Lesson number 182,406... Be careful when offering help, more than likely I'll have no idea what's coming!

So I’m finally a working girl again, although I would have to say that learning Kinyarwanda is kind of like working. During my first week on the job, the Rwanda Ministry of Health had a special event that worked to distribute vitamins and shots to mostly children throughout the sector. My sector has 30 umudugudus or villages. I spent the week about an hour truck ride away, although it was only 15 kilometers or so. About 15 of the health workers loaded into the bed of the pickup truck and thank fully I landed a spot inside. There’s some things that just seem easier in the familiarity of home. The site was really pretty and there’s a separate health post there that was just built.

I helped by recording the distribution as I am not actually supposed to distribute medicine as in fact, I am not a doctor. But it was so cool. The first day we distributed vitamins to over 150 children and the next two days, over 200 each, not including the group that went to the school next door which gave out over 500. One of the nurses that came with us also distributed Depo Provera shots to mothers who were interested as there is a huge push for family planning in Rwanda. (Depo Provera is a type of birth control you get once every three months). The final day of my first week was spent hanging out at the health center and then accidentally watching a woman give birth. It was horrifying (sorry Kaleigh)! I will spare you all details, but I was telling my co-workers after that now I’m not sure if I want to go through that and have children. They laughed as they thought I was joking. Not getting married or having children is relatively unappreciated in Rwanda, at least it thus appears so far.

The Above picture is taken in Nyungwe National Park.

As I brag about my future niece, I tell Rwandans her name and that she’s a girl and they are shocked that we know the sex already and they also find it really shocking that she already has a name. They don’t name children until a day to a week after the birth. Anyways, week two was spent doing impromptu job shadows throughout the health center. I figured I had to learn how everything works, although directly after our daily 7 AM meeting, I’m not the most functional, but especially in Kinyarwanda. This week I have helped and watched in HIV testing, family planning, the pharmacy, consultation, baby monitoring and maternity. I’ve also met with the community health workers and planned out some adventures for the following week. When I type all that out, it seems like I’ve done a lot more work than I actually thought I did.

After lunch every day, nothing seems to really happen. Especially the last couple days, it has been raining and things kind of stop when that happens. So after lunch, I’ve been hanging out and studying Kinyarwanda at the health center as well as joking with my co-workers and watching American movies on Rwandan television. I have resisted telling any of my co-workers my age as, I’m close to marrying age in Rwanda (and no I don’t want a Rwandan husband)! But, a lot of people my age also haven’t been to university or held many, if any jobs. So, I’m torn between maintaining professional credibility and not being married off without my knowledge (or with it). It’s become a good joke though because I tell people I’m a child and then after a while I tell them I’m an old woman, and we all laugh. I also joke that I already have two husbands in America, as I wear two rings. It’s nice to be able to communicate jokes again.

I spent my first weekend here by going for a walk/hike in the national park and it was so cool. As I walked along the road, I could hear the monkeys crashing through the trees next to me. Cool, yes. Scary, yes! I then found this trail leading off to the left and decided to explore. I shortly ran into a man who was out walking and chatted for a few minutes then headed in opposite directions. Shortly thereafter I came to a fork and decided to head uphill. To my surprise the man came running after me telling me to take his machete because there were animals along that trail. Needless to say I took the other trail and the man joined me showing me the way and a really nice loop that I can hike. There were monkeys every step of the way. At one point the jungle was ringing with monkey sounds. Fortunately I didn’t see any until we got back to the road, and he pointed some out to me. They were so big! I’m glad I saw them from afar. I have a lot of monkey fear to come to terms with over the next two years!

The above picture is of a village that my health center serves. The bright green on the hillside is tea and the yellow in the distance is wheat!

Today I had to go to Butare, the nearest city to do some banking. I went with Christine a PCV that’s really close to my site. Although, I had to take a twegerane or a squeeze bus, or a small bus that lots of people shove into. Unfortunately the only twegerane that leave my site go sometime between 6:30 and 8 in the morning, and I’m such a morning person. So I got up this morning at 5:45, rolled out of bed and walked down to the town center to wait for the bus. I took that to my nearest big town, where I waited for Christine and then we took a bigger, but still packed express bus to Butare. I went to the bank, the post office, the market, had ice cream and met up with a bunch of other volunteers in my training class. It was a good day, but tiring, as the only twegerane that returns to my town leaves between five and six in the evening. It’s a full day process, so I’m glad I hopefully won’t have to go back for a while.

This picture is along the road to the health post I worked at the first week. I love the wheat, it makes me think of home, I can't imagine driving a combine on these hillsides though!

