Renee Hodgkinson

Bula

By next week I would have been in Fiji 4 months! It's so hard to believe time has gone so quickly.

Since the last time I logged in, Amy and I have moved out of the school compound and into the village; we are staying with a lovely host family - our na (mum), ta (dad), 27 year old sister and her 2 1/2 year old son Waqa (pronounced Wanga). They are absolutely LOVELY and feed us lots and lots of yummy food, no doubt Ive put on weight. We still sleep on mattresses on the floor but this time we have no mosquito nets so I have to put on alot of repellant at night!

School is becoming much more routine now - I love all the kids in my class and thier english is improving so much! We have finished the library, i am proud to say, after battiling wasp nests, ants, cockroaches, dead birds and numourous other things as well as scrubbing the library from top to bottem I have categorised the whole library in terms of the dewey decimal system, which takes a hell of a long time. Amy, an AMAZING artist painted Dr. Seuss characters all over the wall, you should have seen the kids delited faces when they saw it! My kids love coming to the library to read and i take them every day. Computer classes are also going well with all of class 7 and 8 now being able to type words and use the symbols on the key board - though they still have trouble with moving the mouse. The readers program Amy and I set up has proved amazing results, with our students now being able to sound out simple words and recognise the sounds of letters.
As for girl guides, we spent the last 4 weeks teaching puberty to 10 - 15 year olds, and it was actually really fun! They wern't gigglish at all and were really interested in what we were saying.

There was a slight disturbence in school during the tropical cyclone that hit us last month, with rain that flooded many parts of Fiji, creating a state of emergency with the whole country being out of electricity for a while. Some people were even trapped on roof tops and in trees! Luckely we wern't, But our river went from being 7 metres wide to over 150m wide, flooding all roads out of the village so we were stranded for up to four days. We had to evacuate to higher ground at 1 am in the morning, which included paching up the entire house in the pouring rain as flood waters threatened to reach our door step, which it eventualy did. Being red cross trained, I was shocked by the fact that no one in the village seemed worried about the situation, despite the fact that the last time it flooded houses were sweeped away. We had to relocate our entire library recently finished to the upstairs classrooms as last time the entire school compound was flooded. Our dad was in suva at the time, and swam across 3 flooded rivers dragging sacks of food to get to us. So on the whole a very exciting and worrying experience.

Not all my adventures have included natural disasters fortunately, the youth group (i.e. many hot boys with massive muscles) took us on a trek to the waterfall nearby. We jumped 5 metres into a tiny shallow pool the size of a spa with jagged rocks all around it, and it took me a while to pluck up the courage to do it, and the adrenaline rush was awsome. The boys made a fire, chopped up bamboo, filled it with water, salt, and prawns they had caught and cooked it on the fire. One of the boys climbed a 20metre tree to get us bread fruit! (which is really neither bread nor a fruit).

3 weeks ago I got the chance to go to my first beauty pageant - Miss World Fiji, the winner of which would go on to miss universe. I loved how most of the contestints had proper curves, and were not typical model material. Ive been to an amazing beach party (and my first drunk swim in the sea), Ive drunken fresh coconut milk through bamboo straws, walked through the village selling roti bread, learnt how to cook dalo leaves with pork, been to the wedding of a FIJI WARRIOR, been squashed on the floor of a small carrior for 3 and a half hours with about 30 other people, and another 2 hours in the boys carrior, drinking beer shots, getting talcum powder thrown over my head while half a cow carcuss sits at our feet. Every week something completely random and exciting happens that I could write about, these are only a few.

14 weeks of school is a long term so I was SOOO happy when the school holidays started 2 weeks ago. My parents came for a week (YAY!) and I took them up to the village for a night, where they got to experience a traditional cava ceremoney called a sevusevu.
We stayed at a lovely resort for the week, where I experinced the Fiji that most of you will know - sparkling warm clear water with coral and tropical fish, white sand and palm trees and a pool and cocktails and sun bathing in the lovely heat. I must say it was amazing. This week I spent with the other volanteers at a backpackers retreat called the beachhouse, and sorry mum and dad but I definitely prefer backpackers over rich 4 star resorts. We still had the water and palm trees and cocktails, but the food was much cheaper and I had PASTA which was amazing and met some amazing people. One 18 year old girl had been travelling around the world by herself for 14 months and had some amazing stories but unfortunately my memorys from that night are a bit hazy......... I spent the whole week snorkling and kyaking over the reefd and swimming and sunbathing on the sand and sleeping in hammocks and reading and playing beach volleyball and drinking cocktails and eating pasta and going for a 4 hour hike to another waterfall. Oh I have fallen in love. That fourteen months of travelling around the world alone is sounding strangely tempting..............

