RATED G

It was the last official day of school for the children. The original plan was to take them to Deuba ("deh-umba") park, but strong winds suggestive of a developing cyclone thwarted our day trip plans. No one fancied the idea of fishing out shivering children from freezing cold water or reversing the effects of hypothermia...if that's at all possible in Fiji. Of course, the children were severely disappointed. Their hopes as damp as my therapy room. ...nah, nothing can be wetter than that.

Just going off the track a bit, but here's something a little amusing:

There exists within the school a single manilla folder labelled "OH+S". Within this folder is a single sheet of paper which lists briefly certain aspects of the school that require reviewing. One of them is a lack of fire alarm/sensing system. On the second half of the page are a few strategies that have been brainstormed to solve the school's OH+S issues.

Recently, the school was donated a large amount of money from a very generous association. It was suggested that the money should be used to put in place a flashing light alarm system for the hearing impaired department in case of fire. Neighbouring the hearing impaired classrooms are classrooms where there are able-hearing teachers and students. The school is set up in such a way that a classroom of physically impaired children has to pass a hearing impaired classroom to exit the school. Due to their reduced auditory input, the hearing impaired children generally have a heightened sense of smell. Rather than hearing a person coming, they smell a person coming. In fact, they could even smell a fire better than you or I. This is provided that the school is dry enough to catch on fire - which is how this tangent is developed.

So yes, the spirits of the children were dampened, on par with the dampness of the school itself.

Our head teacher called a meeting to decide what was to be done with the children as an alternative for the day. Meetings are interesting. For the most part, the head teacher will take the floor, not because she likes the sound of her own voice, but if she doesn't there is usually a mammoth of awkward silence placed on the table. People are mostly too soft spoken to bring their ideas forward to the group. They much prefer to discuss it with their neighbour and hope that the head teacher over hears them. We tossed up ideas of driving them to Deuba next year and sending them home today. There was also talk of driving 2 and a half hours to kula bird park in Sigatoka, but half of the kids had already been, so of course we couldn't go there again. Ideas kept throwing themselves about but would land lifeless and limp on teh table once another teacher had shot it down. Finally, someone suggested that we go to Village 6 - our local cinema.

We looked up the movie times and we had the choice of Harry Potter, or a fine selection of bad-boy rough and tough, shoot-em-up movies. Excellent range for a school trip. Most movies were starting at 10:20 and it was now 10:00. This happened to be an appropriate time for debating about how we were going to get there and where was the money to pay for it. A lengthy discussion ensued and it was finally decided at 10:20 that we would pack 40 kids onto a mini school bus and cart them down to Village 6. The children would be paid for and any adults who wanted to go would have to pay for themselves.

10:30 we arrived at Village 6 and the movies had already commenced. We were standing at the ticket box. No one knew which movie we were seeing. I assumed we were seeing Harry Potter as it was the only mildly child-friendly movie appropriate for children as young as 6 years old. Somehow, the ticket lady managed to convince us that the movie called "Faster" was rated G and so she sold us 40 tickets. We ushered the children in as quickly as possible and what followed was the most awkward, uncomfortable movie viewing experience I have ever had.

In case you haven't heard of the movie, "Faster", it's got that huge wrestler-turn-actor guy. Now, in the short 15 minutes that we were in the cinema (and 15 minutes too long), we saw the following scenes:

- a car chase with lots of swearing (this was only minimally awkward)

- a semi-naked muscley man doing a series of hard-core yoga poses who then turns soft-core porn when he wakes his naked lady friend whose rude bits are draped by a sheet.

- a heist scene in which the presumed bad guys are torturing the presumed good guys into giving information with guns pointed at their head and shooting past their ears (this is me squirming in my chair wanting to run to the younger ones to cover their eyes and ears)

- an old man pretending to be a little bit more frail than he actually is so that he can lure a young woman into his apartment, drug her and then....

Finally, it was decided that the movie was too violent and inappropriate for the children. And sure enough, we made a beeline to cinema 1 where Harry Potter was about 30 minutes in.

It was such a comforting noise to hear the children laugh and gasp in response to the movie. I was so glad to be out of the other cinema. I couldn't stop writhing and twitching out of awkwardness and discomfort. No child should ever be viewing such violent scenes. I have no idea how the ticket lady thought it was even appropriate to suggest that movie to a bunch of 6-18 year old kids.

Anyway, sega na leqa, in the end the children had fun and even pretended to be fighting wizards when they returned to school!