I am happy to report that I survived my high-intensity Chief Guest training week and I am now free to sit at this computer all day and write like a crazy person without interruption. I decided before Chief Guest stint #2 that if I was going to have to give speeches here then I should at least make them interesting. I tried being terrified and awkward and it wasn't all that much fun. So, I decided to make all of my remaining speeches in Fiji memorable. Speech #2 was an impassioned motivational speech about the history and future of early childhood education in Fiji (I left out the part about the van down by the river). Speech #3 was the most fun because I had lost my ability to behave well by then and I went with a more aggressive anti-graduation speech. I also decided to add lots of extra words to my speeches since that's what everyone here does. So I threw in as much hyperbole as possible. They were a lot more fun to give, and I wish I could report that the audiences loved them. But the truth is that the audience response was exactly the same. I've decided that long ago people here learned the survival skill of sitting and looking attentive while not listening to anything the speaker says. Otherwise, how would one survive in this place? In fact, in speech #3 my whole point was about how we always talk about children's value pointing at some future date... how we always have to say that young children are our future, that we spend all of this time and energy on teaching them stuff now so that they can be smart and successful later... contribute to society eventually... you get it. Then I told them that was a bunch of crap and that we should value children for who they are now, and what they can do right now. That their right-now is just as important as their tomorrow... They already contribute to society! They already have value! See, this is good stuff! I thought it was a darn good speech! Then, this is the best part, the school owner got up after me and said he was thankful for my wonderful comments about how young children are our future. Ha! It's like when we tell little kids "Don't hit your friends." or "Don't pick your nose." and all they hear is "hit" and "pick your nose". It was just excellent.
We're at the point now with this BEd project that we can see the end, but all of the things we have been avoiding because they are time consuming and really boring now have to be done. By the 5:30 tonight my head finally exploded and we had to call it a day. I decided since it was Thanksgiving I should celebrate. So I did my first touristy thing in Fiji. I took a cab to a really fancy resort and had a really expensive dinner, on me. And, guess what I found? All the white people in Fiji. Turns out they don't really catch the bus and hang out in downtown Lautoka. And, suddenly, there were all of these happy hotel-people trying to meet my every need. Major mind-shift. I actually spent a lot of dinner just processing all of it. So much to think about.
However, here are the required food-pics because, WOW!
Open-faced seafood lasagna
And Thanksgiving pie #Fijistyle. I wish you could know about the amount of caramel and bananas that were hiding underneath this whipped cream.
Then I watched the sunset and walked along the ocean and listened to a lot of drunk Australians celebrating at the bar. It was pretty great.
Oh yeah, and the cab driver asked me out on the way home. I think he was hoping to score a U.S. visa. It was pretty awesome. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
You are all a gift in my life! Much love!
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