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.

At Site

Well, training is officially over! Our group swore in on July 24 and quickly loaded up into buses to be shuttled to the far corners of Fiji. The day before swearing in we had about 8 hours to kill in Suva. I went to meet with Helen Sykes, an environmental consultant based in Suva. After that, I met up with some fellow trainees at a bar. After having completed 8 weeks of training we were all in need of a drink. Some of the wilder volunteers had 2 drinks! After that, we were shuttled back to the campus at Nadave where we went to bed early in order to be well rested the next day. Despite this precaution, we all seemed to be particularly groggy on the 24th.

Leslie and I spent the first night at site with another volunteer in the area named Tara. The next day we moved into our new home, and began furiously cleaning. There was a dead rat in one of the cupboards, but before either of us could clean it up a cat raced into the house and munched it down. Both Leslie's host agency and my host village have been very generous in donating furniture for our house. We still have a list of things we need to buy, but are not in too much of a hurry. The house has electricity and running water, and you can just barely see the ocean from the front patio. We don't have a refrigerator at the moment, so we have been doing our shopping day to day. It is actually not as hard as it sounds.

My village has been very understanding of our need to spend a few days getting the house ready before we start work. They actually suggested that I not go to church with them on Sunday but instead take the day off. With that in mind, Leslie and I rode our bikes (oh yeah, we bought bikes in Suva) to Volivoli beach (mentioned in another posting). My bike broke down several times on the ride, but we made it. At the beach Leslie and I happened to meet the group leader for some sort of high school group doing a study abroad in Fiji. She invited us to go out snorkeling with them. The guys at Ra Divers, the dive shop on Volivoli beach, were really cool and had no problem letting us tag along for no charge. They took us out about 6km to a small seamount with spectacular coral cover. I took a ton of pictures with our underwater camera which I will be sure to post at some point. We saw a white-tip reef shark!

We should be able to post regularly as our house is fairly near an internet cafe. Keep in touch, everyone!

Finishing up training

Training is quickly coming to a close. We have our final Language Proficiency Interview on Monday. Before heading out to site, everyone is expected to be at the "intermediate-low" level in their respective language. Supposedly, those who are not at this level will stay in Suva for an extra week of language training before being sent to site. I will be suprised if anyone ends up doing this.

Last night was cultural night in the Indo-Fijian settlement. The Hindi class learned a dance and a song, and a few of the teenage girls from the settlement performed a couple of dances. There was a massive quantity of really good spicy food and plenty of yaqona.

Yesterday I went to USP in Suva to meet with a woman doing turtle conservation work on the north coast of Viti Levu, near my site. I will probably be helping her a bit in communicating with the villages in the area.

Tomorrow, Leslie and I will celebrate our one year aniversary. We really do not have any big plans, since our options are much more limited here, but we are planning on going out to a nice restaurant and having some wine. Thank you everyone who has sent us letters/packages. We really appreciate it.

Site Visit!!!

The road leading into Rakiraki town!

John's training village just outside of Rakiraki.

Looking at Rakiraki from Volivoli Beach Resort.

John playing in the sand with his new "nephew".

Trying out the under-water camera!

Hub day at John's training village - I am an
honorary member of the village as John's wife!

The monipusi (mongoose) dance. Those who know
John will recognize his sweet dance moves :)

We got a lesson in Beekeeping.
We survived without a sting.

Hub day in the Indo-Fijian settlement.
Pretty sarees!

Site announcements. We are standing in
Rakiraki - our new home!!!

Doing Site Visit

Leslie and I are doing a visit of our site in the Rakiraki area. I'm actually not supposed to disclose the exact town on this blog, but I think all of our friends know it already. This part of Viti Levu is beautiful. There are mountains to the south of us, and the ocean is very close. The diving in this area is supposed to be world class. This week we are staying with a current Peace Corps volunteer. The Peace Corps has not yet found a house for us, so we have been looking for a place to rent. Leslie will be taking over another volunteer's job with a local Indo-Fijian women's organization. I will be traveling to a nearby village to do environmental work. I will find our today a little more about what projects the village is looking at. A lot of times the host agencies have a misunderstanding about what Peace Corps does, so it will be nice to meet with my village and answer any questions they might have.

Sites Announced!!!

Friday, July 4th was a big day for the FRE-6 trainees. We found out where we will be assigned for the next two years. The day started with a surprise Emergency Action Plan run-through that started at 6 am. Mahen (my language teacher) came to our house and knocked on our window before sun-up. We had to grab our emergency bag which contained clothes, dry food, water, medical kit and our life vests. We spent two hours sitting at the hub office drinking coffee in our pjs. Good times. After our consolidation training we planted trees at our host homes to celebrate the 4th of July and learn about native Fijian vegetation. At 11:30 we headed to Lomanisau (one of the host villages) for the big announcement and 4th of July celebration. Currently serving Peace Corps volunteers mapped out Fiji on the grass. As our names were called they took us to our assigned area in Fiji. John and I are going to spend two years in Raki Raki (Northern Viti Levu). John will be commuting to a neighboring village to help the community set up a Marine Protected Area as well as Mangrove planting, waist disposal and other fun environmental stuff. I will be working with an Indo-Fijian Women's Group. The group is an NGO and they have asked for help with small income generating projects, basic bookkeeping and budgeting skills, marketing, and general women's outreach. I am taking over an existing project. The current volunteer will end her service next week so we will have a chance to chat before she leaves. John and I are both very happy with our assignment. We will live in a rented flat and will have electricity and running water. We will also be a mere 3 hours from Suva and Nausori so we will be able to visit our host mom and the "big city" very easily. We are also super stoked about how close we will be to the ocean. Raki Raki is surrounded by some great scuba sites! It won't be long until I'm certified, until then, John will have to scout out the reefs for me :) We leave tomorrow for our Counterpart Conference and then Tuesday we go to Raki Raki for a week to check everything out.