Hello hello hello from the Friendly North!

All is well up here in my new village. I'm adjusting to life near the ocean and in a bamboo bure. By that, I mean I'm enjoying the company of my new friends, Susan B Anthony and Lyndon B Johnson. Respectively, they are a giant black hairy spider and a toad. My other friends include cockroaches, bees, a gigantic gecko (seriously, it's enormous and eats my food!) and a buttload of flies. I want to post pictures of them but my camera battery just died and I can't.

Lets see, I eat fish every day. I'm ODing on fish, seriously, because it makes me sick after I eat so much. I eat a lot of crabs. We're not talking little crabs from Red Lobster; no, these things are the size of about three or four of my hands. They're huge. The pinchers are enormous and delicious.

I had my first big adventure last Friday. The village is nestled along a river which opens into the ocean. Along the river to the ocean is a mangrove swamp. It's big, but not too big. I've been going running in the mornings and how nice does it feel to take a swim after a hot run (I've had to start getting up closer to 5:30; by 6:30 the sun is too hot and too bright to be active!)? I decided on Friday that I would go to the ocean. I've swam in the ocean before and while it's not really cold (it's really, really warm and the sand in some places is so hot it burns your feet), it's refreshing and I think the salt does my skin good. So I decided I would go through the mangroves this time, a way that I went with one of the guys from the village a week earlier. ONly this time I went alone. And this time it was high tide, unbeknownst to me. I start trucking through the mangroves and guess what, I get lost. I try to stay along the river but it's so wet that I can't or I'll get stuck in the muck. It's fine and I'm lively as I climb over and through the trees and then I realize that it's actually not going to happen that I'll get to the ocean. So now I'm a little nervous and tired and hungry because I hadn't had my breakfast yet. I'm trying to make my way back but everything looks the same and I'm in a thicket of mature trees and young saplings. Oilei. And then the most awful striking pain hits my forearm under my elbow. It hurt like you wouldn't, wouldn't ever believe. Now I'm mad at myself and the pain in my arm is all I can think about. That and the sweat dripping off my face and how in the world could I get lost in the mangroves right at the edge of the village? Who does that?? I finally get out, far from where I started but coming in through where the church is being built. I show my arm to one of the women, because by now it's started to swell and it hurts ot move my arm, and she tells me it's a bee sting. By Saturday my arm had swelled up and there became a huge red welt. It itched and kept getting bigger. The redness persisted and the swelling did, too. It's finally going away but the redness is still there and it still itches. It's been awful, but of course has been a great way to get integrated into the community and something for us to laugh about. It's been quite the entertainment for everyone who are used to getting stung. But I've been stung before and never had this problem! No one seemed concerned; I even went to the health center to see the nurse who just said to put hydrocortesone on it.

Not having electricity is something I'm getting used to. We have a generator from 6:30- 9:30 pm but I don't actually have an outlet. Everyone who isn't drinking grog watches movie after movie at ridiculous speed. Then we light our lanterns and it's pitch dark.

I'm starting a project (already) that was started by the other PCV. We'll be building a bread oven for the Women's Group to take over. The village is giving us the money, compliments of a logging decision, and the other guy had already done the ground work to getting it built. So next week i get a $1000 cash and get to buy the materials. It's pretty exciting to get something going so soon! We have a lot more to do that I feel good about over the next two years. Including reparing some of the damage from the logging decision. It's so frustrating to see this but given the choices, and actually being here seeing the choices made, it's a sticky situation. The village clans own a huge amount of land up here. They decided to allow a logging company to come in and clearcut. They got a huge sum of money but now they're seeing landslides and increased erosion problems. And, there's this pool that everyone likes swimming in over in the next village ( just a 10 min walk). It's amazing: the water comes all the way from up in the mountains and it's cool and clean. The pool is in this natural rock creation and there are little waterfalls and the kids jump in from up high on the rocks and it's a great little place to be when it's hot (I'm getting a reputation for going there!). Except, I keep hearing about how it used to be much deeper. You can see where the water level once was. Then they tell me it's because of the logging. The logging company is taking the sand out and they moved some of the rocks to lower the water level so they can get the sand easier. Then, yesterday I went to two villages to bless the construction of two new churches and I see that the sand from this pool is being used for these churches. Apparently the logging company is paying for and helping build the churches and houses in these villages. Shit. The money is really helping people but the long term problems aren't yet being considered. It's really frustrating to see.

Have to go now; a bunch of us in the area are having lunch together in Savusavu and I have another quote to get on prices. Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving!