AU LOMANI VITI

basically right now my life rocks. the only problem that i see is that i leave in just over a week. the even bigger problem is that means school starts entirely too soon. i am not ready to accept that fact! so i think i will stay here forever. honestly i would if it weren't for....well i'm not exactly sure what it is thats pulling me back to america. i guess its gotta be the food and maybe hot showers. bottom line - i'm happy. real happy. this weekend we went to a deserted island with this man that kristy met on a bus. he used to be in the peace core here but now he and his wife live here and take volunteers and peace corers out on his boat to fish and snorkel and chill out on some secret island. it was wayyyyy fun and the snorkeling was incredible! i felt like i was in the movie finding nemo. we totally went to the drop off.
yesterday i went over to my friend's house for lunch. i ate a fish...off the bone....it still had a tail...thank goodness the head was chopped off. also i learned that i really like cabbage that is cooked in coconut milk or something.
rad weekend. rad life.

DANCE PARTIES AND BASKETBALL

so ive been doing a lot of 'work' lately. on saturday night i got home from our sleepover and rope swing/river adventure in vanuakula - my favorite village, and upon arrival to our beautiful home i was invited to a birthday party for the cousin of one of our friends from church. OF COURSE i accepted and headed out to who knows where. it was sweeeeet. there was a huge meal and then afterwards there was lots of dancing. it was some sort of big family thing but they assured us that it was ok that we were there so we dominated the dance floor. then on sunday evening a woman that helps us a lot with our projects and stuff just had her daughter get married so naturally we were all invited to the wedding. it was a christian wedding but indian people so we all dressed up in sari's. HOT. only problem with that was that there was a bit too much skin showing for my liking and wayyy too much fabric to dance freely but of course i made it happen. after the actual wedding there was a dance party and the mother of the bride was like 'oh will you people go up there and dance please'. no problemo, we were up there and rockin the house down! it was so much fun and everybody was staring and it was hilarious. afterwards this indian lady came up to me and was like. ' oh i like you people's dancing very much. where did you learn it from.' she then proceeded to tell me that my sari was untidy but that i should marry her son who is a bee farmer. as tempting as it was i declined that offer along with a few others that night. then monday night was ward fhe and even if i didn't love the ward i would have gone just to partake of the DELICIOUS refreshments. but i do love the ward and we got to play basketball with them. OF COURSE the mormon church will have a basketball court wherever it is...even if its the only one in this entire country. we played americans vs fijians and i thought that we'd defiately win since basketball is an american sport and nobody plays it here. WRONG. the fijians owned. and i should have seen it coming. they've got mad hops, speed, and they are huge so they've got intimidation going for them too. but as badly as we lost it was still soooooo fun and as expected the refreshments were splendid.
it may sound like all i do is play, but i am doing work as well. i built a beautiful garden at a school yesterday. it turns out that that school is the poorest school in the area and they reallllly appreciate us coming and helping so that was great. it was so funny watching the kids build the frame for the garden though because they were using coconut tree trunks as the frame so all these 10 year olds were trying to roll the trees all over and actually doing a really good job of it.
oh ya i got pics of that too and i tried to put them up but as is the usual the computer is being weird and i can't put any up. SORRY MOOOMMMMMM
oh goodness i am running out of time and i don't want to pay for this internet time.

