Ok, well actually Happy New Year's and Merry Christmas but in all the British Commonwealths they also celebrate Boxing Day on the 26th of December. What and why is Boxing Day a holiday? Presently it's a day basically for banks and stores to get an extra day off and for people to go shopping much like our day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., but before it was a day where the wealthy would give a box of goods (clothing or other such items) to their servants or those people in need. Why do you need to know all this? You don't but I just wanted to know myself so I figured I would share.
Things in the village continue to go as normal we had a wonderful Thanksgiving, getting to meet up with all the volunteers in Savusavu for a couple nights.
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| (from left to right: Me, Monica, Bubba, David, Greta, and Milli) Hanging out on the porch at Daku Resort near Savusavu for Thanksgiving. |
Alyssa conducted a Young Women's Empowerment Day (I think that was the title), that went really well. It basically gave the girls in our village ages 14-25 a chance to get together and have a day for themselves. Alyssa taught them about exercise and ways to they can workout in the village, tips on healthy cooking, I conducted a short class on money management, and then they all got a chance to make their own bracelets and play volleyball. They all seemed to have a really good time and Alyssa did a great job planning and running the day pretty much on her own.
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| Alyssa leading the group exercise in the community hall. |
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| Eating lunch at our house. On the menu; dahl with rice and juice |
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| Manasa and Myself helping run the financial management training in the hall |
I finished writing a business plan for the fish/prawn pond that the village wants near the school that is on their land. Some of you may know that I had been working on it quite a bit when Alyssa and I first got to site but do to logistical problems and lack of motivation, the project never really went anywhere. Well I decided to write a business plan for something tangible that shows I actually did spend quite a bit of my time here working on it. The picture below gives an idea of what the fish pond would look like and the size. It is a integrated pond, meaning it would use duck manure to create plankton growth in the pond to feed the fish. I am planning to give a copy to the Ministry of Fisheries and Natuvu village and maybe someday something will come out of it but if not like I said I at least have something to show for the work.
As for our Christmas and New Year's we got the chance or maybe we created the chance to go to New Zealand. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen and had a great time there. We spent 12 nights there all together spending 10 nights on the southern island and the our final two nights at the capitol of Wellington.
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| Canterbury Museum in Christchurch |
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| Franz Josef Glacier |
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| Queenstown; view from our Gandola Trip |
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| Our Kayaking Trip in Milford Sound |
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| Mirror Lake in Fjordland National Park |
Finally once we returned form there we headed to Funky Fish Resort for New Year's on Malolo island to spend it with some of the Peace Corps Volunteers
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| New Year's Night |
P.S. Alyssa hates it when you place snakes on her shoulder!
