Here is Taveuni....

Okay, here are our pictures from the Garden Island of Fiji. Hopefully we will have pictures from the reef monitoring workshop soon.

This is a killer reef off of the coast of Vanua Levu. I wanna get up in that!

John walking through volcanic rocks on the Costal Walk from Lavena.

Swimming to the falls outside of Lavena Village.

In the upper right-hand corner of this picture you can see me jumping off of this HUGE waterfall. It must have been at least 50 ft. high. To the left are John and Natalie.

The clouds over Viti Levu....amazing!

The Update

This is going to be short.....pressed for time. John and I are back from our trip to Taviuni Island for the Reef Monitoring workshop we participated in. We had a great time with Grace, Rachel, Natalie, Nic and the local volunteers. In total we spent four days in the water practicing various reef monitoring techniques. We spent an additional day at Nic's village checking out the village-based tourism project he working on. We jumped off of a 50 ft waterfall. In fact, I was the first FRE-6 Peace Corps volunteer to take the plunge :) I still hurt from the jump. I am pretty sure Natalie will never be the same. Expect pictures and maybe even a video soon.

The big news is that we are moving to a new site. I will not go into the details of why; it is a long story. The village we are moving to is in the same province we are in now so our address will remain the same. We are still Ra Volunteers. We expect to move by the end of the month. We are excited for the move to the new village but plan to still work with our original communities until our commitments are fulfilled. John plans to complete a compost piggery for his previous village and I will complete my two water projects in the settlements.

More recent pictures

These pictures are much more recent than the last batch. They range from mid November to December. This first picture was taken right before my birthday.

Woo hoo, I am now scuba certified! Not my best look, but hey, it was a good day. I finished my certification on this final dive. No sharks but still a ton of fun!

These two pictures are from two of the Indo-Fijian communities that I work with. I worked with the Social Welfare office in Rakiraki to organize a workshop for the International Day for the Prevention of Child Abuse. These pictures are from the workshop.

Our Thanksgiving feast. From front: dark-chocolate brownies, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and fried fish. Ahndree and Nuper celebrated with us.

This picture is just funny. John is grating onions for our salsa (we don't have a blender) and his solution to watery eyes was to wear his scuba mask. This IS a good look for him :)

Picture Time!

Okay, first of all, sorry for taking so long to get these up. It is practically impossible to upload pictures in Rakiraki, the connection is just too slow. These pictures go all the way back to October!

This is a picture of John's friend Sikeli. During most of the year Sikeli is in the Lau group but he returned to Vitawa for the holidays! He, his wife Una and two of their sons lead us on a climb of Ulu ni' Vatu, the peak that separates Narewa and Vitawa. The hike was a lot of fun and was more like rock-scrambling than walking. In this picture Sikeli is marking our accent to the top with a nice red sulu! Vinaka Sikeli! In the distance you can see Milake Island.

This is the view of Vitawa from the top of Ulu ni' Vatu. In the distance you can see the Nakovadra range. We hope to tackle those peaks next :)

The day of Diwali Nuper, John and I went to the beach. I got super sun burned, as you can see in the picture! We spent the evening of Diwali in Nagoro, a neighborhood near Rakiraki town. My friend Sandiya invited us over for fireworks and yummy Indian treats!

To walk off all of the Fiji Gold we consumed the previous night, a group of us decided to check out Colo i' Suva Park. It was great and we would recommend that anyone passing through Suva make time for a quick hike through the park. There are multiple water-holes, waterfalls and trails to explore. There is also a rope swing somewhere.....we never found it....isa! Pictured (from the left): Amy, Nuper, Sarah, Heath, Grace and me.

This is the previous night :) Before Heath left us for the States we took him out to karaoke and dancing in Suva. I have no idea what we were singing but I can tell from this picture that it must have sounded AWESOME! Pictured (from left): Heath, Nuper, me, Sarah, and Ashley (aka Gashley)

A Hard Rain is Gonna Fall

Rain, rain go away.......no wait.....come back we still don't have water! Ahh! This was our mantra during the four days we were without water or electricity in Rakiraki. A big-fat tropical depression hit Fiji on Thursday and did not let up until Sunday. I have not seen or heard rain like that in my whole life and I am from one the the rainiest states in the US. John, Natalie (aka Nuper) and I were stuck in the house during the storm. We did not even step outside the house unless we needed to take the daily rain bath. It was raining too hard to leave cover in anything other than a bathing suit. For now the rain, wind, thunder and lightening have stopped and we are in town stocking up. Another system is expected to hit on Wednesday. Peace Corps has issued a "Stand Fast" for all volunteers in Fiji. This means, stay where you are until notified that is again safe to travel. We have heard from the locals in town that this is the worst weather in over 30 years. It seems like record breaking weather is following me around the world. In Oregon we were hit with the worst snow storm since 1938.