BUSSES

well i had pics all ready to put up on here but for some reason this compy is not gonna let me put em up. sorry mom. i'll try again soon.
in other news theres not much new to say. were busy eerday but basically doing the same stuff. its pretty awesome though. yesterday was fun. we went to teach health and fitness and stuff at a school that is about 2 hours away by bus. some people would consider that bus ride long , bumpy and boring one but i LOVE the bus rides, maybe a bit too much. naturally when i got on i went straight to the back because everybody knows cool kids sit in the back. so there i was squashed between two fijian men and one of them started talking to me. it was fine except for the fact that he was missing one of his front teeth. this doesn't bother me because its somewhat rare to find a person here that has all their teeth. the problem with this one was that he was eating and talking to me and every so often a little chunk of his food would come flying out at me through the hole that should have been a tooth. not so good but he was a nice old man so its ok i guess. well eventually we got to the school and i got paired up with a girl named noelle to teach health lessons. it was pretty good but the kids were so quiet for the whole time so at the end when we talked about physical health we went outside and played some games. glad to say that they really liked that and i think that saved our lesson. but it was really fun and the teachers all said they wanted us to come back so we'll probably get to go back to the school and do more stuff so thats exciting. then the bus came and as always we were not ready so we ended up running to the bus and looking like fools. nothing new. but it was a great ride back because i sat next to this girl who i thought was like 25 or something, turns out she's 15 and still in high school. but we were talking and she was really nice and stuff and then she asked where i go to university and i told her brigham young university and she was like 'oh yeah i have heard of that. i saw it on the internet and i want to go there.' she's not mormy but she wants to go there and study law so that was pretty sweet and i think if she gets a scholarship she'll go and that would be SWEEEEEEET. then this woman behind me was like 'excuse me sorry to disturb you but are you a member?' and i was like member of what? and she was like 'the lds church' and my mind was blown because there are not many members here and it was so cool because she is a member from suva but she was coming over to visit her family here and she heard me talking about byu and thought i was a member so we talked for a long time and, bottom line it was a pretty sweet bus ride. oh also i got to eat yum o's which are delish so that made it awesome too. funny thing is that i got off the bus and this girl that i had met on a bus about a week earlier popped up out of nowhere and was like JANEY!! where have you been? and chatted with me for a while and then when a cute boy got on the bus that she was delaying getting on she quickly handed us our stuff that she had been looking at and ran onto the bus saying 'sorry i have to go! i have to go!' hahahhaah it was soooo funny. good old pow. so after that we got home and went over to the soccer field where we saw a bunch of our local friends and hung out with them until dinner time and it was just a really great day. the end.

New People

This past saturday 3 new people came to join us. First of all thats crazy becasue i can't really believe that i have already been here for 6 weeks and i only have like 5 more left. its also pretty funny tho because they are all very tired and confused and don't really know whats going on and that is exactly how i felt when i got here so its nice to not be that person right now. its also funny because all of their white t-shirts are soooo white and its a little bit shameful to see how dirty our clothes really are. the new people are cool but i don't really know them that well so thats all i have to say about that. meanwhile the gardening continues to be excellent. in most of the villages we are in right now they already know how to make them so we basically just come and bring seeds and then we get to hang out with the people for a while and jsut chat with them which is really fun. this morning we went to a village and presented all of our projects to them to see which ones they were interested in and they said that they wanted all of them and that they want us to come back every week for about a month to teach them and build gardens with them so thats pretty exciting. oh ya yesterday we got home from the weekend and found two or three mice in our house which normally would really freak me out but something weird has happened to me and i don't even care that much anymore. its more just annoying rather than gross or scary. however one of the boys killed one of the mice. i believe he did it with a fly swatter so that must have been interesting. well my thoughts seem to be all over the place and nothing monumental has really happened recently hence the reason this post is probably so boring. basically everyday is great even if nothing crazy happens. i love it so much and the weather has really cooled down since we first got here. so thats nice. oh ya i have more pics but not with me right now but i'll work on it for next time maybe.

LELUVIA

last weekend was the coolest thing ever. i think i actually died and went to heaven and then somehow made it back to earth or something. on friday, me and 4 friends took a 5 hour bus ride to suva - the largest city in the south pacific and one of two cities in fiji. a few of my friends had been there before and made some awesome friends that live there and are pretty well off...they own an island. sooo they invited us to go with them on a trip to their island for the weekend. of course we accepted the invite and BONUS they are aweeesoommmeee people. so they took us to their house in the morning. sidenote, they have abeautiful home that overlooks the ocean and used to belong to the king of fiji. but anyways they took us to a boat launch place and we boated about 45 mins to leluvia aka their provate island. IT WAS SOOOO AMAZING! the water was clearer than anything i've ever seen and the food was good and basically i was loving my life. at night when we were having a bonfire on the beach all these people started busting out brownies and cookies and that was when i found out i was in heaven. the next morning the boy of the family we went with got baptized. however it just so happened that a tropicl storm hit right then. let me tell you that never have i seen more intense rain. 5 seconds in this rain meant you were totally drenched. so of course we ran around in it and went for a walk around the islan. along our wak i forgot that everything was soaking wet and decided to climb a coconut tree. OOPS IT WAS SO SLIPPERY AND I FELL OFF. so funny anyways we hung out for a long time and then it was time to goso we boated home and then caught the bus home to tavua. the family gave us an open invite for anytime we want to come back and hang out with them. i will be taking advantage of that. definately. so many more cool things happened but as always i can't stand this computer and especially this keyboard. that is why you must not make fun of all the typos in here. whatev

