Time is flying...

… and I really don’t like it. All of the volunteers who were here when I arrived are now gone, and I recently met the latest wave of newbies. I haven’t been keeping track of dates and time as much as usual here, so when someone asked me how long I’ve been in Fiji and I realized the answer was seven weeks, it was quite shocking. It feels like maybe seven days. But at the same time, I feel like I haven’t been home in seven years. Time is a funny thing.

Yesterday was July 4^th, and no one cared. No blueberry and strawberry flag cakes were eaten; no fireworks were set off. In retrospect, I should have just had my own little party, but it’s too late for that now. :(

Last week, I had to say goodbye to Molly from England, one of my favorite friends that I’ve met here. Since we pick our own start/end dates with Projects Abroad, people are always coming and going, and it’s very sad. I’m really hoping for reunion(s) later on. Here’s Molly in a ‘mini-bus’ on our way back from the Hilton Resort swimming pool in Denarau:

Even though I’ve been in Fiji for seven weekends now, this past weekend was the first time that I’ve been “home” in Nadi both Friday and Saturday nights. I’ve loved having the luxury of taking weekend trips, but it was nice to spend some quality time with my host family this weekend. On Saturday, we (my host mom, Shabreen + host dad, Tufel + host brother, Tashkeel + me) took a thirty minute bus ride to Lautoka, where we spent the day. I’d only been to Lautoka once at night to go to the Farmer’s Festival, so it was nice to see it in the daylight. They have a huge fruit and vegetable market in town:

After some window shopping in the morning, we had lunch at a restaurant that served mostly chicken, but was tiger-themed for some reason… You can see the tiger print wall in the background of this picture of me and Tashkeel:

After lunch, we headed to the theater to see a movie called ‘I Hate Luv Storys’ (that’s actually how it was spelled). This movie theater only had four screens, but Nadi doesn’t even have a theater at all. It was kind of nice to have a little taste of western civilization, Fiji style. It wasn’t too western though, seeing as the whole movie was in Hindi… with English subtitles. I’m ninety-nine percent sure that I was the only one in the theater who was actually reading those subtitles though. J After seeing a few questionable Bollywood movies with my host family, I had my doubts about the quality of this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised and actually really enjoyed it! It was a good romantic comedy. The purple/pink building is the theater:

Here’s Shabreen and Tashkeel on the bus back to Nadi in the afternoon:

Lautoka is called “Sugar City” because it’s home to the sugar mill, surprise, surprise. Sugar cane fields seem to be everywhere in Fiji, and in fact, there’s one right behind my house. If I’m not mistaken, tourism and sugar exporting are the two biggest industries in Fiji. We passed the sugar mill from the bus:

We also passed a lot of really gorgeous mountains, and I kept snapping pictures from out of the bus window. None of my pictures look as good as the real thing, but that didn’t stop me.

Yesterday night, the backyard seemed to be glowing, and I looked out to see that Tufel was just burning some trash. I assume there’s a fire department in Fiji, but I’ve seen no signs of it so far, and you certainly don’t have to request permission in order to burn things. Our trash pile was really small compared to some massive ones that I’ve seen the neighbors have, but it was still exciting.