Institute Dance and Service Project–November 29-30,2013

As I have mentioned before, it’s the end of the school year here.  Graduation is over, the kids are out on summer vacation and this week the Institute celebrated years end. 

All day Friday the Institute was closed – if they could play pool nothing would ever get done!  And the girls spent all day decorating the hall at the Samabula ward house, and the committee was out buying food for refreshments and food for Saturday’s service project.

And at 7pm last night the dance was to begin.  We got there a little before 7 and it was pretty quiet.  They are normal young Mormon adults – no dance can begin before 9:30pm and then they finally get in the swing of things about midnight – when it’s time to go home.  And that is exactly what happened.  By 9pm Sister Tennis was insisting that no one was going to come.

We left about 9 and there was a small group dancing, but they were enthusiastic and having fun.  After we oldies when home to sleep off our snorkeling adventure things livened up and E & S Tennis finally got the last of their charges home around 2 am.

Saturday was a service project.  They were set to clean the beach down at Suva Point.  The police recruits were to begin at one end of the beach and our group was to start at the other and meet at Suva Point.  The police recruits were in and out and off to their training before all of our group even arrived, but our group of young adults, all wearing “Helping Hands” cover-ups did a great job.

It is hot and humid here and we finally realize why everyone walks slowly here, it’s just too hot to hurry.  I think I must have lost at least 10 pounds in sweat – which was right back as soon as I got my bottle of water.

After the clean up was finished they all had apples and oranges and then Elder T and us went over to three fish and chip shops and ordered 25 orders at each shop.  We about cleaned them out.  Then we raced to the Primary school to get the volley ball and net and they were all headed to Suva Park to play on.

We hit Cost-U-Less and then headed home to “die” in our chairs and napped for a couple of hours.  They end this marathon of activity tomorrow with a fireside.  This is the Tennis’ farewell activity – they head for home in about a week.  When they leave, and all the kids are on summer vacation at the villages it’s going to be pretty quiet for us!

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Yanuca Island Experience–November 29, 2013

We have had a busy month and have worked on three of our P-days so we decided that we needed to take one.  We went out to Pacific Harbor and took a day trip out to Yanuca Island on Friday.  We had to be there by 8:30am and went out on the same boat we went snorkeling on before.

This time they took us over to a small island and around to a small cove where they have a surfers camp set up.  The big surfing waves are out quite a ways and they stay on the island and boat out.  There were about 14 of us that went.

The cove is beautiful and the water had that gorgeous turquoise color.  We all went snorkeling and it was a great place to do it.  There was no wind, so no white caps and the coral is right off the beach.  It was the first time I have actually snorkeled and it was fun, you just have to watch where you swim and not try to swim over the coral because in some places it’s only a few inches under water

We came back in and one of our tour guides climbed up a tall coconut tree and threw down coconuts and they cut them open and we drank the coconut water.  These are green coconuts and the coconut meat is very soft and not very thick yet.

Then we played a game where they laid out a pineapple and blindfolded people and turned them around and had them guess how many steps it was and then walk that far and hit the ground with a stick to try and smash the pineapple.  The pineapple was in no danger – in fact one girl walked in a complete circle without realizing it.

Lunch came next and we all just lounged in the warm sunshine and then a few hearty souls snorkeled again and it was time to depart.  We got back about 4pm.  We headed straight for Baca Blues and had dinner and then back home to help Elder and Sister Tennis with their end of semester activities.  Fun, fun day – but next time we have to remember that when snorkeling it’s the back of you that gets sunburned – not the front!  Point taken!!!

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