Julia here - thought I'd give you the rundown on my work. The office is a bit ramshackle; the roof leaks, the floor is wonky and it hasn’t been renovated since it was built a good forty years ago at least, but I have plenty of daylight streaming in and behind me through the window I can see away to the mountains. (Although I'll be playing musical desks a bit for the next couple of months). The work environment is interesting - it’s an odd cross between Pacific style (nobody ever does anything quickly or when you ask them to and [View Full Entry]

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So far so good with work for both me and Julia, but we might as well write about that later when we know a bit more about what we’re actually doing here, so for now, I’ll tell you about home, sweet home. We’ve moved into an old 2-storey German colonial house, which has been recently extended and redone to make four 2bd units. We’ve got one of the top ones that overlooks a lush overgrown veggie garden/forest which is exploding with ripe pumpkins, pawpaw, coconuts and even a Hawaiian guava tree. I went for a fresh coconut mission with crazy little [View Full Entry]

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After doing our best headless chicken impersonations and trying to madly catch up with everyone and get organised over the last couple of weeks, Ed and I finally scraped through check-in without having to pay for our ridiculously overweight bags, and collapsed in a heap on the plane. Five hours later we stumbled off at the other end, bleary-eyed at 1am the morning before we had actually left (although it’s not that far away, you cross the dateline to get to Samoa). We were greeted by a smiling Karin, the in-country manager of our volunteer programme, and her Samoan husband Bill, [View Full Entry]

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The day approached with excruciating slowness and speed at the same time. On the one hand, I clearly remembered looking in my diary and seeing eight weeks to go until I leave Fiji, and then all of a sudden there was a week left and it seemed that seven others had concertinaed themselves together in the intervening space without the good grace to warn me that they had decided to shrink. On the other hand, it was lifetimes since I had seen Ed, and I watched the second hand on my watch slow down and gleefully insist on not ticking any [View Full Entry]

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Anyone with an impending wedding to plan and minimal dosh, take note. Traditional Fijian weddings are so hot right now. Nothing like matching outfits for the bride and groom and a quick coating of coconut oil as the entire pre-wedding beauty regime to put a stop to any bridezilla fantasies. Although I’d stick with western-style gift-giving, unless you want to end up with enough pillows, blankets, mats and mosquito nets to kit out four or five villages. I had the honour of being invited to the wedding of Kara and Atu’s son, Lai (short for Laisenia) to Torika. I watched curiously [View Full Entry]

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I think I may have finally found paradise. It’s an island called Taveuni, also known as the Garden Island, to the northwest of Viti Levu (the main island in Fiji). Over the Easter long weekend, Sally, Emily and I headed to Taveuni for a girls’ weekend. After conveniently leaving our flight bookings too late, we had to take an extra day off work to get a spot on the plane back, so luckily had four nights and the days between to fill with Taveuni delights. Lavena, our first stop, was beautiful. Lavena Lodge is the only accommodation on the edge of [View Full Entry]

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I’ve had a few reminders recently about the differing status of women in Fiji. Having grown up in a city and family where I had all the opportunities available to me that men did (except when I was in a surf club, but that’s a whole other story), it’s easy to forget that gender equality still has a long way to go in a lot of places. A lot of it is not about overt sexism either, it’s the more subtle ingrained ideas about the role of women. For example, Kara and Atu have been so sweet since Ed went home, [View Full Entry]

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Arriving back at Domain Road after a week at home in Oz, we (me and my two new housemates, Wes and Janet) were met with hugs from Kara and the family, and went inside to discover that they had redecorated for us. The furniture throughout the house had been rearranged, with some nice touches to welcome us back like sarongs on the walls and pot plants brought in. Previously, we had had blown-up photocopied faces of some of the volunteers on our toilet wall (left-over decorations from an awards night), but these faces had now been stapled to a sarong on [View Full Entry]

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A few people commented on the morose tone of my last entry, so I’m following it up with a cheery blog. Just to add another twist to the story, I got the call a week ago saying my assignment was given the all-clear to return, so I’ve decided to spend another three months in Fiji to finish it off. But more on that later - first, a rundown on one of the most amazing days I’ve ever had. Ed and I hopped on an aeroplane down to Kadavu, an island half an hour’s flight to the south of Suva, to join [View Full Entry]

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We really need to buy some carbon credits to offset all this air travel we’re doing. In the blink of an eye events have come full circle and Ed and I find ourselves back in Fiji; in a hotel in Nadi. A standard cheap Fijian hotel, where the once-white sheets are now a uniform grey from the collective sweat stains of a thousand guests; some of whom have certainly lain their heads here since the last time the sheets were washed. But it’s good to be back. The optimistic prediction of my last blog that everything would be fine turned out [View Full Entry]

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