fiji, and the conference is easily one of the largest events held in fiji each year; they are expecting over a 1000 people this year and the hosting province is expected to provide food for all the participants for the entire week in which it is held). The trip was great, and it was really nice to finally get out on the water for a little bit up here.

So, as I said before, the field work has been really good so far, but unfortunately the office work has left a bit to be desired. With the conference looming on the horizon the office has been quite busy, and I think a bit unprepared for my arrival. Since most of my work outlined in my assignment is out in the field, there is a bit of a gap in what is expected of me in the office; which has led to a lot of workless days sitting around my desk when I'm not out traveling somewhere. On the bright side, the office downtime has helped me a bit with my language, and I am optomistic that as I spend more time there that I will find my niche.

Otherwise, everything else has been going very well. My expectations for Peace Corps service have been quite a bit different than the reality of my assignement, in both good and bad ways. I certainly did not expect to be living in a semi-urban environment with running water and electricity 24/7. I also did not expect to be living around so many other volunteers. There are 5 of us specifically stationed in Labasa, and 6 or 7 in the outlying area (1-2 of which are usually in each weekend); so I have quite a bit of contact with other Americans on a regular basis.... which has been great socially, but is going to make my continued cultural and language education a bit more dfficult (compared to those volunteers that are in a community of all natives, which is the case with the majority of the volunteers here).

Thanks to everyone who has sent letters and things/called or emailed me. It is really nice to hear from all of you, and makes the bit of homesickness that I feel from time to time much easier to get through. A special thanks goes out to Jason Hilton, who was the first person to send me something to hang on the walls in my house; I greatly look forward to more letters of that nature. I hope all is well with everyone, and I will certainly post up here again very soon.