Fijian Time

                Things have been progressing here in Fiji. Yesterday, I had a meeting with four (!) board members of the Ministry of Education. Previously, they had expressed interest in holding teacher trainings, so I went to receive more information from them regarding this. I was very excited to find that they were interested in having me hold a Reading and Math workshop for the teachers in the Suva school district. (For those of you that don’t know – this is RIGHT up my alley as I would love to teach education at the collegiate level one day. Actually, that’s an understatement. I genuinely get excited thinking about the fact that I WILL teach at the collegiate level one day. Yes, I’m that big of a loser. You can judge all you want.) We set a date for the training and began ironing out the details, but I asked to do some observations first. See, the education system is SO different here, that I want to make sure that whatever I may be discussing in these trainings is applicable. Otherwise, it would be a waste of time for all parties involved. In the meantime, I’m anxiously waiting for them to get back to me about observations and with more details about the workshop, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high about this potential project.

Why? Well, like I had mentioned, this would be a dream for me, but I’m quickly becoming accustomed to the fact that Fijians truly live on “Fijian time”. In fact, if I wouldn’t feel like a piece of me was missing, I’d take off my watch altogether as it really doesn’t serve a purpose here. If somebody tells you that they’ll get back to you tomorrow, consider yourself lucky if they actually do because, realistically, it will probably be several days from now. This mindset honestly drives such a big part of the culture as there are little time demands on anything. To emphasize this even further, allow me to take a moment to break this down even more: Imagine teaching without stressing out about the limited time you have. Imagine showing up for a meeting or an appointment and not having to worry if you’re there on time or not. Imagine a world where you don’t worry about what other people think because you just do things whenever you want to do them because, hey, it’s Fijian time! NOW, you may have the slightest idea as to how laid back the cultural mindset is… and now, you may understand why I’m trying not to get my hopes up for this project as my time left here is slowly ticking away.

Despite my rare annoyance with “Fijian time” (and yes, the locals actually use this term to joke about and reference this laid back mindset), allow me to say that it’s been fantastic to live a completely stress-free, worry-free, live-your-life-however-you-want-to type of lifestyle. So, while I’m waiting to hear about this potential project, I suppose that I have no choice but to wait because although it can be frustrating, I’d be lying if I said that Fijian time wasn’t a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I’ll end this post by saying that I’ll update my blog again soon – but you’ll just have to live via Fijian time because who knows when that could actually be!

God bless!