Can't Believe I've Been Here for Almost 3 Weeks

Last weekend I went white water rafting with ten other Projects Abroad volunteers. We rode in a crowded 12-passenger van for over two hours to get to Pacific Harbour last Friday afternoon. We had no plans until dinner, so we just hung out by the gorgeous beach! Then, we stayed in the dorm at Uprising Resort on Friday night. We got up early on Saturday morning to take another van to the white water rafting place. It took us an hour and a half drive in a bus off the main road, plus a twenty minute hike to finally get to the river. The path that we drove in the bus was soooo bumpy, I cannot even describe it. Also the road was really narrow. The views were incredible, so I tried to focus on that instead of the obviously unsafe driving conditions.

When we got off the bus, we met our rafting guides, who were all Fijian men from the nearby village. The rafting company pays the village to use their river, and they additionally give 30% of their profits towards scholarships for kids in the village to have a chance to go to school, so I thought that was pretty cool. The first thing they said to us was that the water level was really low, meaning that the rapids would not be as exciting as we expected. We still managed to have a blast though! The guide in my raft was really entertaining, and he kept encouraging water fights between the rafts. At one point, one of the volunteers who was on another raft jumped onto our raft and started throwing us all into the water. It doesn’t sound so great as I’m typing it out, but it was great fun at the time.

Since getting back to Nadi on Saturday night, this week has flown by! School is going well, and I think the kids are listening to me more. (Hooray!) I’m learning that teaching so many young kids takes a LOT of patience, but it’s also rewarding. There’s a boy in my class named Pio, and he only knows a few phrases in English like “Excusememissjuliecanigotothetoiletplease?” and “Good afternoon and thank you teachers” (all the kids say that to us after our pre-lunch prayer/Hail-Mary session). Anyway, we were working on simple addition the other day (like 2+2 and 3+6), and Pio was really having trouble with it. I wasn’t sure I was being much help to him since I cannot speak Fijian, but he made me so proud the next day when we were again working on addition and he correctly did a few problems all on his own! Two months in this school isn’t a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but it’s nice to feel like I’m making a tiny bit of a difference to some people while I’m here.

On Tuesday afternoon after school, I went with some other volunteers to a nearby village to have a mud bath. It was a really fun/weird experience. I was picturing a huge field of mud that we’d all frolic around in, but it was nothing like that! Surprise, surprise… It was actually just a really big pit of mud that we had to climb in. Once in the pit, we had to fill up a container with the mud from the bottom so that it wouldn’t be mixed with leaves and other debris. We then got out of the pit to coat ourselves with the mud and let it dry in the sun. Next we rinsed off and had a HOT bath in a “pool” that was filled with water from a hot spring. The people working there were really nice and took pictures of us looking ridiculous. They also told us that the mud is good for curing all kinds of diseases- mostly skin rashes and stuff, but they also claimed it was helpful for diabetes as well…?

Tomorrow I’m going on another island trip. I’m really looking forward to relaxing on the beach! Obviously, I have to recover from another stressful week in Fiji. ;)