Work Hard - Play Hard

Another busy week of eye exams, with long line ups and having to turn people away at the end of the day.  We get the feeling that we could spend another 5 or 10 years here and still not see everyone who wants an eye exam.  Oh well, you can't say we don't feel needed here in Fiji.

When we arrived this morning, we found
there were already about 70 - 80 people waiting
to be seen.  We usually give out 85 numbers per
day, so we were pretty much up to our quota
already.  I have never had so many people just
begging me for glasses, or asking to squeeze
them in.  It is heartbreaking for me!!  But of
course Rick can only see so many in one sitting!

Here I am informing the Bishop's wife, who
was my helper for the day, that we just couldn't
fit any more in that day!

 Checking another patient in.

Here is one of the young girls getting her
eyes examined.

Now it's time for this young boy.

"Which is better, number 1 or number 2 ?"

...Explaining to this father that
his daughter 'really' needs glasses!

There are several patients who come in with
completely scarred over corneas, causing
complete blindness in that eye.  

This girl was quite happy with her new glasses

This boy needed glasses, as well.

This sweet little girl didn't need glasses.

After an extremely busy week, we drove up to the far
north part of the island to stay over night
at the "Wananavu" Resort, near Rakiraki.
"Wananavu" is Fijian for "awesome", and
it truly was an awesome resort.  

This is the last part of the road to get to the resort

We passed this galloping horse
on the highway on our way there.

Nice turquoise ocean water at the marina part of the resort.

The beautiful white sand looked so nice
with the turquoise water in the background.

It was "wananavu".

This is the area where we snorkelled.

A "wananavu" view from our Bure.

We took our friends, the Greenburgs (a missionary couple)
with us to the resort.  The Fijian in the middle,
named Ebeloni, became our friend.  We sat
down with him for over an hour while he told
us all about different aspects of Fijian culture.

This is the nice Fijian band at the resort.

 Just finished snorkeling right at
the beach.  There was amazing coral and
fish to be seen right there in the ocean.  There was
lots of jellyfish too, which really scared me!

We enjoyed swimming in this lovely pool.

We enjoyed dining together at the resort.
The food was "wananavu".

The Tandori Chicken was "wananavu".

I so enjoyed my pork medalions.

Here are two of our "wananavu" servers.
They treated us so well.

Someone spent a lot of time wrapping
all the poles in palm leaves.

This was the back wall of our bathroom, also
shower.  I have never seen anything quite
this cool!  It was like you were outside when
you were showering!

We stopped on the way home to take this
photo of a real Fijian house/Bure.

There were a number of interesting
mountains on our drive.

Another stop at a
waterfall on our way home.

What a "wananavu" view....

We found it interesting to watch some of
the local Fijians swimming in the water
hole, and cliff diving from the high rocks.  They
climbed those rocks like they were nothing!

We stopped to take a photo of this very skinny
cow.  We see a lot of these along the roadside.

The cows are like us humans, looking for
a place to cool down in the summer heat.

Now that we had a short break to relax on the weekend, we are ready to get back to some more very busy days, I think in order to do this kind of a 'mission', we have to 'play hard' as well as 'work hard'.  What a treat it is to have that freedom!

We now have two months left, and some exciting weeks ahead of us!