Busy April

The Dog's first time at the beach

Savusavu Bay

Rachel and I with the interim prime minister

It’s been a busy last couple weeks. Although we did not, as scheduled, start our village visits. Those are now scheduled to begin tomorrow, and I am hoping to catch a ride with the team that will be visiting all the coastal villages from Udu point down by boat. It’s a great opportunity and I hope it works out, but I have a few responsibilities to tie up here before I would be able to go, and it may be a on the wire decision as to whether I can.

The track team I have been coaching ran in their zone meet (the equivalent to our regional meet in the states) two Fridays ago. We finished 2^nd, behind a school that fielded a team 4 times the size of ours, and finished with gold medals in 15 events. We will be taking the individuals/relay teams from those 15 events to Suva for the national meet at the end of April (I believe the dates are the 25^th and 26^th). It’s pretty exciting, and I felt that our boys and girls had a very good showing. I am greatly looking forward to the national meet, which apparently a big deal is made of, and it will be an experience traveling and camping with the kids. There are a couple volunteers up here that will also be accompanying their school’s teams down to the games, so I can only imagine that some friendly competition will arise….

Last week was pretty granola, but I did make a weekend trip down to Savusavu. Several of us came in, and had a belated Easter and birthday gathering for one of the volunteers in town there. Our visit coincided with the current prime ministers visit, and a few of us randomly ran into him at one of the hotels there and promptly accosted him for photos and conversation. Consequently enough, I also brought the dog down (who is named after the prime minister……) and took him out to the beach for the first time. He wasn’t exactly all that excited about it, but he now knows that the earth is not covered by just land; and important lesson for anyone. I also say a bid of the Aberdeen Rugby 7’s tournament, and the U.S. team made it to the quarter finals! I know that very few of you (if any) were aware of this, but it’s kind of a big deal because the U.S. team is usually abysmal. All the people here in Fiji were quite surprised (as they are not used to the U.S. even making it out of pool play), and I was rooting hard for a Fiji vs USA final, but alas, it was not meant to be as Fiji lost to New Zealand in the quarters and USA lost to South Africa. Maybe one day….

Otherwise, all is well. I just sent in my expression of interest to be involved with the next group’s training, so hopefully one or more of my ideas will be accepted. I am also continuing to prepare for the race in May, which is quickly approaching, and it looks like I might have a state side visitor around that time, which is all kinds of exciting. If I make it on this trip I’m not sure when I will post again, but hopefully I will be able to find some time in the next week or so.