Ni Sa Bula Vinaka!

Sorry for making everyone wait so long for this post! I'm in Fiji, and I'm safe and healthy and everything like that so stop worrying! This post is going to be difficult to write because I've been here for almost four weeks now and so much has happened. I didn't know until the last minute that I'd be coming in to town today so I didn't bring any pictures to post, sorry. Where to begin?

Nadave (pronounced "nandavay")

After arriving in Fiji, all 32 of us stayed at a small college in Nadave for the first week. We all lived together in cabin-like dorms called "bure"s. We spent most of our days listening to various peace corps staff talk on and on and on about PC policies, rules, safety, security, culture adjustment, etc. We started to learn a little language, but we didn't know at the time if we were going to be learning Hindi or Bauan (the most common dialect of Fijian), so everyone learned a tiny bit of both. At the end of the week, we were finally told which language we would be learning and in which village we would spend the next 8 weeks of training. I found out that I will be learning Fijian and my training village is called Naimalavau.

Training village

There are five Peace Corps trainees (PCTs) in Naimalavau and one Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF) named Josefa (or JT). Each of us lives with a different host family in the village. Every weekday morning, we have language and cross-culture training with JT. Then we have lunch with our families. In the afternoon, we have technical training. There are 3 types of volunteers in Fiji: environment, health, and business. So every afternoon we're divided into these three groups for tech training. Then we go home to our families for the rest of the evening. On Saturdays, we usually go into town with our families and Sunday is a day of rest and church. So that's an overview of my daily life.

My family

There are six people in my host family:

My Qei (pronounced "ngay" and means mom) Matalita
My Tamanqu Paula
My three brothers: Epeli (4), Taione (7), and Asaeli (15)
And my sister Ilikaci (13)

I also have a 21 year old brother who lives in capital with his wife. They just had a baby last week and guess what her name is: Nansi Monika Saurara. That's right, my new baby niece was named after me.

Village life

For those of you who thought that I would be coming to a tropical paradise, let me describe my village a bit. It's not near the ocean. The ocean isn't even within walking distance. Actually, yesterday was the first time we got to go swimming and it was raining and we had to do "water safety training." I haven't gotten tan at all for two reasons. 1. It rains all the time, I hardly ever see the sun. And 2. I have stay covered from my shoulders to my ankles whenever I'm in the village, which is always. Our village does have electricity and running water that comes from Suva (the capital of Fiji) so it's safe to drink. However, the water pressure isn't ever high enough for the shower to work so I take bucket baths. If you've never done this before, it's actually not as bad as it sounds. I fill up a bucket of water in the shower room and use a bowl to pour the water on me. You get used to it pretty quick. The village pays for electricity a little differently than we do. It's prepaid. So you go into town and buy however many units of electricity you can afford and you're given a number. Each house has a box on the wall where you type in your number and it tells you how much electricity you have left. If you run out of units, your electricity switches off. Because of this and other costs, not everyone can afford refrigerator or other electric appliances. Though everyone seems to find enough money to buy a tv and dvd player.

I have so much more to write but I have to go. Hopefully I'll be able to use the internet again soon so I can finish writing. Since I can't email very often, I would love to get snail mail! Here's the address is you don't have it yet:

Monica Papp
Peace Corps Fiji
Private Mail Bag
Suva, Fiji

Much love.