Wednesday 26 August 2015

Farefell to Fiji


COUNTRY: Fiji
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching
WRITTEN BY: Issy Steadman

Wow, we couldn’t believe it, we had already lived in Nadi for three weeks and our last week was upon us. Time was absolutely flying by!

After our weekend away at Beachcomber Island and sporting our new tans, we were well rested and ready to fully embrace our last week at school. With only minimal days left at school and with our lovely host families we weren’t taking any moments for granted.

Our final week started off with the most heart warming assembly given by the Nadi District School, were they sang and danced for us, this assembly was too celebrate the fact that Antipodeans and Vida, another volunteer, had cumulatively donated $1000 to the school for 20 extra water taps around the campus. The Nadi Special School was given $200, which will hopefully go towards their school camp in Term three.

The Nadi Special school also gave us a lovely going away morning tea, with traditional Indian snacks prepared by the talented vocational girls, and where both of us were presented a traditional Fijian sarong to Thank us for all that we did at the school, and a sarong that will forever remind us of all the wonderful people we met at the Special school.

In the afternoon we experienced our second Lovo, where the food was cooked underground on hot stones.
The lovo was our last goodbye with all the staff members at the Special school and definitely one of the best meals we ate in Fiji, consisting of traditional roots, dips and yummy meats.

Our school days now involved more one on one time with the students, gardening in the vocational garden and enjoying afternoon games of soccer and badminton. After four weeks we had done our best to assist students and it was so great to see a visible improvement in many of the kids writing and math’s abilities.

We hope that our most used phrased of ‘keep your hands to yourselves’ will be kept in mind by the young cherubs at the Nadi Special School and hopefully the students will all be treating each other with a little less, whilst playful quite rough, violence.

To ensure we did not lose any time in this amazing country we spent the afternoons in Denarau; watching sunsets and fire dancing at Smugglers Cove, as well as picking up some Fijian handicrafts for our families back in Australia. Thursday night we shared our last meal with our fellow Antipodeans and our in country partner, which was a great way to reflect and laugh over all our adventures from the past month.

After living with the beautiful Chandra family for a month now it was hard to say our goodbyes. It was amazing coming home every night to this family, their playful
children and the beautiful meals we shared with them. We really can’t thank Antipodeans enough for the life changing experience they provided for all the volunteers, and the memories of those four weeks that we will forever cherish.

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