Hello Everybody. Sorry for not posting in a while. Things have been pretty busy lately. I've been going into my village almost every day, and Leslie has been working at the local hospital. A group of doctors from the U.S. were doing eye exams in town and Leslie was helping with that. I guess the Lions Club collects used prescription glasses for these programs. Eye exams are only a dollar, prescription glasses are two dollars, and cataract surgery is 30 dollars. Some people were pretty bummed about the glasses they got since some of the donated glasses were truly ridiculous. But I guess for 2 dollars you really can't expect too much. I helped out with this on Thursday. It was pretty hectic. The line of people was out the door.
I've been doing a bit of snorkeling recently. I've been taking a lot of underwater pictures of fish and then trying to identify them back at home. I'm definitely getting hooked on these coral reefs. I'll post the pictures once I get to a fast internet connection. Those of you waiting for pictures will have to bear with us for a few weeks, but once we are able to get to a big city we'll try to upload a lot of photographs.
I built a boat this week. Well, really I watched as one of the guys from the village built it for me. It is called a Bavelo, and is basically a 12 ft canoe made from a single piece of corrugated tin roofing material. It is the most ridiculous looking boat you can imagine. I haven't taken it out into the water yet. I'll probably build an outrigger for it before I take it out. I will, of course, not take it farther out than I can swim and will ALWAYS wear my lifejacket.
A lot of people in my village are excited about getting an ecotourism project going. I think the village is well situated to take advantage of the tourists visiting the north coast of Viti Levu. Of course, my main concern is not really whether or not we will be able to make money, but what the village hopes to do with the money. I'm hoping that I'll be able to convince them to reinvest it back into the community through scholarships and other things.