cyclone camp

Big news this week was Cyclone Tomas, a category 4, hitting Fiji. I was already in Suva for a training on HIV/AIDS outreach with about 10 other volunteers, so we were instructed to just stay put. No major damage to Suva (and if they hadn't said it was a cyclone I wouldn't have noticed!) but better to be safe, right? All volunteers were consolidated to nearby cities, and it only looks like a few sites are affected (although some may be severely affected - still don't know).

We all got pretty stir crazy during the national curfew, in which we would be arrested if we were caught walking in the city. But we made it fun. There were a few computers that were constantly running "ugly betty" and "glee." I painted my toenails teal. There was a pool, and we did water aerobics and ran around the perimeter making a whirlpool, only to switch directions and get swept backwards. We had cards and "set." We even made up games. My favorite was the jump/roll bed game, where one person would roll back and forth along the bed and the other would have to jump across them as they rolled, and if the jumper touched the other person, they lost. Another was the Gladiator cushion game, where we took two long cushions, stood two tile hypotenuses away from each other, and whacked each other until someone stepped out of their tile. At the breaking point we started an impromptu drum circle, using whatever we could whack together to make noise. I might have been playing the toaster at one point.

Overall, quite a different experience than the last cyclone. And hey, when did this whole experience start being so fun??