Home Sweet Home

Sunrise over my island. This was when I was riding on the ferry back to the main land to go to an agricultural fair.

Taiyo! This is the dog that more or less belongs to my family. He comes to hang out sometimes and I managed to corner him the other day and give him a bath. I'm surprised he didn't do a back flip when I let him out of my shower, he was running around like a maniac. Sadly, he has a very short tail because the original owners cut it off when he was young. This is apparently common here but I have yet to understand why.

My luxurious full sized bed! That's right it's bigger than my bed back home. Although, what you can't see is that the springs inside have all sort of piled up on one end making this goofy rolling lump about two-thirds the way across and causing the end that I get in on to have no support whatsoever. It's quite deceiving and I seem to forget this fact every time I go to sit down on the end of it (actually it's kind of high so by sit down I clearly mean jump) and end up just sliding right off!

The other room in my house that is not the bedroom. Did I mention how much I love my house? The gas stove is awesome! That's it over there on the left, placed on top of the termite ridden old wooden stand. The blue bucket under the sink is for my food waste, which right now goes to the pigs until I get my compost set up. The sink leaks a little, hence the bin down below. The large silver thing on the counter is my official Peace Corps water filter. The posters on the door (I have 3 doors the main one being just out of view on the left) are of the most common food fish in Fiji. Frighteningly enough, many of the fish up there are the pacific relatives of many of the fish back home in the Giant Ocean Tank. The other day in fact, I ate a needlefish that was about the size of an Atlantic needlefish...

The other half of the room. My table is rarely sat at being that the thing to do is eat on the floor, although, unless I have a visitor over I usually sit in a chair and eat at the little pink table there facing out the door so I can yell at people as they walk by. I hang all non canned food to keep it away from ants and rats and mice and everything else...but sometimes it's a losing battle no matter what I do. The table is laden with all the spices I brought from home. I was originally very excited about this and about using them but as it turns out, spending 7 weeks within the same suitcase caused them all to taste the like a combination of garlic and cajun (regardless of how well they were individually wrapped).

My sitting area, complete with maps of Fiji, environmental posters, dead flowers on the shelf and my dear guitar. That would be door number three to the left and is directly opposite door number one. Those blue curtains are the entrances to my bedroom area. The thing I love most about my house is that there is always a lot of light!

There she is! That blue house in the background is my bathroom/shower.

The bathroom/shower. Flush toilet and a large shower with shelving and a tile floor. It's all really great, although no hot water, alas...

Can you spot my roommate? His name is Larry and he and his brothers tend to like that particular corner of my room including all of my hanging clothes. Larry will continue to be my roommate because I am too chicken to kill him. I don't know if you can actually tell but he is the length of my palm (longest leg to longest leg)! You try to kill that as it runs maniacally all over the place!!

One of my sisters crossing the Prince Williams Bridge. It is about 20 ft across, 4 ft high on the far end during low tide and 6 ft high on the near end. Shortly after this was taken the log she was walking on collapsed under the weight of two rather large gentlemen. So there is definitely no safety net anymore since the third log on the other end is too far from the center one. The other day I was crossing it with my sister to go training on the trails. I was a few steps behind her on the wobbling bridge when Taiyo ran up out of no where from behind and knocked me off! I managed to grab the log as I fell and did this graceful roll underneath it while managing to cling on having wrapped my legs and hands around it as best as I could. I then had to shimmy up to where there was land before I could dismount. I've never seen my sister laugh so hard.

Wailevu (ok actually that means big water, but it's only called that because of the river). This is my family's house for 6 months out of the year. In November, they'll move back down and a guy from Austria moves in for the winter. This is where my garden is located.

The view towards the ocean while standing on the bridge.

Sunset towards the main land! That island there is called Naigani.

The black sand beach in front of my village. I went running up the coast the other day to the next village over and nearly died on multiple occasions because once the beach ends it becomes slippery jagged rock. Won't be doing that again soon...