Un-posted Post

This post is from my first week here!

Bula! My updates won’t always be this frequent, but I wanted to have a short update that I landed in Fiji this morning. And, after traveling for 12 hours on an overnight flight, we were ready to begin training. I successfully managed to stay awake until now. It’s 6:51PM, Thursday, September 3, 2015. On the positive side, we landed right as the sun was rising and were greeted with the Fijian version of a mariachi band. I can barely hold my eyes open while I type this today, but it is so worth it. This island is beautiful, and I will have pictures after I figure out how to get them off my camera. 

We have been training with the Tonga volunteers and a fun fact about Tonga is that even though they are in the same time zone, they are over the International Date Line! They are exactly 24 hours behind us and they will be flying back in time. The idea of relativity of time is fascinating. Even though, technically, in the U.S.A you are in the past, you are still at the same present as the volunteers over here in Fiji.

We had our welcome ceremony complete with the consumption of Kava, which is a depressant made from the root of a vegetable grown on Fiji.  Traditional ceremonies, as someone trained in psychology and music, are fascinating! What does this ceremony really mean and where do the traditions come from? The traditions of the music and how each song has been developed are fascinating. I’ve also had coconut, cassava root, several fresh fruits and a few other delicious, traditional Fijian meals today.

I also went for my first run today and I brought my sole sister with me in form of our “Sole Sister” tags on my shoe. I took a ton of pictures because I wanted to be able to share my first run in Fiji with everyone, but I forgot that I needed an SD card reader for my computer! We happened to stumble on either a Hindu temple or Hindu shrine; I’m not aware enough of the Hindu culture to know the difference and therefore, we did not enter the temple. We saw many people and the reaction to three obvious Americans running was interesting. We take for granted so many things in the United States! I’m pretty sure many people had never seen a woman in work out clothing, even if they were modest, or running with guys before.

I can’t wait to see where the rest of this week takes me. My updates will be sparser after Monday, though. I feel like I have so much to share with everyone that I will probably upload several entries at once. Do you want me to continue writing the detailed entries, or would you prefer the non-detailed entries?