Holy...shark!

Bula-la! This is what me and my friends have started saying when we see something (or someone) we like. In case you missed it, bula means hello in Fijian and we add the la to make it our American-Fijian way of saying oo-la-la. This last week was another roller-coaster. Here are the updates on my discoveries, projects, adventures, and fun I had.

 

Discoveries       

         

 People with less are more generous than people with more. The workers at the bread shop gladly covered a muffin I bought at the market with loads of sweet butter cream. I offered to pay them for the butter cream but they wouldn’t accept it. I guess seeing an American girl enthusiastically beg to have them cover a muffin with butter cream was entertaining enough. Then, the taxi driver on the way home charged us less than the full cab fare so we didn’t have to break our $20. These are small acts of generosity, but when they are coming from poor people you feel undeserving of such kindness. 

 

You don’t have to be in a foreign country to learn from others. This trip I got in the habit of carrying around my little purple notebook, so that when I learn something new I can write it down. At the beginning my findings came mainly from the wonderful Fijian people. But as I have spent more time talking to my American friends I have begun recording their words as well. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy getting to know someone and learning from their past experiences. Everyone is truly a teacher. I am excited about this new habit and hope to carry it with me when I return to America. After being with the Fijian people I have learned to never take knowledge for granted. Learning outside a classroom is my new favorite pastime. 

 

God works in mysterious ways. I have never been one to speak much about my faith, especially with those outside of the church I attend, but here is my little blurb. I didn’t expect this experience to be a spiritual awakening of any sort. Sure, I am traveling with a band of Mormons but as a group we don’t dedicate any time to our faith. The majority attends church on Sunday but we don’t worship as a group in any other way. So I have been surprised by the amount of spiritual growth I have experienced. 

 

I think the root of this growth has come from feeling alone at times. Though I am constantly with people, I am detached from the familiar: I can’t talk to my parents on the phone, I can’t walk up the street to my best friend’s house, and texting isn’t an option. Sure, I could Skype people more often, but I think I am relishing in this new feeling. And yes, this kind of loneliness was a new feeling for me; I have never experienced such isolation before.  Now you don’t need to feel bad for me; by this time I have made new friends, but at the beginning it was hard. This unfamiliar emotion made me uncomfortable. It pushed me to the only person I knew I could talk to any time: God.  Previous to this experience I never had to rely upon God in such a way that forced me to test my faith in Him being truly there. And not just there, but there for me. My relationship with God has strengthened in a way I didn’t expect: never have I so strongly felt His presence is my life. I was comforted when I prayed for it, guided when I asked for it and loved when I needed it. This may seem like an unnecessary thing to write about, but it has shaped my experience here so I thought it worthwhile to record. I am grateful for the opportunity I had to be uncomfortable and lonely at times; I now know it had a purpose. 

 

Projects

 

I had a bit of a let down on Tuesday. I was supposed to present my fitness/health program to all the teachers at Dalana Primary School because the headmaster approved it last Friday. I was very excited about finally getting the project rolling. Unfortunately, the meeting fell through because the headmaster was at a workshop. So now I am presenting this Monday. I was bummed I lost a week of working on the project but in Fiji you quickly learn to go with the flow. As they say: sega na leqa!

 

I am seeking medical experience while I am here so I spent some time at a retirement home this last week. I very much enjoyed being with the residents and helping where I could. I might try to head up a sanitation project for the facility, but it is not for sure yet. I also went to the ministry of health and turned in an application to work in a health clinic. I probably won’t hear back from them for a couple of weeks (oh Fiji time) but I will be excited to work when the time comes.

 

Much of my time this week was spent working on renovating a classroom for a village. The kindergarten at this village is the size of a small shack complete with a tin roof, spiders, geckos, and cobwebs. The children use the great outdoors for their bathroom since an outhouse is nonexistent. The place needs a lot of work but the volunteers heading up this project have done a great job turning it around. This week they had us come and help paint it. I enjoyed getting my hands dirty and beautifying a space for the children of this village. 

 

Adventures (I tend to get carried away with my descriptions)

 

This weekend was so much fun. We traveled to by boat to Treasure Island. The boat ride there was beautiful. The morning gray sky melted into the glassy ocean. The sun beams streaking through the clouds appeared as falling golden hair. The scene was made perfect by the unanticipated rainbow splashed upon the silver sky. The high speed of the boat made me feel uninhibited and enlivened. Treasure Island certainly surpassed the Robinson Crusoe Island in beauty. The white sand welcomed the small rolling waves, the color of a perfect translucent blue. The coral bed painted patches of navy throughout the cerulean sea. What words can accurately describe the feeling of sun on my back, a salted breeze playing in my hair, and water drying on my bronzed skin? Perfection, delight, bliss, peace- all are appropriate, yet inadequate. Human desires seem to disappear when you are living in such a perfect universe. Hunger, sadness, want- none exist on this little piece of heaven. 