In our closest big town though, we’ve found good American food, a nice hotel, cheap massages, and a potential night club, not to mention a really cool outdoor market. My site is pretty cold and every one casts a worrisome look my way when they say that. But I’ve finally learned the word for snow, and try to explain that we have that at my home in the states. My Kinyarwanda is very limited still, but I can have conversations and everyone is very patient. I joke that I can only speak and think in Kinyarwanda between 10 AM and 2 PM when I’m the least tired. But it’s relatively true. It’s so easy to space out when you need to work to understand what’s even being said. But I love that I learn something each day. I am so happy that I am here and it’s weird that I’m already three months in! How did that happen? I will be done and back home much quicker than any of us expect it to feel like! Crazy! I’ve got lots of work to do though, and a lot of that will be initially trying to figure out what work I need to do. And all that is in a brand new language! OY! Wish me luck! Much love.

24 Months To Go.... Let the next adventure begin!

Welcome home…. Or rather, welcome to my home… This is a picture outside my home on my very first night at site!!!! It’s so beautiful, or Ni heza cyane! – Just a quick rant about Kinyarwanda. There’s the whole obnoxious noun class thing, but there’s also the fact that they have very few words. It all depends on the emphasis on the syllables. For examples gusura can mean to visit or it can mean to fart. Gusura is visit, but gusuuuura is to fart. Easy mistake right? But the other thing is that –iza means good, pretty, attractive, smart, and many other positive adjectives. This is annoying! So when I want to say sweet, pretty, nice, good, and many others when describing a person, in Kinyarwanda I can only say mwiza. When describing a place it’s heza (that’s the whole noun class thing!) Anyways, long story short. They need more words.

As one fellow trainee said the other day, “I’ve never learned a language that actually made me appreciate English before learning Kinyarwanda!” I would often times agree with that assessment! hahaha

Well, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. We had our swearing in ceremony in Kigali this past Wednesday. Dressed in our traditional Rwandan garb (most of us) we swore in at the US Ambassador’s residence. Apparently there may have been an article on it in the Rwandan New Times newspaper, or a broadcast on national television. It for sure made it on the radio as we heard that. We were allowed to be unleashed on Kigali and to fend for ourselves and I think for everyone it was a success.

I learned how to get back and forth to the town center using public transport, which in my book was a huge success! (Kigali is HUGE by the way!) Anyways, I finally bought some sunglasses – mine broke on the flight to Rwanda. I also made some other purchases that I am so happy to have now that I am here at my site! I ate some ice cream, which is always rewarding, and I ate lots of American food, like a hamburger!!!! Yep… it was awesome! I also purchased some green and yellow Nike flip-flops, which I had to throw in here, only to emphasize how awesome the Oregon Ducks are!

The above picture is of my host parents and the one down below is me with my oldest host brother Nafta, and my youngest host brother Saj.

“Site Installation” as the Peace Corps calls it, which was really shoving as much as we can into a compact space and being driven to our sites and thrown out with a fond farewell and a “do good work!” However it is organized, ours happened yesterday. It was a long day. I was the last one to be dropped off, which was nice to see some other PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers – the PC loves their acronyms) sites and to see more of Rwanda. But I was glad to arrive. After cooking, arranging my room a little bit and visiting my co-workers, I ate and watched some TV on my computer and ended up going to bed early! It was nice. One of the hardest parts of my job will be the daily 7 am meetings! OY! I might try to figure out the logistics of bucket-bathing in the evening, while trying not to be bitten by imibu, more commonly known to us as mosquitos!

So I am officially at my new home, amongst the tea covered hills, next to the Nyungwe Forest. No monkeys yet, don’t worry! I am so happy to be here. I’ve had such a positive experience so far. When I did my site visit a month ago, I was much more stressed out and the constant calls of “Muzungu!!!!” got to me a little bit. But I’ve enjoyed my interactions so much, so far. Maybe it’s because my Kinyarwanda is better. Maybe, I’m just not as stressed out now, being unleashed into the world of Rwanda all on my own.

Since I’ve been here, I have adventured to various places to buy different things. I cooked “Grandpa Haggerty’s Spaghetti” last night over charcoal and I’ve had like 10 cups of tea out of my new electric teapot! I also used it to heat up my water for my bucket shower this morning! I love it! Anyways, today I ventured into town with one of my co-workers to talk to a carpenter. Hopefully next Tuesday I will be able to pick up my two bookshelves that they are making!

Other than that, I have spent today beginning to compile all the information on my community so far in my community needs assessment that I need to put together for the Peace Corps. It’s a really awesome tool, and I am glad that I’ve been able to add it and “Participatory Analysis for Community Action” or PACA to my tool book. So, I began the compilation, which has helped me think about what I would like to learn in the next three months (broadly of course)! I will actually begin this whole working thing on Monday morning, and between now and then, I need to study Kinyarwanda, collect myself, eat, maybe fit in a movie, do some reading and go to church on Sunday.

