FIJI FIJI

I'm just going to add some random pictures this week and talk a little about them.  We have been busy teaching our classes.  I teach the primary school teachers, K-3, reading strategies once a week.  Kim is teaching a technology and computer class twice a week.  It has teachers from both the secondary school and the primary school.  It's been a really fun class with great participants.  I feel like I'm pretty competent with the computer, but I've learned a few things myself.  I'm also still tutoring about 10 students.  I started last week working with a year 9 student.  He is new to the school this school year, which started last January.  He supposedly attended schools in a remote village where he is from.  Unfortunately, I don't think he has previously had any school before now.  So I am teaching a 15 year old beginning reading.  I've only worked with him 3 days because he was absent both Thursday and Friday, but I feel like he's already started to make some progress and when he left on Wednesday he thanked me more than once.  "Thank you Sister.  Thank you!"  It was really sweet.
Here's a few pictures of me working with Waisake.  

We took a river trip with some of the other missionary couples a couple of Saturday's ago when Elder and Sister Poll were visiting.  After going up the river to a large waterfall they took us to a village where they showed us some of the traditional Fiji cultural activities. 

 Cooking chicken and vegetables in a pit with hot rocks.  He is getting the food out to prepare it for our lunch.  He is putting it into a basket woven from palm fronds.

 Doing some traditional dance.  Very similar to the one the kindergartener did at our school.

The women doing a traditional dance.  They are wearing tapa skirts.  They pound the wood thin and mesh it together somehow to almost be a canvas type material.  Then they paint it. These are also used as hanging decorations in the homes.  They are beautiful.  

 They performed a Kava Ceremony for us.  Kava is a drink they beat out of some plant.  It looks like mud and they say it tastes as bad.  But they drink it for some unknown crazy reason and they have different rituals that go along with it.  Apparently the Kava makes your mouth numb and the more you drink the more numb you become.  Obviously this is something we don't participate in!!!

 The lunch they provided for us.  Very traditional Fijian food.

 Starting in the back of the boat:  Elder & Sister Mendenhall, Elder & Sister Poll, Elder & Sister Hinkson and of course us.  It had been raining  right before we got in the boat, so some of us kept our ponchos on.  Plus they helped keep us a little dry while going up the river.

Haha!  Sister Poll's so fun!  They transported us to a bamboo raft that they use to float their vegetables down the river to take them to market.  That was quite the experience.  Sister Poll is showing how we were all feeling!  Poor Sister Mendenhall got her leg caught between two of the bamboo poles.  She gave us a bit of a scare but she was fine. 

 Several waterfalls flowed into the river on our journey.

This is the waterfall we were heading for.  It was a little bit of a hike into the jungle.  But beautiful and not difficult to get there.

The hike coming back out from the waterfall.

 Weaving a basket with palm fronds.  So cool.

Showing how strong these baskets are.  Pretty amazing.

 This woman was weaving a mat.  I think they all have these mats in their homes.  I would love to have one.  They're super smooth and comfy on the feet.

 A painted tapa.  This one was painted using stencils.  Some are hand painted with brushes.  They paint using natural dyes from plants.

  This woman was stenciling the tapa material.

 Saturday morning it rained and stopped for the most of the day.  Sunday afternoon it started again.  This was a steady hard rain.  It continued through the night and through the whole day Monday.  One of the missionary couples measured unofficially at least 12" of rain.  I've never seen rain like this in my life.  It's hard to tell in the above picture, but this is the school and all the rain.  Amazingly, with that much rain most of it just runs away.  There are big puddles all over but really no flooding. But after all that rain, the picture below shows what the roads looked like.  The pot-holes are EVERYWHERE and they're big and deep!  Roads are not the best in Fiji.

Elder and Sister Blackburn, the 2 in the front, were going home last Friday, and they wanted to have one last outing.  It was Fiji's Independence Day and there was no school.  They took us to this waterfall which was really just off one of the main roads.  Then we went out to a beach Kim and I discovered a couple of weeks before.  It's secluded and hardly anyone goes there and extremely BEAUTIFUL!

 Kim and Elder Blackburn walking along the beach.  I love the way the sand is like a mirror.  So reflective.

Kids playing and digging in the sand.  The sand is almost black and it has gold sparkles in it.

Different areas of the beach has different patterns in the sand.  So interesting.

Elder and Sister Blackburn in front of "the tree of life."  They have the coolest trees in Fiji.  The Blackburns are from Centerville.  They've been gone just over a week.  They worked up at the LDS College with us.  We really miss them.  

 These 2 girls are Methodists and were with a small group of other youth and they were handing out flyers to everyone on the beach.  Doing Missionary work.  We loved talking to them and were so proud of their bravery and their own testimonies.

This is Fiji's No. 1 pass-time...playing rugby.  This guy about creamed me as he ran with the ball playing with a bunch of kids. 

Is this not the cutest little girl that you've ever seen.  Had to take a picture.

The last video I have to include.  The temple had some minor work done on it last week.  After our river trip, we went to the temple which is where we always meet as missionaries whenever we are going somewhere.  I don't know what prompted this, but the workers were out taking a break and then they started singing.  If there is one thing the Fijians are good at it's singing.  WOW!  You've got to listen to these men.  

Farewell Elder and Sister Blackburn.  They served the Fijian people very well.  They are greatly missed.