Sarah goes to FIJI: Tavua Adventure.

Monday morning, Britt, Audrey, and I left at 6:30 to get to the bus stand and catch our bus to Tavua. It's a 5 hour bus ride. It was so long, and rather uncomfortable if I'm being honest. Luckily I had my ipod with me so I just listened to it the whole time. But they did show a movie on the bus. It was called "the Lost Medallion" and it was about the dumbest kids fighting a cobra king for a magic medallion movie I've ever seen. Oh goodness. But the kids on the bus were SO into it. Kinda funny. These buses stop quite frequently to drop people off and pick up people, but it's only for a few seconds. We stopped twice for 5-10 minutes where people can go to the bathroom and get something to eat. Guys. The bathrooms here. SICK. Not to mention hardly any of them have toilet paper, so you have to bring your own. Some of them cost money. You'd think if they were charging people to go in, the least they could do was invest in some TP and a mop... NOPE. Ah well. Go Fiji. We finally get to Tavua, grab some lunch and head to our first workshop. We went to a Fijian village (Tavua has a lot of Indo-Fijians (Hindus)) in Loloma. These ladies were a RIOT. They were so funny and just the nicest, most loving people ever. We did a workshop where Audrey talked about healthy eating habits, and I talked about Exercise. It went really well! They loved it and participated. It was great. Then we went back to town and got a few groceries for our dinner that night. We stayed with a woman named Irene who works with the GOLD Foundation (the foundation that organizes and helps the women's groups in Tavua). She is Hindu and lives with her husband (Roma), daughter (Chan), and granddaughter (they call her Baby, and I can't remember her name). They live on a farm (goats, cows, chickens, a dog, and a kitten). They are SO funny. Roma showed us all the goats (all the adults were pregnant, and we got to touch the preggo bellies!) and around his farm. Roma is just about the funniest man I've ever met. He was hilarious. Then we started making dinner. We had 3 kinds of curry. Potato/Eggplant, Pumpkin, and chutney. We made lots of roti (those tortillas that we love so much). We made them over an open fire in their yard, and whenever it was time to turn the roti over, Roma would say "FLIP IT, BABY!" he's so funny. He told us stories of how there used to be cannibalism in Fiji and anytime someone would say something about falling in the fire he would say "oh that's ok. We'll just eat you if that happens." Slightly creepy, but mostly funny. The curry was DELICIOUS. Oh my gosh. SO GOOD. I could eat that all day.

While we were making the dinner, a few funny things happened. First off, the granddaughter is a wild child. She is 2 1/2 and she was just everywhere. I was given the responsibility of watching Baby while everyone else worked on dinner. I AM THE BABY WHISPERER. The whole time she was with me, she sat still and did whatever I asked. We sang songs, I taught her the itsy-bitsy spider, and we watched geckos and frogs (there were SO many here I almost threw up. It was kinda gross). Second- while we were watching said frogs and geckos, the little kitten came over to us. It did the coolest/grossest thing I've seen here. There was a gecko climbing on the wall just under a window. The cat came SPRINTING over and parkour jumped onto the wall and grabbed the gecko in its mouth and landed smoothly back on the ground.... and then it started to eat it.... which was gross, but it was an impressive series of events.

Also, Chan made us sugar roti. It was basically 2 small rotis glued together with butter and cinnamon sugar. Delicious. Reminded me of the things Mom makes in the oven. They were so yum. Brit, Chan and I stayed up and watched some Indian Soap Operas and then a movie. Then we went to bed.

Got up the next morning and had some left over curry and roti and some toast. Then we went to our second workshop in an Indo-Fijian village. These women were very kind, but much quieter than the Fijian women. There was also much more of a language barrier (most of them only spoke Hindi). But the workshop went alright, and then they prepared a huge lunch for us. It was all delicious, but pretty spicy! I started to not feel so well, and then we got picked up in our ride- a pick-up truck with a tarp over the back and handles to hold onto. Then we proceeded to travel up the bumpiest road I've been on to get to the school we were going to be at. I almost threw up about 15 times. I felt horrible by the time we got there. But we were very early, which was lucky, because they changed times on us. We were supposed to do our thing from 2-3, but they wanted us to change it to 1:30-2:30, so we got started right away. These students were SO polite, well-behaved, and VERY cute. We played Sharks and Minnows (on land of course), keep off the ground (with balloons), animal noises, missionary tag, and a few others. It was a blast. We talked with them for a bit about working together and helping each other out, but it was mostly just really fun.

Then we got to take the bus with a bunch of them back into town. That was a fun bus ride! Got off the bus and found the bust station for our ride back to Suva. Except the next bus was going to leave until 5:45 and it was 4:00. So we had a long wait, but it was alright. We got some pineapple (which was REALLY not ripe and burned our mouths!) and scones (more like cornbread here) and waited for the bus. It was a really long bus ride back as well, and pretty bumpy. We got home just before 11:00 PM. I showered and then went to bed. It was an awesome trip, but a lot of traveling for only 2 days (not even full days). Today I am super exhausted, but that's ok. Only a week left, which is super weird. I'm partially ready to come back, partially wanting to stay here forever. It's a hard life.

Moce and much love,
Sarah

PS Picture time!

-Talking to the Women's Group in Loloma