Back to work next week, and another 3 months of learning how to cook Fijian food, weave bracelets and fans and mats and hats and climbing coconut trees and teaching and getting headaches from loud excited children.

I love Fiji, but I really can't wait to get back to NZ, get my nursing degree and travel round the world with it. Yeah so no I don't want to be a teacher, I get too many headaches and im not fit enough to keep up with thier hiperactivity 24 seven, I think primary school teachers are the most amaing people in the world to be able handle it. On the other hand I have fallen in love with my class, and will be so upset when I leave them.

I can't wait to hear what everyones been up to this year, especially Ruth, Harriet, Laura, Caitlin, Clem, and Fiona! Love you girls and I wish you were here to party with me. Your always welcome to come up for a visit!

LOve you all!

Renee.

p.s. it's cold here (WTF!?!?) and i didn't bring any warm clothes cause I though it was a tropical country.

Bula again!!!
man this computer is sooooo slow its taken like 30minutes just to log in and now i only have about 15mintues to write about my first month!!! But ill do the best i can then fill in bits later.

Amy (my fellow volunteer from Australia) and I have our own house near the school in the village of Lutu 3 hours bus ride inland from Suva. It is very remote, we have to boil all our drinking water and when it rains the water turns brown so we have to wait for several hours for the dirt to settle and when it REALLY rains iroincally there is no water coming out of the taps at all.

Our house is basic but lovely. We share a bedroom with two thin mattresses on the floor and there is no drawers so im living outa my suitcase (no complaining about those uni rooms!). Our shower is luckily inside though sometimes we have to use a bucket and our toilet is flush which is awsome! Though sometimes that too stops working.... In our main room we have a woven mat on the floor which we sit on to eat (no couches or dining room table!) but recently we got a table and two chairs from the school. We have a traditional fire oven but as we have no cooking utensils nor firewood we cannot cook for ourselves. All the villages here are self sufficient, they grow their own food and chickens are in ready supply, running around the school, houses, the library...on top of our house crowing at 5am every morning....

Ants are so annoying! If you leave any food out or don't wash the dishes straight away you will find MILLIONS of ants on the floor. I tried to hide some chocolate biscuits in my bag....but theres no hiding place thats safe from ants, and it took alot of cleaning to get ride of all the ants in my bag and all through my clothes!!!

The school is lovely and I love the children!! There are 117 students from ages 4 to 15, 4 teachers (now 6!) and I have taught every class! I am now permanently in classes 3 &4 (7-9year olds), i teach class 7&8 computer classes on monday after school (on the one computer the school has), I take a slow readers program on wednesday, co ordinate girl guides on thursdays, sports is on Fridays (no ashfelt here, only very muddy long grass and netball for girls/ rugby for boys), Amy and I are the school librarians, school computer technicians, typists, and first aiders. In a school that has so little its hard to do so much as so much is needed!
I swear there are 2 pairs of scissors for the whole school, NO ART SUPPLIES, maybe a few balls and cones for P.E equipment; paper, pens, pencils etc are in extremely short supply. Alot of the students can't afford textbooks which makes teaching out of one difficult. There is no playground, the kindergarten have 3 tyres that the children play on...... No music supplies except a school drum (a hollwed tree). All the kids are amazing drummers. There is no first aid kit, so mine is getting slowely depleted... We are going to give first aid classes to all the teachers but with no first aid kit..... The school has no emergency planning for fire drills so we are going to design one for them.
The library needs alot of work. None of the books or sorted so we will introduce the dewey decimal system and teach the students and teachers how to use it, all the books are dusty and covered in spiders and ripped books and plentyful. Half the books at this primary school are highschool and university level (politics on running NZ anyone?)
So we have ALOT of work to do, its alot of hard work but i'm keeping busy and want to do the best i can for this school. All the students are so good and eager to learn and it saddens me that they don't have all the resources and equiptment they deserve. Each teacher takes two classes each at the same time which I have also done and i can tell you it is VERY hard. It is impossible to coordinate two classes learning different things at the same time while also trying to help the slower learners and giving the fast learners extra work. TEACHING IS A REWARDING BUT SOOOO MUCH WORK. It is the best feeling in the world when you spend maybe 20minuted trying to explain something to a child and then finally they get it and you see that smile on thier little face and you just want to cry HALLELUJAH!
One of the hardest things is the language barrier. I have taught a few classes who don;t speak english at all expect for a few words...a very frustrating experience... even my class (3&4) have alt of trouble understanding english but i can see them getting heaps better which really makes me feel like im achieving something!