Christmas and New Years

First of all, sorry everyone for not posting in over a month. A lot of things have been going on lately, and it has been a while since we've made it to the internet cafe.
Leslie had to travel back to the states for Christmas because her grandmother recently passed away. She is sad, but told me she was happy to see her family and friends in Oregon. I am looking forward to her returning to Fiji tomorrow. As you can imagine I miss her a lot.
Since Leslie was in the U.S. for Christmas, I ended up traveling with Peace Corps volunteer Nuper, our adopted daughter in Fiji. We left on Dec. 24th on a ship called the Westerland, sailing overnight from Lautoka to Savusavu. Remembering the Peace Corps motto "Be Prepared" (or is that the boy scouts?), we smuggled a 5th of Bounty Rum onboard with us. The boat ride was 12 hours long, getting into Savusavu at 5am Christmas Day. We did not have anywhere to sleep on the boat, so we found a nice spot on the deck, poured the Bounty into a Gatorade bottle, and did our best to make the journey fun. We did a pretty good job having a good time until about midnight when we were just too damn tired. We made friends with some locals (not at all hard to do in this country), drank some kava, played a guy's guitar, and made a drinking game out of a video game on our cellphones called "snake". In the end, fatigue got us and we had to pass out on the deck along with everybody else. We probably got about 2 hours of sleep.
When we arrived in Savusavu we headed to the house of some other Peace Corps friends who agreed to put us up for a couple of nights. We spent two days in Savusavu, snorkeling at least 5 hours both days, and then headed to Taveuni. The nearshore snorkeling in Savusavu was impressive. I saw a lot of fish species that I only see on offshore reefs in Rakiraki. Savusavu itself is a very nice and tidy town. A lot of yachties come here and never leave.
Savusavu was nice but Taveuni was amazing. The first place we headed was a small village on the eastern side of Taveuni whose name I probably can't mention on this blog because of Peace Corps' policy. The village name literally means "forbidden water" (look it up if you have a fijian dictionary) and they have one of the oldest and best managed marine protected areas in Fiji. The difference we saw when snorkeling between the village fishing grounds and the Marine Protected Area was stark. The fish inside the protected area were enormous! We saw massive schools of harlequin sweetlips, giant sweetlips, bluefin trevally, peacock grouper etc. We also saw several sea snakes and two hawksbill sea turtles. The villagers were very welcoming and did not charge us to use the MPA since we were staying with a volunteer and therefore entered the village as guests rather than tourists.
From the village we also did the Tavoro waterfalls hike, taking time to swim in each of the three waterfalls. The water was cool and clean. I spend so much time swimming in the ocean that I was surprised at how much less bouyant my body was in fresh water. I had to tread water to stay afloat.
After three nights in the unnamed village we headed to a camp ground in the touristy northern part of Taveuni to celebrate the New Years with a bunch of other Peace Corps volunteers. We had a very wild, but safe, time. There must have been about 20 volunteers staying in the camp ground. It really was a lot of fun, and the only thing that could have made it better would be if Leslie had been there.
I am now back in Savusavu and will be heading back to Viti Levu on Sunday. Leslie will be back in Fiji at that point. Well, that pretty much sums it up. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year.

Finishing up November

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Here in Rakiraki we had a small gathering to celebrate and give thanks. Nuper and Ahndree came to hang out with John and me for the weekend. We created a Thanksgiving feast with a Fijian twist. We had fried fish (instead of turkey), mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie (from an actual pumpkin!!!), dark chocolate brownies (just because they sounded delicious) and cool glasses of Captain Choney's Pineapple Kacabote to wash it all down. Everything turned out perfect; the pumpkin pie even tasted like America......so I hear. Unfortunately for me I was recovering from some intense food poisoning and could not enjoy the dinner. It was all just too savory for my queasy stomach to handle. The night before Thanksgiving I spent in the toilet. I made some bad decisions the day before and paid the price.....dearly. What did it was one or both of the following food items: three-week old rice and/or moldy cheese. I know, you are wondering why I would consume either. Let me explain my rationale for consuming both: the cheese was for lunch and there was a bit of mold on one side so I cut it off and thought the rest would be good. You just don't waste cheese in this country, it is too precious. The rice was for dinner and honestly I was just too damn lazy to cook up another pot. So, yes, I made two bad decisions; I did it to myself.

By Friday morning (two days later) I was fine. So the four of us made our way to Nananu i' Ra for the rest of the weekend. Ahndree introduced us to a returned Peace Corps volunteer and his wife who have decided to retire here in Fiji. They very generously offered to take us to the island and then out to some reefs for snorkeling. After dropping our stuff at the resort, we got back in the boat and motored to the Northern side of Nananu and had a picnic and snorkel day. Nuper climbed a coconut tree and got us some bu (young coconut) and Ahndree husked them....all of them. Ahndree is by far Peace Corps finest coconut husker. The snorkeling wasn't great due to the strong current and heavy rains but it was still a good time. The next day we got up early and hiked the ridge trail along the top of the island. We hiked for about an hour and came to a dead end on top of the ridge. Hot and sweaty, we decided to bush-whack our way down to the beach for a swim. We got a lot of cuts and bruises but eventually made it down in four whole pieces. The beach we ended up on is called "One Secluded Beach". We decided to hike back to the resort along the coastline. As we began to walk it started to pour. We were all in our bathing suites at that point and the rain felt glorious against our saltwater-covered skin and cooled us off nicely. At one point in the walk we decided to swim along the coast instead of hike and found a really healthy reef in the process. When we finally made it back to the resort it was 1:00, the hike/rock climb/swim lasted about five hours. That afternoon it proceeded to rain non-stop. Tired and satisfied from our adventure we spent the rest of the afternoon watching movies in the main room of the resort. At about five we took the sea kayaks out for a night paddle. Needless to say, we all slept well that night.

John and Judy (the returned PCV's) met us on the island for our last day and again took us around for a picnic/snorkel trip. This time we snorkeled around Nananu i' Cake and Honeymoon Island (the islands next to Nananu i' Ra). The reefs were much healthier there as both islands are fully forested and relatively uninhabited. The best snorkeling of the day was on Honeymoon Island. It was there that we saw a black-tipped reef shark and that Choney saw a sting ray!

The trip was a great way to end a month that has been full of workshops, traveling and meetings.