FRUSTRATION AND RELIEF

I'm so sick of things falling through.

Events and outings do get organised here. You work with others to set a date, you do your preparations and they do theirs. You look forward to the events that have been organised. The event is written down in your diary and you turn down other offers because you're already busy (apparently). Then, the day before, or even on the day, it gets called off. Someone's "sick". It's not the best time to do it. Something else has come up. The equipment's faulty. No one else has shown up. It's cancelled.

The other day at school, I had prepared my professional development topic. I spent all night putting together my information sheet and pored over it time and time again to comb out the mistakes. I added in extra notes to extrapolate on certain sub-topics and even brainstomed some side jokes to keep the teachers interested. The day that I was meant ot deliver my professional development came around but then one teacher decided that there were too many teachers absent. I think only 3 were absent, but apparently that was enough to decide to call the whole thing off.

Postponed until further notice. When? Your guess is as good as mine.

Over the last 6 weeks, Emily and I have been trying to get our diving licence done. We've been postponed 4 times. We were meant to go out in a party of four. First, one person was sick, so that meant that everyone missed out. The next week, someone else was sick, and despite Emily and I wanting to go out anyway, it had to be cancelled. Then the next week when we were meant to go out diving on the Saturday, someone was sick again so our diving instructor compensated by moving the Saturday date to Sunday. On Saturday, the diving instructor was on his boat anyway and hence could have taken us out. Why he couldn't keep Saturday's date and why he had to move it to Sunday was beyond me but either way he managed to get out on his boat, fall over, hit his foot and acquire a haematoma. So Sunday's dive was cancelled. Postponed to today. That was fine, except the boat wasn't working. So it's been postponed. Again.

I handed in a hand-made bra for the bra art competition. I was told that the result of the competition would be announced yesterday morning at 7:30am. I went to the place where I was told it would be announced. And why was I not suprised to see an empty venue, with no sign of another person with no evidence that a bra competition was in progress.

Luckily, some things do go ahead as planned. I am a bushwalker. I am Australian so I will call it bushwalking. Perhaps now that I'm in Fiji, I'll call it jungle walking:



I've missed my walking at home. Every long weekend is an opportunity to get away with my friends to scale the peaks of Victoria. There's something unique about sitting on top of a peak, looking out over an amazing view without the noise of traffic, crowds or screaming children. The world stops at the top of a mountain. You feel like you're floating on air. ...but that might be because your legs are showing you how much they hate you by throbbing with pain after negotiating mud, roots, steep inclines and rocks.

Yesterday was the Rucksack Club's Mt Korobaba hike. We walked up a steep, rooty, muddy, overgrown track to the top of the mountain. The peak is about 400m above sea level, only 15 minutes out of Suva, and rewards those who reach its peak with this:



My legs are burning now and I have mud stains on my socks that look as though they're a permanent feature. Despite all the things that don't seem to happen, a walk in the jungle certainly calms me down quite nicely.

Back to school again tomorrow...