Moving

So, I suppose I should update everyone on my status. Peace Corps has decided to move me from my village due to some safety and security concerns. I'm hanging out in Suva City until they can find me another village. It was really sad and really frustrating, but there's not much I can do about it so I'll keep on keeping on. In the meantime, I have a lot of time to regroup, enjoy Suva and the company of other PCVs, and catch up on pop culture. That means I'm almost done reading "Midnight's Children," watched Ironman and Definitely, Maybe (Definitely can't stand Abigail Breslin, definitely love Ryan Reynolds, definitely love when Madison plays a part in movies!), and went to see Body of Lies yesterday. It was good and brought me back to reality a little bit; it's only been a few months but I feel so distanced from things like terrorism, torture, and the war in Iraq because even though they do influence my life and I read about them occassionally in Newsweek, my day to day thought process is rooted in Fiji. I thought I didn't like Suva but this morning walking in to our office I got a really good view of the harbor, the ocean, and the mountains in the distance. It's really pretty here; there's so much greenery still in the residential areas. But still, this is such an interesting time for Fiji. I was talking to a woman who is originally from France who has been here for 16 years about the changes she's seen. She's lived in a village, married a Fijian villager, and is now living in Suva. She put a lot of emphasis on the changes brought by television about that same time. But what else happened not yet 16 years ago? A little thing called NAFTA which probably (I have no evidence for this, just correlation and causation) brought TVs- and everything else Fijians deem necessary to life. This woman argues that before TV there were burglaries, no gangs, and a lot of the violence issues were brought out by television. And where else do people find out about stoves or stereos or phones and all these other "modernities"? You can see the struggle of balancing Western culture with a place like Fiji. You have unfinished billboard signs, grocery stores stocking individually packaged overly processed extra sugary, extra transfatty goods, bills owned for appliances, washing machines, rusty old cars, and a political system wrestling with its own identity. I digress...

My address is once again...
Taylar Foster, PCV
Peace Corps Fiji
Private Mail Bag
Suva, Fiji Islands

And if you try sending things but they get sent back to you, try, try again! That's happened to me and to other volunteers. You probably have the address right!

While I'm still not over my first village, it will always have a special place in my heart, I'll now be able to start over, coming into a village understanding village life, knowing how to speak Fijian, and be more prepared for delving into work to be done. We have to stay optimistic, right?