 

The snorkeling on this island was unbelievable, much better than anything I have experienced in Mexico or Hawaii. Rainbow fish swam in schools throughout the purple and blue coral. Dull gray fish swam in a wall so thick that it appeared to be solid. Later that day my two friends and I attempted to swim out to a distant sand bar that appeared at low tide. We had hopes of skinny dipping if we were able to make the trek. As we ventured out into the sea the low tide made it impossible to swim because of the shallow water. We carefully waddled between coral and sea life, trying our best not to injure ourselves or the sea life. We must have looked ridiculous staggering through the shallow depth in our fins and snorkeling masks plastered to our heads; but it was all a part of the fun. We soon became discouraged when the coral became thicker and I hesitated going any further. It wasn’t hard to convince the others to join me once we saw three small dorsal fins a little ways off. It didn’t take us long to figure out it was a nursery of young sharks! It was probably the scariest moment I have experienced the whole trip. I have never so badly wanted to be on dry land. We scrambled back to shore which became difficult as the tide came in. Our fins greatly slowed our pace but we couldn’t take them off because they were the only gear protecting us from the coral sea floor. It was one of those moments where you know you aren’t going to die, but you start thinking about how you are too young to die. Haha, it sounds overly dramatic but you would have been freaking out too if you started entertaining the thought of mama shark looking for her babies. I now only have three toes on my right foot, but I think I should be fine. 

 

Funny moments

 

When we were painting the kindy (that is what they call kindergartens here) we discovered a little gecko that had got stuck in the red paint. The girls struggled to save it from its doom but their fear of touching geckos thwarted their success. So I come over thinking I am going to be a hero to this little guy. I used a piece of paper to unglue its small body from the sticky paint. When we freed its body we realized that its little legs were stuck to itself. As I took it outside and tried to help him normalize he squirmed out of my hand and pretty soon all I had in my hand was its tail! I freaked out for a second as the detached tail swam around my palm. Haha, it was kind of gross, but made for a good laugh.

 

Going dancing at a local club. I can’t tell you how awesome it is to dance without giving a crap what you look like. When I usually go dancing I am concerned with how sweaty my face is and how frizzy my hair is getting. But when you are in Fiji you could care less. My dance moves ranged from pop, drop and lock it to interpretive dance, to getting low, to some ballet twirls. If you have ever seen me let loose on the dance floor then you can better imagine why this moment was a funny one. If you haven’t seen me let loose on the dance floor, then you are missing out.

 

3-2-1 Action!

 

 Do you know who Cameron Manwaring is? Well if you don’t you should YouTube “world's largest rope swing” or “human slingshot” and watch his amazing work. This last week Cameron and his girlfriend stayed with us. He was hired by Help International to do a video on our projects here. So I participated in an interview and he went around with some of the other girls to film them in action. He also worked on creating a YouTube hit that focuses on breaking down stereotypes of humanitarian work. He based his idea for this video off of the YouTube hit “African men stereotypes”. 

 

So on Wednesday our group went to the beach and we were assigned lines. The beginning starts off with us all giving stereotypical reasons for why we are doing humanitarian work such as “I like to hold babies” or “to save starving children”. These lines were scripted and assigned by Cameron and his girlfriend.  My line was “I came to work with help international because I knew it would look good on my resume, also because I LOVE Angelina Jolie”…haha yea, pretty cheesy. But it was supposed to be cheesy so I did my best to rock them. It should be interesting to see how the video turns out. Watching the takes made me a little nervous, but I am sure Cameron will do an amazing job. It’s no big deal if I look like an idiot in front of thousands of YouTube viewers, right? And yes, there will be thousands of viewers; Cameron will make sure of it. 

 

What’s to come

 

This week my agenda includes presenting my fitness program, singing at a carnival for the US Ambassador, going back to the villages (I have missed them so much), doing more evaluations for the World Health Organization, and whatever else they need. I am so thankful for this experience. Vinaka for reading.

 

(i had a funny picture for you but the internet was being too slow to publish it)