Wonderful Weekend- Thanks, Fiji!

 For the first time in my life I feel like I've BEEN somewhere for 2 years...I don't have any of the typical feelings of 'oh time went by so fast' or 'where has the time gone'. I'm not saying it's a bad feeling...it's actually quite nice to just just nod my head and say 'YES, I DID that. And it was good.'

We had a pretty big training this week (new volunteers are HERE- ahh! I'm helping train them on a bit of the Indian stuff and how to deal with Safety & Security issues), and after that a small group of us headed to an 'eco lodge' here on Viti Levu that was of course run by the local village. (sidenote: I'm realizing that people back home think we go to resort's all the time or feel like we 'hit the jackpot'. But I would just like to say although the places we go to are naturally beautiful [which we DO appreciate]..we're still not in paradise. The local 'lodge's' are rustic to say the least and often times we still feel like we're in the village/settlement. As Americans we have all these expectations of what a resort/vacation should be like and 95% of the time those expectations are unmet. For example: having your feet be dirty/sandy the entire time you're on vacation, being hot/sticky the entire time because of lack of air conditioning, our reservations/rooming situations never being what we asked for/planned on, and having a margarita or a Corona in your hand is just not existent. And I don't want to complain by any means, I just want to give people an understanding. EVERYWHERE in the world has positives and negatives to where you live.)

SO ANYWAYS- back to the good stuff: we had a SUPER fun weekend played volleyball, played on the black sand beaches (cool side fact: white sandy beaches come from parrot-fish eating the coral and then small sand particles come out of their booties. However, black sandy beaches means that there is a river/water source that flows from inland (near volcanic rock) and flows down to the beach. The black sand is much more fine because the particles break off in smaller pieces when the river carries it- COOL), had good food (fresh curried prawns, lovo, and coconut mussels- these things are HEAVENLY), and then went on this Dolphin Watch + Snorkel excursion the last day! AWESOME!

Saw around 100 spinner dolphins...they come in to a bit shallower waters, near large mass of crescent moon shaped coral and then head out to feed at night. They broke up into smaller 'clique's' and would swim in unison..so neat to watch. And some of them would do tricks for us, jumping in and out of the water spinning forward and laterally! Then we went to a different area to snorkel in more shallow waters (I mean...we still couldn't see the bottom) but the coral WAS GIANT and the species were so diverse. Just really neat. I didn't see anything new really but we did see a small nudibranch black with lime green design) and some really beautiful and bright colored small fish (orange, magenta's rich purple's).

ON the way home we managed to find transport in a minivan that came by mistake..so we were jammin' out to Fijian Christian music- really beautiful...like you guys have no idea. It was a very surreal moment...looking out the window, reflecting on the past two years. After that we came home and I somehow churned out a full load of laundry (by hand as always), a banana cake AND a cobbler. took me 2.5 seconds to fall straight asleep. Thank you Jesus for a wonderful weekend!