Sorry folks....

Ok, so I've been an awful blogger the past several weeks, and I apologize. I have been a bit busy getting used to the new job schedule and traveling a bit. I started work at the provincial office here at the begginning of August, and so far everything has been going pretty well. Most of the work I will be doing is in the field, and as such the few trips I have made out into the field so far have been really great. A couple weeks ago I began trips out into the province to generally introduce myself to the villages in the surrounding area. These trips have been good, and there is quite a bit of work to be done. Several of the villages have wonderful ideas for projects that I really hope can get off the ground; there is one that is very interested in doing some small scale prawn aquaculture, another village has plans for some pearl farming off it's coast, and another wants to start a diving/kayaking/surfing ecotourism venture. I also made a trip up to the Namuka tikina (a tikina is a group of between 4 and 10 villages that work together for governing purposes, the equivilent in the states would be something like a county) for the opening of one of their marine protectect areas. They have had their MPA in place for three years now, but are openning it to fishing for a week to help prepare for the national Methodist Conference that will be held in our province this year (methodist is the predominent religion in fiji, and the conference is easily one of the largest events held in fiji each year; they are expecting over a 1000 people this year and the hosting province is expected to provide food for all the participants for the entire week in which it is held). The trip was great, and it was really nice to finally get out on the water for a little bit up here.
So, as I said before, the field work has been really good so far, but unfortunately the office work has left a bit to be desired. With the conference looming on the horizon the office has been quite busy, and I think a bit unprepared for my arrival. Since most of my work outlined in my assignment is out in the field, there is a bit of a gap in what is expected of me in the office; which has led to a lot of workless days sitting around my desk when I'm not out traveling somewhere. On the bright side, the office downtime has helped me a bit with my language, and I am optomistic that as I spend more time there that I will find my niche.
Otherwise, everything else has been going very well. My expectations for Peace Corps service have been quite a bit different than the reality of my assignement, in both good and bad ways. I certainly did not expect to be living in a semi-urban environment with running water and electricity 24/7. I also did not expect to be living around so many other volunteers. There are 5 of us specifically stationed in Labasa, and 6 or 7 in the outlying area (1-2 of which are usually in each weekend); so I have quite a bit of contact with other Americans on a regular basis.... which has been great socially, but is going to make my continued cultural and language education a bit more dfficult (compared to those volunteers that are in a community of all natives, which is the case with the majority of the volunteers here).
Thanks to everyone who has sent letters and things/called or emailed me. It is really nice to hear from all of you, and makes the bit of homesickness that I feel from time to time much easier to get through. A special thanks goes out to Jason Hilton, who was the first person to send me something to hang on the walls in my house; I greatly look forward to more letters of that nature. I hope all is well with everyone, and I will certainly post up here again very soon.

Quick note

I found a way that you can send me free text messages from your computer to my phone. For those interested, email me and i'll give you the details (aricbickel83@yahoo.com, and please identify yourself in the email....).

A better post will be on the way soon.