welcome to mcdonalds!
a rugby game right by our house. if you look in the background you can see a green roof. thats our house.
sunset. pic taken from our front porch. sweeet.
a few friends i made at the rugby game.
these two were so sneaky and they kept poking me with sticks from below the bleachers. i could NOT find them until heather caught them on camera

me and heifer riding a scooter through nadi
this little girl was teaching me a hand-clappy game. (this is pre-tablecloth mode)

me, heather, and sereana. she is HILARIOUS
this little guy goes to church with us but he was just hanging out by the bus stop one night climbing poles and stuff

tablecloth

every day i leave the house in the morning wearing a normal shirt and every day i come back home wearing something resembling a tablecloth. why? you might ask. let me explain. everytime we go into a village the kids do one of two things. 1. they immediately run up to us and try to hold our hand or climb up us or hug us or whatever. or 2. they are shy for about 5 minutes and then they run up to us and try to hold our hand or climb up us or hug us or whatever. the problem is that it doesn't take to long before they totally overcome their shyness and pretty soon it is wrestle mania and i will have one kid wrapped around my legs and just when i go to peel them off i get a little one jump onto my back. bottom line skirts get pulled down dangerously low and shirts get transformed into tablecloths. the only thing i can't figure out is why i am the only one who suffers from this. in other news a HUGE spider was found in our house this morning. luckily i was not there to freak out. also i got to tour the Fiji Water plant which was pretty cool. then i was talking to this woman who works there and at the end of our convo when we were going to go our separate ways she was like 'here take this' and shoved a huge box full of fiji water into my arms. SCORE! what else? heather got bitten by a cat. i ate some really spicy peas. james killed a mouse with a fly swatter. i learned the word for cow and have been telling all the kids that heather is one. i learned how to say in fijian 'i like your hat' and then about 30 seconds later i saw a man wearing a sf giants hat. fate. i played soccer with some locals, one of which was named merica. and i am trying to figure out how to put up pics. basically eerthang is good in the hood.

things i love

things i never knew i loved so much:
1. mcdonalds. never has a hamburger been so tasty as it was this weekend.

2. having gecko's in the house. they eat the cockroaches so they are welcomed by all of us.

3. not living out of a suitcase. if i cared about having wrinkly clothes i would not be happy. luckily i don't care.

4. scooter rides. i thought i loved them before but its a whole different experience when you are riding down a road on a scooter in fiji.

5. pretending that you are a guest at a fancy hotel resort. free pool, beach, activities, hot tub...it was fantastic.

6. bus rides. so many conversations with so many random people. so great.

7. candy. a woman came to visit us this week. she is from america. she brought us candy. it was gone so fast.

8. ice. pretty much non-existent in this country.

9. not sweating. it doesn't happen, but if it ever did i would love it.

10. washing machines. today is laundry day. i will be doing it by hand. dang it.

11. fiji. i don't know if i will ever leave. it is simply the best.

I might be engaged

Yesterday was interesting. I would not say it was anything out of the ordinary but i will say that it makes for a good story therefore i will share. It started out normally, Heather and I went to a kindergarten to help them finish planting their garden. the children were cute, we planted the seeds, they offered us juice and cookies. they also offered us cassava pudding sticks - i don't know what was in them but they were absolutely disgusting. this time i couldn't even pretend to like that food as i do on most days. still, nothing too crazy. then about an hour later we take a bus ride to who knows where to meet up with a woman we don't know. excellent, i love bus rides, you get the nice breeze and you get to sit down for a while. NOPE we got off the bus about a mile too early and what? at the bottom of the giant hill we later climbed with the assistance of an indian man who owns a million acres of sugar cane. so finally we reach this lady's house and she greets us with hugs and kisses and is calling us 'my daughters, my daughters'. she force fed us a little bit and then we went out to do her garden. oh wait, she thought we were going to plant an entire farm! noooooooooooooo. whatever, they put gardening hats on us and we did our little garden anyways. The hats were ridiculous and i'm pretty sure i laughed for about 10 minutes straight at the very funny sight of heather in a gardener hat. finally after we finished the garden, we went back inside to drink some coffee that her single son had made for us. she was very clear that he was her single son and even had us wake him up so that we could meet him. AWKWARD. anyways we then ate more gross food and then she insisted that i get dressed up in an indian sari. i was trying to be polite so i let them dress me. Big mistake - i almost had to wear it home on the bus. but instead she just paraded me around the house to show me off to her family and then told me that i must marry her son. i threw out all the excuses i could think of but she and her husband assured me that he could come to america with me and that i'd be able to finish my school and blah blah blah. FINALLY heather helps me out and tells them that i had a boyfriend back home but no- they told me to have 2 husbands! it was sooo funny but becasue of a little problem i call a LANGUAGE BARRIER i am not sure if i am currently engaged to this man or not. i guess we'll find out eventually.