Lutu as a village is lovely. The school committee mothers club cooks all our meals so we get lots of people coming round to our house at the randomest times. The food is very different (lots of leaves and starchers but no red meat or calcium and not alot of fruit) but good. I have fallen in love with the village; everyone is always smiling and inviting you round for tea and telling you stories. The village is a community, everyone is always welcome at everyone's house, if you need something you just go next door. Privacy does not exist.
The main questions we get asked are "Are you married?" and "What religion are you?", i swear the women i the village are trying to marry us off; when I asked if I would get to see a wedding in Fiji they said "YEah! Yours!", and they sounded serious... hahaha.

So no I am not having a holiday. I have not seen the beach in over a month or sand. But the experience I am getting is so much more, even though I'm uttely exhausted and annoyed that I can't do all the things i want to for the school cause there is just so much they need done and I as one persons can not help in all the ways I want to. But I'm learning more everyday, experiencing more everyday, and I am making a difference, just seeing the childrens english improve is so rewarding. I don't regret this trip one bit.

I hope University is proving a good experience for all my friends back home!

Will write again as soon as possible.

Missing u all, cold weather, milk, the beach, SLEEP and being a student.

MOCE!!!

Love Rinei (its easier for Fijians to pronounce), xxxooo

Hey there!!!!!
Still not at my placement....
Ok so we were supposed to be going to Suva on Monday but then it started raining. And I mean REALLY raining.
The bridge we had to drive over was flooded and Nadi town had 7ft of water!!! That's taller then me!!! So we had a National Disaster, torrential rain, landslides, flooding, evacuation centres. R.I.P to the family who got buried in a landslide
Luckily we were ok though, apart from my bag and stuff being all wet.
Slept on the floor Monday night in a friend of Lattitudes house with 25+ people. Had fun showering in the rain on tuesday.
Other then going out Wednesday night with the Auzzies to celebrate Australia day nothing much happened untill we FINIALLY got to Suva Thursday night.
Suva is amazing! With 400 000 (or 800 000?) people its alot bigger then Dunedin with lots of huge buildings.
Suva is unlike any city Ive been in, Its situated on a large port with shops that range from expensive items from Jeans West and Gucci to the Local Market place where u can buy a large bunch of bananas and eggs for less than $4 NZ. Fiji can be either extremely cheap or expensive if u know where to look!! (the trick is to avoid the tourist areas and walk down dodgy looking alleyways for cheap cafes). I thought that Suva being a bigger city would be more multicultural than Nadi but how wrong I was! We definitely stood out. On Saturday a big cruise ship came in to port so of course everyone thought we were from there. When we asked a policeman for directions to the Harbour he took us right to the cruise ship despite reminding him we were not rich tourists.
Everyone here is very nice and welcoming, some a little too much....
I got a huge shock today (sunday) to find all the shops closed and the busy town depleted of people and to realise how big going to church is here.
SO apart from some really cheap shopping, interesting looking food (i don't know what half of what i'm eating is), getting asked if i intended to get married while in Fiji, getting lost numerous times, seeing some shocking driving skills (in Fiji you often have to drive on the opposite side of the road despite oncoming traffic to avoid potholes), having a birthday party on the roof of our hotel, watching the huge bats fly across the sky and wondering at the beautiful sunset, I really just can not wait to get to my placement.
Hope everyone is well
xoxo
p.s. i think ive got used to Fiji weather now cause it was 22degrees in our room the other day and i had goosebumps. Oh and it hasn't rained very much at all apart from monday - wednesday.

