One Week Down

So we have officially spent one full week in Rakiraki. We have spent this first week setting up house, starting our garden and getting to know our respective counterparts. I am pretty sure that Thursdays are going to be my new favorite day of the week. Thursday is the day when people from neighboring villages in the Ra Province come to Rakiraki to do their shopping. RR has pretty much everything you need. There are at least four grocery stores, a Rupes Big Bear (where we got our bikes), a post office, three different banks, hardware stores, three internet cafes and a hand-full of other little Fijian shops. The open-air market here is great. It is open every day and is packed with local produce, kava, and handmade brooms and mats. It has been the place I use my hindi most as a lot of the produce vendors are Indo-Fijian. It is super fun to surprise the locals with my killer language skills. Note: my Hindi is actually not that great I just really paid attention to the lessons on shopping....surprise :) Anyways, because villagers come into town to do their shopping on Thursday so too do the Peace Corps volunteers in our province. This means that we get to see a few more of our Peace Corps friends. Today John and I had lunch with Tara (stationed here in RR), Ahndree (village near the bay), Natalie (village across the bay), and Sylvia (stationed in Nadi but homeless right now so chillin in R-town) and it was so great. Thursday lunch has been a tradition for the volunteers in the area so Tara and Andree seemed happy to have four new lunch buddies. The six of us looked pretty ridiculous walking around the two streets of Rakiraki but we were so happy to see each other it was easy to ignore the stares.