Thank You One and All

   I want to give a very big thank you to all who helped us raise money for computers for our local school here at Wailevu West Primary School.  With your help we managed to raise over 3,000 USD.  With that money I recently had a meeting with the teachers and we plan on buying two computers and one projector for the school to use.  It is our hope that it will be the introduction for the children to computers and allow the teachers to better teach the children with the use of visual and media aids.  Once we get the computers and the projector hopefully I will be able to put a bunch of pictures up here for everyone to see.  Thank You again

   In other news it has been awhile since we posted on this blog and I am not even sure if anyone really ever reads this thing any more, due to the lack of material not the quality of course.   Since the end of December we have had my father come visit, a camera break, a trip to Tavueni and our Close of Service Conference.  We continue to do many of the things we have talked about in the past.  I lead the local Environment Club at our school, I still teach the children of our village once a week in a computer class, and Alyssa and I both run the local educational club for the kids in Natuvu every Saturday.  Alyssa continues to work with the village health workers and the health centre on issues and goes to local check-ups to help the doctor and talk about the importance of exercise and diet to help stop non-communicable diseases and has been teaching a bunch of aerobic classes around the area.  She also next week will be leading a knitting workshop for the women in our village, which she has already done once in the village of Dawasomo down in Viti Levu with her friend and fellow Peace Corps volunteer Marie.  I also got a chance to go to a Investment Fiji Seminar with my village chief and mayor, which was a great chance for them to learn about exports and business in Fiji.  When my father came back in March we managed to organize some of the villagers and built a bus shelter for the village.  One of the things that is a big pain here is the village is about 2/3 a mile from the road where you get on the bus, so it is great now to have something to hide under if it is raining or from the hot sun.

  Finally we have decided what we will be doing after our time here.  We both were accepted as Peace Corps Fellows at Western Illinois University in Macomb, IL.  I will be working to earn my Master's Degree in Public Administration while Alyssa will be earning hers in Public Health Education.  The Fellowship basically is a way for us to earn our degrees while also getting real experience in our respective fields and not having the huge debt that goes with going to a College/University.  It is one year in the classroom followed by a one year internship.  It is great to know that we have another two years of our life planned out and I am really excited to begin the course work, I really like this two year scheme we have going.

  Finally we learned at our COS conference that we will be coming home on July 1st.  In fact we are working on booking the flights today as we write this.  Stay tuned I think I will actually post again within the month if all goes as planned(SHOCKING!).

Alyssa with her Program Manager at the Close of Service Conference.  She is presenting her with a photo collage she helped prepare.

My Father building the bus stand with some of the villagers.