Bula!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't have long here so ill write as much as i can! Sorry i havn't bloged sooner its been so full on the last 5 days. When we arrived in Nadi at 4 oclock wednesday it was enivitably raining! and the HEAT!!!!!!!!!!!! omg nothing can describe it. I sweat all the time. We all have like 2-3 showers a day its CRAZY!
On thursday we split into groups of four and with a guide set off around Nadi and yatoka. It was amazing!!!! We visited a tattoo palour (no i dont have a tatooo now...), i brought my first sula, ate a CHilli (i died for about 20minutes afterwards), ate cassava, travelled on public buses, visited a market (lots of people selling fruit!), brought some kava and tried some Kava (my tongue went numb). It was strange as there were not many tourists as its not tourist season so it felt like we were the only white people there and of course everyone stared at us! Everyone was so friendly though!!!! People say BULA! all the time and just come up and ask where u are from. Thursday night we went to a traditional Fijian village meal. We dressed in sulus, nelt on a mate and ate with our hands (even the mushy stuff!). Kava does not taste like muddy water but more like bitter water. it is very nice. On friday night i drank about 11 bowls and the result was i sat spaced out staring around me feeling very content with a slight tingling in the back of my throat.
Friday night we went to a traditional Indo fijian night. We again sat on a mat and i have flea bites all up my legs from the dog jumping on me! We were treated to a prayer session that Hindu people only do once a year and involved lots of smoke and putting this strange substance on your forehead. We had three meals, all very sugary and yummy.
Right I have to go soon so i say a few quick things.
We went to our first church session yesterday. It was one of the most uplifting inspiring things i have experienced in my life. All the children got up and sang to us and i was not the only one with tears in my eyes. Everyone is so lovely here and I love it so much! I got dehydrated after church so the chiefs wifr took me into her house and her 8 year old was fanning me with a leaf, soo cute.
We went out clubbing thursday, friday and saturday night. Thursday night anf Fri was just at a tourist bar so it was like the ones at home but Saturday night we went bar hopping through Nadi and these clubs we definitely not tourist clubs! everyone stared at us when we went in as we were the only white people there. Fijian people are really good dancers! They can definitely move thier hips so hopefully ill be able to show everyone a few moves when i get back.
They play Club music everywhere in Fiji, in nightclubs in buses in shops in supermarkets, everywhere! Most of it is the same as at home but then randomly they will play abba or something.
Took my first dip in the sea last night!! i didn't swim just dunked my feet in the water and it was like a bath! SO warm i loved it!!!!! ! It was so polluted though, rubbish was everywhere.
There's so much more i want so say but so much has happened all ready it feels like ive been here for weeks rather than days and i can hardly organize my thoughts. even though we're now in "fiji time" its just so full on, the food, the language the culture, its all so different and i feel so lucky to be experiencing it. I just can't get over the friendliness of everyone and how happy they all are.
Well in about 30minutes ill be busing to Suva then staying at another volunteers placement till Friday because the placement i am going to is building us a house which is not quite finished! SO we will be helping build a school somewhere near Suva then travelling to my placement in Lutu. Ive been told that some people in Lutu will never have seen a white person before so it could be interesting!
I'm very excited and nervous!

Well till next time, which will probably be ages away.....

Missing everyone all ready!
xoxo

Hey just seeing if this thing works...
so im pretty much packed and ready to go!!! well kind of....
starting to get very nervous and excited! I leave at around 6 am Wednesday morning where ill get to Nadi around 4pm. Then i spend 5 days at the Capricorn 3 star hotel which looks gorgeous in the pictures!!!!! There i will meet the rest of the crazy volanteers from around the world. Fun fun!

Im gana miss everyone and NZ soooo much! Though maybe not Dunedin weather.....

Love Renee xxxooo