Leaving...

I have been awful the last several months about getting up here, but I did want to post one more entry to say that I am currently in the process of closing my service here is Fiji and will be returning to the States in the very near future. I leave in a day or so to begin a shortish trip (about a month) to the south island of New Zealand, Thailand, and Cambodia (if anyone knows people in these places feel free to pass on that info...). I return to the States on Sept 13th or so where I will be meeting up with the Bickel's in Arizona for a mini reunion. I then return to Cincinnati to see the rest of the fam on Sept 26th where I will continue looking for further employment (if anyone knows of any opportunities there please share as well). I've already applied to several vacancies, but it appears that this may be a couple month process, so I have yet to hear anything concrete back.

I have had a great experience here in Fiji and in many ways I am sad to go. However, I am excited for the trip, seeing everyone at home, and figuring out what my next step is going be.

Thanks for reading....

March

Monopoly in the hospital (She had rat-lung worm! -look it up: http://www.cdc.gov/NCIDOD/dpd/parasites/angiostrongylus/factsht_angiostrongylus.htm)

Nico, Sarah, and I On swinging bridge in Taveuni

Natewa Bay

MH burning (courtesy of Fiji Times)

Well, here we are in March, and life is moving here in Fiji. I was just talking with someone the other day about the difference between this year and last year around this time. My first year I always felt like I had more time than I knew what to do with and was begging for enough work to fill up a day; now my general feeling is that there isn't enough time in a day/month/before I leave to get done everything I would like. I am getting ever closer to finishing my tree planting endeavor in Labasa. It has been a long time in planning and getting appropriate approvals and the like, but we will hopefully start this weekend, which is very exciting. I have been sitting down with people over the last couple weeks to plan the renovations of the children's park we are working on. We still have sometime before work can begin, it is usually advisable to wait to start construction until after the rainy season (late April, early May), but there is a surprisingly large amount of planning that needs to go into something like this. [If anyone out there knows anything about building playgrounds shoot me an email...you might just have earned yourself a life long friend...] National Youth Day is coming up on March 23rd, and I have been asked to speak at the event they are holding here in Labasa about climate change and Fiji's environmental issues. It is exciting, but a little daunting; working out a 20 minute talk that encompasses all of that while giving people things they can do individually to mitigate these problems is going to take some work, but it is a rare opportunity to talk to a large audience of young people and I'm trying to make the best of it. My environmental group is also gearing up for another round of waste management workshops with local women's and youth groups as well as organizing environmental movie nights with local schools.

Rachel and I are shopping around a proposal for a poster campaign to encourage sustainable catch sizes. We have the poster essentially designed, we are just looking for funding for the printing and the transportation to do the awareness work that will accompany it. It also looks like I will be going down to her side of the island to do some of the marine protected area monitoring trainings she will be holding in several villages. Looking forward to that, as it's been awhile since I've been out on the water.

Track season is also in full swing. We had our interhouse meet last week (which is essentially tryouts) and we have started official practices this week. It actually looks like we have some good distance runners this year (as opposed to last year when we only had 1 come out for the team), which is exciting. Not that I take issue with coaching short distance runners, I just feel I know a bit more about the LD training work. Our first meet will be in April, and the national meet will be held in May.

I had a reasonably interesting birthday. A couple people were in town and we decided to do a brief tour of the bars here in Labasa. As we were sitting and eating a lateish dinner at our fourth or fifth stop the waitress came up and told us that their was a fire on the main street and we ought to step outside to see it. Initially we wrote it off, finished our dinner and prepared to move on to the next establishment. We stepped out onto the main street to find more people than I have ever seen on the streets of Labasa watching the largest supermarket here completely engulfed in flames. It was one of the crazier things I have seen here. The local fire department did a surprisingly good job at containing the fire (the building abuts a couple others and could have easily caught half the town on fire). The full story can be found on the Fiji Times website here: http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?ref=archive&id=115672 ...sometimes they move their links around, so if you would like to track it down manually it is in the March second edition under the title: Inferno, an all-night fight to save a town.

That's about all of the big news for the time being. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with all my leave. Again, it figures that I have all this vacation time at the same time that i have all this work to do. I'll maybe be planning a diving trip in early April, but with the rest I am still looking for options. [If anyone knows of a not obvious way to get cheap flights to New Zealand, Australia, Vanuatu, or anywhere else around here they may also be become my best friend]

A New Year

Pictures from "Clean-up Fiji Day"

I swear I more energetic that morning that I look...

If you don't ask me where this picture came from I promise not to lie

Well, here we are 2009. I haven't written up here since October, and I apologize. Call it a New Years resolution to do better through the next several months. Instead of covering the last 3 months of things that have happened, I might just skip up to where we are for brevity sake.

On second thought, maybe a bit of what has been missed: The holidays were great. I spent a good deal of December on vacation. Rachel had a friend visit at the beginning of December, so I went down with them to Viti Levu, did some diving (which was fantastic, lots of eels and sharks..) and did some outdoor type stuff. I also ended up accompanying them to Taveuni, where we did some camping, some snorkeling, and other forms of merriment.

I went out to Viani village for Christmas, then back out to Taveuni for a large new years celebration (there were about 20 volunteers that came out). Had a really good time, despite aquiring some food poisoning that kept me from doing the diving I had wanted to do. After I got back I spend a couple days here in Labasa then had to go down to Suva for a training. It was supposed to be a three day deal, but while I was down there Fiji was hit by several tropical depressions in a row which caused wide-scale flooding (particularly in the west around Nadi, Ba, and Sigatoka and in the North around Labasa). As such, many of the roads in these areas closed, boats weren't traveling across the strait, and all the airports were closed for several days. This prolonged my stay down there on the order of a week or so. By the time I finally made it back up to my house it felt like I had been gone for a month. The last couple weeks I have been working on getting the house back in order and getting back into the swing of things at work.

There are plans for several projects this year. We are trying to get some trees and things planted on the main street of Labasa. It looks like we will get final approval on the placement and the monies in the next week or so, and the planting should be finished by march (my fingers are crossed). We are also still working on renovating a couple parks, which will hopefully start in the next several weeks as well. There are new people in charge of fisheries, the labasa town council and the provincial office, so I am hoping to sit down with them and work out a plan for this year. Hopefully these guys will be a bit more sympathetic to the work I am trying to do here than the last group. Track season starts next week as well, which is exciting. We're hoping to get more of a head start on it than we did last year and build on our succeses.

Otherwise, I am starting to think more and more about what comes next after Peace Corps. We were just given the dates of our closing conference (mid april), which really woke me up to the fact that I do not have that much longer here. So the search is on for the next place. It's a daunting task, as I feel there are several different avenues and options to consider. I'm trying not to stress too much about it, but July (my completion date) is looming and I think I have been asked somewhere on the order of 5-6 dozen times what I'm going to do when this is over. Patience is called for.... or something like that...

I'm going out to a friend's village this weekend, and then I am hoping to find someplace to watch the superbowl on monday (go cardinals...).

Anyway, I hope all is well out there. If you have emailed or something and I haven't gotten back I apologize and assure you I will get too it. I'll get back up here reasonably soon.