Ladies in red

It's almost time to go!  This is so crazy to me!  I'm looking at Laramie weather and WOW, I am going to have to adjust to the cold quickly!  Fun things that happened this week.  First, I just finished writing the Programme Document (dig the spelling) and mailed it off to the Dean!  Yahoo!!!!!  That means when I leave here on Wednesday they will have everything then need (pretty much) to start having lots of committee meetings in January  This is a University, though, so everything takes forever.  The new BEd will start in exactly a year from January (unless something unpredictable happens).

Okay, more fun things this week.  Dropati and I went to Nadi and to Port Denarau Wednesday afternoon and it was grand!  Dropati and I are an excellent fit as far as adventures go.  You could say she's also a little on the immature side, and simple things bring her great joy as well.  So we have had some lovely times.  I think our highlight was drinking delicious fresh pineapple smoothies at the shore and watching the fish and little crabs fight it out over some bread crumbs for about 30 minutes (with added sound effects and voices and such).  Sangeeta doesn't necessarily share similar interests, so we have a lot of fun encounters.  For instance...  last week she was so happy to announce that we were going to go to a university graduation - not FNU - together as a little break from work!  For 4 hours... in the heat...  all dressed up in our Sunday best... with not a single person there that I would have any connection with at all.  At hour 2 she leaned over and asked if we have graduations like this in the U.S.  YEP, we do!  And NO ONE goes to them unless they are forced to due to blood relationship. But, the food was good, so I'll give her that.  Did you know the back of your hands can sweat?  I believe that the back of the hand is the last part of the human body to sweat - this is scientific - meaning at exactly that point you have reached the apex of wet, sticky grossness that the human body can experience. The back of my hands were sweating at that graduation.

Two days ago she came bursting into my office and told me we should all wear matching clothes to the FNU Christmas party on Saturday.  Just please pause a moment to take this in.  She meant the following. Go buy matching clothes and wear them to a party with people. This Saturday.  First of all, I didn't know about the party, so my millisecond's worth of time to respond included the following thoughts/feelings in the order they were experienced:

1- Intense feelings of anxiety about having to go to another social event with actual people, none of which would be children I could ditch the rest of the group and play with.

2 - A realization that said event was an FNU Christmas party, with the clear implication that the number of people I envisioned all in a space together would greatly increase - leading to a significant amplification of the previous anxiety-response.

3 - Registration that she just said that we should go buy matching clothes... in a store... at the same time... together... trying things on... cute things that Sangeeta would try to make me put on my body.  

4 - A vivid picture of myself, in something pink and gold and frumpy, walking up to a group of party-goers with Sangeeta and Dropati - closely followed by a gag reflex.

5 - A recognition of the genuine happiness and sincerity in her face as she spoke, with it's accompanying feeling of panic while facing the desperate need to respond quickly and appropriately.

I have been told a lot of times in my life that I am terrible at hiding my feelings. Apparently my face shows it all.  This was certainly the case at this moment because poor Sangeeta's happiest, sincerest expression faded rather quickly.  Thank goodness Dropati wasn't far behind her and had heard what she said. She responded in Hindi, but I think it's safe to say that an edited version of her response would be somewhere in the neighborhood of  "Are you out of your mind!"  So, no, we are not buying matching clothes.  We have compromised, however, and are all wearing red.

I really love these ladies. Can you imagine being Sangeeta and anticipating having a sophisticated American professional woman coming to visit. And then having to slowly come to terms with the fact that the American woman she got was me.  But she is so kind and good to me and loves me anyway.  For that I am so grateful!  

Here are some pics from the week.

Lunch at the beach! I touched sand and water for the third time.

Jules, my new kitty friend.  He likes tuna in the morning.

Another sunset #fijistyle.  I just can't get enough of them.

Extremely important Fiji sweets

Jelly ring (mango flavored fried perfection)

 Gulab juman - tasks like a rolled and smushed pancake soaked in syrup.

 Gulgula - a sweet bread with raisins - fried of course.

Suva Top 5

Suva, the capitol of Fiji, happens to be across the island from Lautoka where I'm staying. I've been trying to figure out how to get there for a weekend ever since I came. I've actually been there twice for work - both times on Mondays - both times leaving at 5:00am and getting back at about 9:00pm the same day. It's a 5 hour drive, so those trips did not lend themselves to stopping and hanging out in the city much. Well, I lucked out on Friday afternoon and caught a ride with some FNU people. I spent the night Friday night and then hopped a bus home on Saturday. Here are the top 5 things about my trip to Suva!

#5  

Suva is really beautiful and it's BIG (for Fiji anyway). It's really rainy and way more tropical than my side of the island.

#4

This will shock you, but the FOOD! Tikos was pretty much life changing. Plus, it was a dark and stormy night... on a boat... on the water. Mostly that just meant that it took some serious concentration on the lights outside to not end up seasick!  

And being seasick was not an option because I had a lobster tail the size of my head (see below), and some other amazing fish, and dalo and MITI!!

The second food-celebration was finding a Nandos there. I was actually looking for another seafood place for lunch, but everything was closed. So I ended up at Nandos. But Nandos, if you don't know about it, is really excellent! They have this African-Portuguese hot sauce that they put on everything. I ate at one in Ireland just last year actually.  :-)   

#3

I went to the LDS temple in Suva and it was so beautiful and peaceful and exactly what I needed! 

#2 

On a related note, I found these lovely Fijian girls at the temple.They were so great and we had such a lovely visit.  Also - this might possibly be related to why I liked them so much - they thought I was in my late 20's or early 30's. (Stop snickering right now! It's true!) The two on the left just got back from missions and the one on the right is leaving this week. Oh how I love missionary girls!  I have one, you know.

AND THE #1 BEST THING ABOUT SUVA...

I had a hot shower for the first time in 6 weeks! Unfortunately, I don't have a pic for you. 

(HUGE sigh of relief from the audience!)

I have mixed emotions about my cold showers in Lautoka. Well, about water in general. I have been able to get myself clean just fine every day that I've been here. And there are plenty of people in the world that have never had a hot shower and are doing great! Having clean water in Fiji that people can drink out of the tap is a blessing I also would not have appreciated if I hadn't spent time in Nepal. Water is a precious resource that a large part of the world struggles every day to access (663 million people lack access to safe water), and in the U.S. we have so much of it that we do things like the ice-bucket challenge.  

Having said that, however, I appreciate what the ice bucket challenge people did to raise money for a really important cause, and I REALLY, REALLY enjoyed my hot shower! I enjoyed it so much that I took a much longer shower than necessary and wasted plenty of clean water - I'm sure more than a bucket-full.  My western-privileged-world-view is something that I have to reckon with all the time when I travel. It's so much easier to see it raising its ugly head in other white westerners than it is to recognize it in myself. I think we are being simplistic and dismissive when we let ourselves off the hook by saying how we now have a new appreciation for all of the blessings we enjoy back home - with it's implied pity for everyone else (which is most of the world) who doesn't have it as good as we do. And then we inevitably have to add "But the people (the poor ones) are SO HAPPY!" Every white woman from the U.S. that I have met here has made this statement to me. I'm sure that someone smarter than me has already deconstructed this line of thinking (our need to comment that poor people are happy) so I won't even try - you can find their blog.  

 But, I inevitably do feel more gratitude for all of the luxuries I enjoy back home when I see that other people don't have those things - or more accurately, when I miss having them at a particular moment here. And, it can't be a bad thing for me to be forced to notice the things I've never even bothered to pay attention to. The other day Dropati was amazed because a friend had given her an apple slicer/corer as a gift. She couldn't get over it... the fact that it cuts the core right out and leaves evenly cut pieces of fruit. I felt awkward when the conversation came around to me and I had to tell her that I definitely have one of those at home in the U.S., but that they are so awesome (even though I've never given it a thought)! But the next time I use my dollar store apple slicer I will at least pause and think about it. When I get home, if this trip is anything like my trips to Nepal, I will spend the first few days wandering around my enormous house trying to figure out how I feel.  

 I think that condescendingly dismissing an enormous part of the world as if I've done something to deserve my "blessings" is just gross (obviously).  AND, I think walking around in a cloud of guilt and/or judging and shaming all of my partners-in-privilege is also ugly and unproductive. There has to be a place somewhere in between where we can reside as we try to understand the human experience.  So... there's that for you... three paragraphs of me still not being able to make any sense of it. I could go on, but I think you have the idea. Not insisting on wrapping it up all neat and tidy is probably a good way to go anyway.