BIEBER FEVER

Justin Bieber doesn't even know how much he is loved in Fiji. He is always on the radio and everytime I ask anyone here what their favorite kind of music is the answer is Justin Bieber. I am quite positive that by the time I come home I will know all the words to baby baby. Another thing I have recently discovered is that I would REALLY REALLY like to have a washing machine here. Today was the first time I have done laundry here and it was not so fun. The process included soaking my clothes in a bucket for a long time, then pulling them out and scrubbing them on a wooden board with a bar of soap and a brush. After that I rinsed them out and hung them to dry on the clothes line. I have no doubt that they will be dry in an hour tops due to the INSANE heat that is everyday but especially today, hence the reason that my back is wet. Apart from that though, everything is fantastic. Yesterday a bunch of us wet out to this village to teach some fitness. It was way cool because a lot of the villagers came to participate. It was funny though because our actual fitness part only lasted about 20 minutes but we were there for about 3 or 4 hours. I love this culture because anytime you go to visit someone they will want to talk for a while and then they will feed you, and then sometimes they will want to show you around the village or introduce you to their neighbors so everything takes a long time but I really like it. So when we went to do the fitness they first just chatted with us for a long time. then we had a kava ceremony to welcome us.Kava is crazy and it totally makes your tongue numb, but i tried it anyways. then after that they fed us some sandwiches and cookies and juice which was delicious. finally after all of that we did our excersizing for about 20 minutes. then we played with the little kids which were SOOO cute and played some rugby - touch of course. The after that the locals showed us where they like to go swimming and we went there and swam and jumped off this big rock and stuff and it was way fun. then we did some more stuff which was really cool and fun but this computer is driving me crazy and i'm going to eat.

PALAGI

FIJI IS AMAZING! i don't think i am ever going to go back to america. i am in love with the people here. after 2 minutes of talking you are best friends and these people will do anything for you. i am also in love with how beautiful everything is. when i tell the fijians where i am living - in tavua - they tell me i am on the dry ugly side of the island but its so green and beautiful and when you go up onto the mountains you can see the ocean and it is fabulous. i can't wait to see the other side of the island if this is ugly! also the kids here are basically the cutest things ever. if i marry a fijian man - which i plan to do - i am going to have a million kids because they are SO adorable. one day we volunteered at a primary school for the indian children (fiji is half indians and half fijians) and the kids were the sweetest things ever and they were teaching us songs and dances and games and some hindi words. i can almost count to 10 now in like 4 different languages. i am also trying to learn fijian and the most recent word that i learned is palagi which means white people. i learned this one today when i was walking through a village and a bunch of kids came running out of their houses yelling palagi and pointing at us. it was great. apart from playing with kids me and heather MY BFF (as she likes to call herself) are incharge of the square foot gardens project which is way fun and i'm loving that. also its rad because lots of the people are excited about it so we already have like 3 or 4 planned for both this week and next week. oh ya and one more thing...fiji is about 17 hours ahead of minnesota time so basically i am living in the future right now.