Holy Cow!

Bula! Holy cow, this past week was amazing. In case you aren’t interested in reading the details let me just give you a run down: Sick on Monday, travel into the villages, play with beautiful children, teach CPR, eat curry for lunch, hold a baby goat, climb a mountain, watch the sunset, eat curry for dinner, watch kids dance, sleep under a mosquito net, eat curry for breakfast, hold little Trisha, walk on the dirt road, talk to an Indian women, give a lesson on empowerment through positive thinking and goal setting, dance for baby, talk with the girls, eat Fijian style dinner…with curry, talk with Romaine about life, learn a lesson on marriage, go to bed, stay awake thinking, sleep, wake up at 6 am, milk a cow, learn how to pasteurize milk, watch the sunrise, eat roti bread for breakfast, cut down sugar cane with Romaine, eat sugar cane raw, walk to another village, give empowerment lesson, ride into town, chill, sleep, present my health/fitness program to head master at Dalana Primary school, travel to Nadi, dress up in a sari, attend a Hindu wedding, dance like a weirdo for the Indian’s entertainment, hold a cute little boy, stay up late laughing, tell scary stories, sleep, travel to a resort, nap by the pool, witness the most beautiful sunset, go to the carnival, ride the Ferris wheel, ride the scrambler…twice, laugh a lot, sleep, wake up and go to church, eat, now this. 

Now details on the cool stuff. Traveling into the interior villages was a breathtaking experience. The white crops growing upon the green hills reflected the gold light. This created a golden sheen on the landscape which contrasted the turquoise sea just on the horizon. Little tin houses and smoking chimneys spotted the hills making the evening picture perfect. Chocolate brown horses grazed nearby and baby goats danced around our male host, Rajnesh. He swooped down and picked the baby white one up and let me hold its trembling body. Later that night I lay in bed and wrote in my journal thinking about how different life is here. How much beauty there is in simplicity. From an American’s perspective the houses are somewhat cheesy looking: Indian pop star posters scattered everywhere, pots and pans cluttered along the wall, bright sheets separating bed rooms from living rooms from kitchens, showering from a bucket of boiling water, colors clashing everywhere. This house would be mocked in America; people would call it ghetto, run down, trashy. But when you are here such thoughts never cross your mind. This is their way, the norm. And you know what? It is beautiful. Because the tacky strings hanging from the ceiling were put there to hang the mosquito net to protect us, and those disarranged pots and pans cook food for us, and they boiled that water so we could comfortably bathe. It is the people that make Fiji so beautiful, so warm, so bright, so… happy. They love without asking questions, serve without hesitation, give without reservation, smile without reason. And you learn to love that doors are merely pieces of cloth because it allows the children to dash into your room with a music player and giggle and dance for you. Perfection.

Wednesday was awesome! While we were waiting to teach a women’s group I felt inspired to plan a lesson on goal setting and positive thinking. So within 5 minutes I jotted down a few ideas on a piece of paper and just trusted that the rest would come to me. The biggest challenge with teaching the women in the villages is the lack of understanding that sometimes occurs. Most people know English but some jargon is just not comprehended. But I feel like I am good at putting things into simpler terms and getting all the women involved. In my lesson I taught them about the power of confidence, how to build confidence in yourself and others, how to set goals, the power of positive thinking, mental visualization and mantras. I encouraged the women to pass this information along to their children. I felt like I was a motivational speaker, it was super fun. It is such a great experience being able to share your knowledge with others and in a way that you know others could not. The women received the information well and I felt that they understood the importance of the lesson. 

Thursday I lived the farm girl’s dream so now I can tell you how to milk a cow: rope the cow to a post, tie back its left hind leg, splash some water on her teat to clean it off, put some butter on your fingers to make the milking more comfortable for her, use two fingers and start at the base of the teat and squeeze quickly downward aiming to the bucket beneath you. Waa-laa! Milk comes out! Isn’t that freaking sweet?! To pasteurize: filter the milk with a strainer, boil for a long time, let it cool. Waa-laa! Now you can drink the milk from your freaking cow. Seriously, this experience made me want to live on a small piece of land with a cow and chickens so I can have my own milk and eggs every day. Oh! And I would want horse! I love life here. 

As I mentioned in a previous post we are partners with the World Health Organization. They have a project called Health Promoting Schools that they are carrying out. This inspired me to create a fitness/health program that I could present to schools and help them implement if they were interested. Last week I talked to the head master of Dalana School and asked if I could talk to her about doing this. So I worked on designing a simple program that could create more structure in the PE classes, encourage children to work out and eat healthier, involve the family in getting healthy, and educate on key health principles and how to prevent non-communicable diseases. I had so much fun creating my program and I feel like it is simple enough to be a success. I felt so professional creating a power point to present my project. So on Friday I presented it to the headmaster and she LOVED it. She invited me to come back this Tuesday and teach the program to the teachers. I am very excited about this project. If it goes well here I hope to travel to schools all around Fiji and implement it there as well. I am so passionate and excited about working on this. Talk about a wonderful experience and great resume builder.  Woot woot!

That night our whole team got invited to attend a Hindu wedding! We got to dress up in sari’s (google it if you don’t know) and eat tons of delicious Indian food and dance with them. I am pretty sure they just wanted us there so we could entertain them. “No, you dance first and then we will feed you dinner”. Haha, so we did a few American moves and got the people laughing. It was very fun. Oh! And there was this little Indian boy who kept giving us kisses on the cheek. He was freaking adorable. He hung out with me for part of the night, I was totally his favorite. Gosh I love children. 

It was fun hanging out at the resort on Saturday but my favorite part of the night was the carnival. Imagine the sketchiest rides ever, fill up a field with brown people, add lots of food and 50¢ ice cream cones, flashing lights, funky music, and bam! There you have the annual Lautoka Carnival. The Ferris wheel seriously looked like it was unstable but it was the most thrilling ride ever. Me and my friend crammed in the seat with a local Fijian man and screamed our heads off as the wheel accelerated to uncommon speeds for such a ride. I love Fiji. No rules, it is all about having fun. I felt safe though…well actually sometimes I didn’t but that is part of the thrill. Then I almost puked my brains out riding the Scrambler. But the best part of the night was actually on a kiddy ride. 

So our country director, Arturo pointed at this kiddy ride and asked “If I paid your ticket would you ride it and act scared?” “If you are paying I’ll definitely do it”. When do I ever turn down a dare to embarrass myself in front of strangers for the enjoyment of my friends? Never. So this ride was seriously the babiest ride ever. Like imagine toy cars and bikes stationed on a turning disk going at a dying turtle’s speed with children under the age of 5 riding on them with expressions of boredom. So I collected the money from my friends and handed them my camera. I begged the carnie to let me on despite my size and age because this was my very first ride. He hesitantly allowed me on. The next 3 minutes were spent with me hyperventilating, tightly squeezing the handle bars, and randomly screaming when it was too much to handle. I quickly had a large crowd surrounding the ride, mostly laughing and very amused by the crazy American girl. The children on the ride looked so confused, haha it was hilarious. Don’t worry, the video gives the experience justice. When I finally rejoined my friends they were recovering from laughing their heads off, one of them even fell on the ground laughing. Great success.

And now I am listening in on our weekly meeting, planning out the activities for the week. Each week seems to get better so I am excited for more. I love Fiji. Vinaka for reading. 

P.S. I miss you. 

In the village Dramasi. The picture doesn't quite do it justice.