meke!

the days are flying by! yesterday was a big festival for the province of rewa and me and other volunteers performed a 'meke'.  its a traditional fijian dance, where the movements convey the meaning of the song.  it was the coolest thing ive done here so far.  we performed in front of a few thousand people, one being the princess of fiji (also a chief, which is extremely rare)!! here are some pictures...

my house brother is helping get me ready. the brown material is tapa, super expensive and made from trees.  the darker brown is special because only chiefly families have them/wear them and lucky me i'm staying with one. 

there was also video taken, i'll get the link and post it so you can see (yay technology!)

and i'm in the newspaper, mom and dad i'll send one home.  and i'll try to find a scanner so everyone else can see!

other fun news:

*i find out where i'm placed in a week

*natural beauty by neil young is my current favorite song

*the clouds are so big and beautiful here, nothing like i've ever seen before

*my hair is  huge and frizzy (you can't tell in the photos because the ladies drenched me in coconut oil)

* 'un día te encontre en un otro sol' is my favorite line from the poetry i've been reading

*i had my first sulu jaba made, i'll have to post a picture later

*everyone in fiji has an amazing voice, no joke,  people just break out into song and im stunned every time. this morning i woke up a choir singing down the street and the screams from an all weekend rugby tournament, oh fiji.

i hope this makes you laugh:

a typical conversation between a peace corp volunteer

person 1: hey! how was your day?

person 2 (in an extremely heavy southern accent): ah so cool, i got to learn how to do bee keeping, where'd you go?

person 1: i got do learn how to make large scale fish ponds.  i think i'm going to try and make one in my future village.

person 2: i can't wait to go to that training. guess what, i learned how to say my age in fijian, it's ruasangavulu ka tolu.

person 1: number are ridiculous. hey i gotta go, my house dad wants me to help milk the cows today.

person 2: okay, i saw the bull in your village the other day, its huge! have fun

person 1; oh i know! later

literally, these are the things we talk about haha

i hope everyone is doing great! thank for the letters, each one makes my day. love you!