It's been such a long time...

Well we have neglected our blog for so very long and so much has happened since our last post that I don't want to post everything, but I will anyway. 
First off let me give a long over due congratulations to my good friends Jason and Angel Skluzacek (Yes spellcheck that is how you spell their last name) on their new baby boy.  Well it is not that new anymore I guess he was born July 2nd, I am just that late in posting.  His name is Liam Kenneth Skluzacek (Damn you spellcheck).  I heard he has his mother's good looks and his mother's brains (just kidding Jason your good looking too!).

O.k. on to the boring stuff I can't really remember where I left off but during training we had something called a Connect Conference which gave us the opportunity to get to meet Government organizations and Non-Government organizations alike as well as get to know the FRE-7 volunteers.  The FRE-7's are the group of volunteers that have been in country for a year and will be leaving in the summer of 2011.  The highlight of the conference was our lodging which was quite beautiful.  It is amazing to see that a country as impoverished as Fiji can have small pockets with so much money.  It was at this conference we learned our sites and where we would all be headed.  They had a huge map of Fiji and they put our pictures next our village we would be staying at:

  A very blurry picture of our hotel for the Connect Conference

Site announcements

From their Alyssa and I ran in a 10k on the last day of the conference to promote health put on by the Peace Corps staff.  Why you might ask, well because I didn't my knees have suffered enough from my years of overeating and playing high contact sports.  Fortunately I managed to make it through and almost managed to keep up with Alyssa the whole way (unfortunately no pictures to document the accomplishment).  

About two weeks after the conference we completed our training and had our swearing in ceremony.  All our host families were invited and it was there we officially went from Peace Corps Trainees to Peace Corps Volunteers.  This is also where we said goodbye to our host families we had been staying with in our villages and began preparation for our departure to our permanent sites for the next two years.

Setting the floor for our goodbye supper in our host village of Nukutubu

Me with Yoni and Billy at our goodbye gathering

All of the Peace Corps volunteers who were staying at Nukutubu about to leave for the final time

All right well I have a lot more things to talk about but I have run out of time for the day.  Everyone will just have to wait eagerly or not so eagerly for me to post again.  I promise it will be much sooner than my previous time.  One last parting note, a group of volunteers decided to have a mustache contest over the last two weeks or so of training.  I decided to go with a handlebar mustache so without any further ado here it is in all its glory

I know its hard to see but you probably didn't want to see it anyway (it was scary....beautiful!)

A few words from Alyssa...

Matt summed it up pretty well.  The other things I want to report:

• We now have a sink in our house (very exciting- there was no indoor running water before) and a garden with a hole bunch of American vegetables planted. 
• There's no refrigeration at our site but I like cooking all the vegetarian foods.  Matt kind of hates it.
• Our bus trip to town takes two hours each way, so trips to town will only happen about once per week (and internet access, too)
• I'm trying to learn Fijian and the new dialect where we are but it's very tough!
• We now have an address:

PO Box 691
Savusavu, Vanua Levu
Fiji 

Bye for now!!!
Alyssa