One might think that after residing in a country where English is one of the three main languages, my motivation to learn the Fijian language would have disappeared. However, there are a few factors that exist here that have helped me maintain my desire to learn, including the 5,000 kids that aren't yet English speakers, but tend to wreck havoc in my house. It's difficult to convey the message, "For the love of God, get your grubby paws away from my ipod," if you can't speak the language. For the same reason, it is also difficult to explain to the members of the village who aren't fluent in English why it is a good idea to stop burning plastic, to recycle, to compost, stop letting pig waste flow directly into the rivers, etc. Other motivations include the 1000s of tourists that stay at the hotels around my village, where most people work. What better way to make sure everyone knows I'm a bit different from those moneybags than by learning more than the word Bula!, which is the only greeting the tourists in Fiji usually know. The final push came from the fact that my predecessor was fluent. What's one way to stop being told how smart she was in Fijian? Become smart myself. So, over the course of the last few months, I have been working diligently (ok….maybe a slight exaggeration) to learn Fijian.

Like anyone learning a new language, I have made a few mistakes when speaking to people. Ok, that's quite an understatement. I have made hundreds of thousands of mistakes, and probably add another 1000 to the tally every day. However, I have also made a few absolutely hilarious, totally awkward, and completely embarrassing mistakes that are worth writing home about. And so, home, for your enjoyment, here is one of my favorite mistakes.

A woman I'm friends with and her family have recently started a prawn farm in the village. It's a rather large operation with three deep ponds and 500,000 prawns. One day, when the critters were first dropped off, I went with my friend to see what they looked like. The weather that day had been particularly hot and steamy, one of those miserable days when at any second you expect the sky to open up to a torrential down pour, but it never does and instead you just sweat profusely. Luckily, in the evening, when we were looking at the ponds a glorious wind had started blowing. I wanted to share the glory of the weather with my friend, and so I told her "E totoka (it's beautiful) na cago!" Now, in Fijian, cagi (said, thangi) means wind. Unfortunately, I mixed up my vowels and said cago (said, thango). Cago means vagina. Yup, I said that the vagina was beautiful. I didn't understand that that's what I had said, of course, because that word wasn't included in our language training books. It was only after my friend stopped her uncontrollable laughter and could breath that she could explain my mistake. More uncontrollable laughter ensued.

There are plenty more mistakes where that came from. Will share more in another entry! Happy Holidays! Love and miss you all!!