Church is a great way to be accepted into the community, and since my health center is housing me with three of my male co-workers, which is commonly frowned upon in Rwanda, I think I will need the positive attention. Since my host family was Pentecostal, I may try to adventure there on Sunday as my co-worker told me it’s only two hours! I think he may be lying! Some Rwandans seem to really love their church here! I will try to switch it up though and attend different churches over the course of my time here though ( I hear the Catholics usually have the shortest service with only 1.5 hours!) Sorry mom, but I may need to make that my service of choice. The Sunday services though are usually really cool because they are half singing and dancing. The other day I walked into my host family’s church to everyone dancing up and down the aisles and singing. It reminded me of the scene in Blues Brothers, where Jake and Elwood finally see the light and join the dancing! It’s kind of awesome!

This last picture is from Swear-In on Wednesday. It has some of the new volunteers, some teachers, Gordy the program manager, Mary the Country Director and some others. This is after we had all stuffed our faces with amazing American food or rather food we're more used to, like quiche, pizza, spring rolls, carrot cake!!! And of course they had meat on a stick!

Until next we meet... May the road rise to meet you!

One week left to real/actual volunteer-dom!

To start... I'd just like to point out in the picture below, my sister, chantal, is wearing a nike t-shirt. But that's not the super amazing part... On her lower back there, printed in blue letters are the words, Beaverton, Oregon! HAHAHA! Obviously it was meant to be, and for the record, she had that shirt before I came!

On Tuesday, my group mates and I had to do a presentation in Kinyarwanda (the language in Rwanda) on washing your hands! It was quite stressful, but it went so well. We had a game, we had a sketch and we built a hand washing station, which is so freaking cool! It's literally four sticks, a jug, some nails and some string, but it's rigged up so that you can press on one stick with your foot and it tilts the jug to pour water and you don't even have to touch anything with your hands. I think I may need to bring it back to the states when I come!

I'm now in the last week of training. I have a language test saturday morning at 8 and then hanging out with my host family. Logistically speaking, I cannot say that I think the move to my site will go smoothly, largely due to availability of wanted amenities and convenience of transportation. But as always, tuzareba, we will see. Every day my Rwandan family tells me how sad they will be when I go and that it's really bad that I am leaving. I will miss them a lot, but I will get to visit. It will be a lot harder to leave Rwanda in 2 years as I already have so many good Rwandan friends! But that's a ways away, and I'm already looking forward to getting to see Family and Friends back in the states. I miss you all so very much!

This last weekend, I got to go to the market again, where I bought some igitenge (sarongs) for the women in my family as a thank you. To my host father and my host brother, I gave my really awful kinyarwandan dictionary - it had none of the words I needed but somehow found it necessary to include the kinyarwandan words for g-string and for card number three in a deck of cards! - anyways, they loved the gifts, which I gave them Sunday evening. Monday was liberation day in Rwanda, so no one had to go to school or work. It was a really great day because we had a host family appreciation ceremony with all the families and me and another volunteer gave a short speech in Kinyarwanda.

The only thing that was missing Monday were fireworks, and maybe a cold brew, but mostly fireworks, and barbecues and maybe the fair my brother said he went to back in Oregon. But it was a really good day. Just as a side note... there is absolutely no shortage of guacamole in Rwanda, or at least the materials to make it. So far, it still kind of frightens some of the host families a bit. Especially the not-cooking part.

So a week ago, I bought some igitenge and I had a traditional Rwandan dress made, minus the head wrap, which I didn't have enough cloth for. I wore it to church on Sunday and my family as well as everyone else in the church were so happy. It was a lot of fun. I'm planning on wearing it at the swear-in ceremony next wednesday! Every day I kept asking my host family, is it saturday yet, is it four o'clock on saturday yet? I then taught them the word impatient, as I explained that I was being very impatient. They just laughed at me. We laugh at ourselves a lot. I recently learned the words for liar, shut up and various explanations equating to "Oh My God" and "Holy Crap" -more or less anyways - and so we've had a lot of fun joking with each other.

A lot of people have bought electronic movies over the course of their time here, so we've done some movie watching which has been really nice. I've also watched a lot of "How I met your mother" which I have to say I'm really hooked. It's a nice distraction from the stress of the day at night, when I can tuck myself in under my mosquito net, put my computer on my lap and watch a little bit of what could be considered a normalcy in my life (television!)

Life is good. Last night I had to explain homesickness versus missing someone. I was trying to explain that homesickness often implies a level of being sad that you are where you are and not at home. I was also trying to explain that I was so happy to be in Rwanda and in Africa, but that I missed my friends and family. Language barriers really make messages hard to get across sometimes.

