An Afternoon Off

Good news! I've spoke with all of my professors about the leaving early for my job and they sounded like it would be fine for me to take my exams early, which is very encouraging. Also, my mom emailed me and she's getting a ticket to come and visit! I was bummed out when I first got here because I found out that everyone had relatives visiting them, but now I've got one too. I'm excited to run around and figure out stuff for her to do when she gets here, where to go, what to see, etc. Yay!

On another note, the game that I was supposed to play in yesterday got cancelled - big surprise. I just went and played pickup soccer with a bunch of indian guys again. Our bathroom faucet stopped working, and we realized that our fridge no longer makes things cold, so we kind of need some home repairs coming up. This weekend for 3 nights there are a series of socials at USP - last night was the Fijian social, so some of my friends bought traditional Fijian clothing and went. Tonight there's an unthemed social with everyone at the Vodafone arena, and Saturday is an Indian social, so there's a lot going on.

Nichole, Eli, Kirsten, and Cliff at the social. The guys are just in bula shirts and sulus, while the girls are wearing sulus and jabas. I showed up late in a nighty (it's a complicated story - I wasn't planning on going out right at that moment) and we all ended up going out to the bars wearing this ridiculous clothing. We got whooped at a lot, definitely for looking like idiots, but it was a lot of fun.

All week the country has been freaking out because this weekend is the Coke Games - a national championship for track and field for high school students. Students from all over Fiji have been pouring into Suva and are training at the National Stadium right down the road. The bars have been absolutely nuts the last couple of nights with this many people being in the city, and at night the streets are just crawling with people and barbecue stands and all sorts of stuff. It's kind of crazy but a lot of fun.

Earlier today some of my friends and I skipped out on afternoon classes and went to Colo-i-Suva again, the national park with nice hiking and lots of rockpools linked by waterfalls that you can go swimming and diving in. It was a wicked hot day (this week the sun came back out and we're all much happier for it) so it was great to get to go splash around in cool mountain water. Tonight should be fun again with everyone in town.