VANUAKULA

yesterday i woke up and knew it was going to be a fantastic day. how did i know? because i was going to my favorite village of all time: VANUAKULA! this village is fantastic but first i had to get there. it is about 2 hours away if you go on the bus so that is always an adventure. the first bus was pretty normal. i drifted off to sleep for a little bit which is actually one of the best things ever because it is early morning so the sun is on your face but the wind keeps it nice and cool...perfection. then we got to ba which is a town that is half way to vanuakula and there we switch busses but we were hungry so we went to teh best bakery in all of fiji (in my opinion) and i got a apple cinnamon pastry thing which was pretty excellent. then on to the village. we boarded the nicest bus i have ever stepped foot on in fiji or america. it had a huge tv in front and air con and such cushy seats. so heather, rachel and i are riding this bus and on the tv they are blasting this indie movie which was hilarious, thank goodness they had subtitles. oh ya and luckily we didn't die becasue i watched the bus driver for a little bit and he was watching the road half the time and the tv show the other half. also whilst riding in this fancy bus, the bus drivers little helper guy that collects the money wrote out the bus schedule and gave it to me. it was very nice and i didn't think much of it until i saw at the bottom it said. "ALL IS WELL. RAJ." hahaha i BUSTED up laughing. i showed heather and she lost it too. im now realizing it doesn't sound as funny as it was but trust me it was HILAR. finally we got to vanuakula and of course they didn't fail to be my faaaaaaaaaav village. their so funny and friendly and they love to joke around with us. a few weeeks ago i told this one woman, vere, to call heather heifer becasue for some reason its a lot easier for fijians to say heifer than heather and ever since then she calls her heifer and i die laughing every time. oh yeah, she knows that heifer means cow which makes it all the better. then we went up to this boy's house who had gotten his garden ready to plant but before we put the seeds in he invited us into his house and we watched justin beiber music videos for about 20 minutes. classic. um a lot more stuff happened which was excellent and further proof of my love for that place but i'm getting bored of typing so i think i'm done now.

HAPPY 4TH

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!!! The 4th of July is an American holiday so when you try to celebrate it in another country it gets very interesting and you have to be creative. Typically the 4th of July includes but is not limited to playing on the lake, eating hot dogs, and watching fireworks. This year however it included church, some casual "family" soccer, and a dinner of chicken, rice, tomato chutney, boiled eggs and lots of other random food. One excellent thing that helped me feel a big more american was that we had some strange red white and blue string that we hung around the house and some napkins with american flags on them that we used to decorate. Oh ya and a few of us had gone out the day before and bought ingredients to make chocolate poo poos or chocolate no-bakes (whichever name you prefer) so courtney and I made up a batch of those in the afternoon as well. all in all it was an excellent 4th of July, however un-traditional it was. A side note on the soccer game we played: there is a little 12 year old boy whom i have befriended that came and played with us. His name is Marika (pronounced like america without the a) and he is basically amazing at soccer and was blowing us all away. finally we asked him if he plays on any soccer teams and we find out that he plays on the junior NATIONAL team for fiji and he is basically mvp for his team that was going to go play in France this year but it got cancelled. that made all of us feel a lot better about being dominated by a twelve year old boy. however i WILL get his autograph and photo because he WILL be famous one day i am positive.

other than that there is nothing too new to report on. I have tried passionfruit fanta and pinapple fanta and decided that they are both way better than orange or grape or whatever flavors we get in the US. Now i must go because i'm hopefully building a garden today and i need to find out a good replacement for vermiculite. HOW EXITING!