But as for here, my volunteer swear in ceremony is this coming Wednesday at the US Ambassador's residence in Kigali. We met the ambassador a little while ago, however he just happened to finish his "tour of duty" so to speak, so it's an ambassador-less residence. Next Tuesday I will be packed and leaving for Kigali before swear-in on Wednesday. Then Thursday I'm headed to my assignment! Crazy that it's that close!!! That is of course if I pass all the tests today and tomorrow! OY! My brain is slowly wilting under the strain of studying! (I thought I wasn't a student, in the formal sense, anymore!) I was practicing my vocabularly last night and learning the names of some of the animals. So I told my host-brother Nafta, that I wanted to be a hippo, to which our visitor replied, "That's not possible!" I found that comment quite rude and limiting in how you address and view your life, but anyways... hahaha.

OK, now I very much need to study to prepare for my language exam, but just a short update on the world of Africa, or rather the world that I currently exist in, in which Africa is a part of! Can you tell my mind is stretching a little thin or becoming a little crazy? haha -Much love

Umuganda.... and the days in between

So here in Rwanda, the government has this required thing once a month called Umuganda, which is a day of work to help beautify and maintain the environment and such here in Rwanda. It's required of all people, and if you get caught not doing it, then you're fined. How strictly this is regulated I am unsure. I know many people who have not been to either of the two that I have attended since being here. Anyways... Yesterday was Umuganda, the last saturday of the month. Being on American time after roughly 23 years of living that way, I was up and ready to go early in the morning. (OK I realize the morning part of that sentence does not sound like me, but I have been living on my dad's schedule here, up at 6 and to bed by 9. No electricity and functional daylight hours - 6 am to 6 pm - are kind of what dictate my sleep schedule!)

Somewhat to my Rwandan family's dislike I rushed out of the house without my morning cup of tea, or any of the porridge they had made especially for me, with the family hoe in hand. As we walked (thankfully with my teacher) we continued to ask people where to go, to which Rwandan directions standardly replied with over there, complete with a flip of the wrist. So we arrive, on American time. To explain, here in Rwanda, things are a little bit more relaxed. Much to my sometimes frustration, they like to greet everyone as they walk down the street. They walk at a very slow pace a lot of the time, and they arrive, when they arrive. We often have to clarify with our training director, "Do you want to leave Rwandan time, or American time?" In other words can we take our sweet time showing up as maybe we want another cup of tea.

Another qualifier for this Rwandan time theory, is that they do not go out in the rain. To their credit, when it rains, it really rains. But it usually only lasts briefly. So unlike Eugene, it does not rain all day, almost every day! Sorry, another story real quick. My host family's toilet is outside. To get there I must go through 3 very squeeky doors, one with a double lock on it. Last night we had a crazy rain storm at about 10pm, to the point that it sounds like it'd be quieter outside in the rain, but it's so cool. Unfortunately I really needed to go to the bathroom at exactly 10:07ish last night. So I crawled out from under the mosquito net, put on my flip flops and rain jacket, trekked through the three squeeky doors, dove across the back yard area under the cover of my siblings porch roof. Then I tip toed through the mud, and raced around the corner into the bathroom. I'm so freaking happy I brought my head lamp! hahaha

Anyways, about Umuganda, we were in the first batch of 10 people to arrive. So we discovered work for ourselve. With two hoes and a shovel, we set to work trying to remove stumps from where they would later build a house. Before we started we tried to guess how much of the Rwandan's time would be spent watching the abazungus (foreigners) work. I was definitely off by saying 67%, in actuality, it rounded off probably around 96.4%. So as we went to work hacking apart a stump and digging it out of the ground (using hoes only) everyone watched, including our teachers and the family members that had gone early. After an hour of work 2.5 stumps destroyed later, and at least 150 Rwandans leaning on their tools watching us, we headed back down the hill, for bucket baths and a trip into Kigali (the capital of Rwanda).

It was a crazy and very thereapeutic adventure, although I have the crazy blisters or rather open wounds going on my hands right now. I took out a lot of agression apparently on that stump. But, now I am down to two weeks left of training. We just had a language evaluation and I received very high marks, which was gratifying. We also had check ins this past week, and the training director said he really didn't have any worries about my survival at site and my ability to intergrate into the community. That was really nice to hear, whether he does have worries or not! So two weeks and I will be an official Peace Corps Volunteer (how long has that process been in the works? OY!) As I said, I love Rwanda and I'm so pleased that this is my assignment.

These pictures are of the area where I have lived for the past two months. The first one is a view from one of the other PCTs houses. The next is the road through my village with two small kids walking to school, and the last is of a few boys laying (where the elephant sleep). It's called the Inzofu (elephant) something or another, but it's a grass park-like area. It's so beautiful!

The forest, some tea and times in Komonyi...

Welcome to Rwanda... The below is where I will be living for the next two years! Crazy right?

This past week was spent on what they call site visits. I traveled out to my where I will be working and living for the next two years. It is so amazingly beautiful. In general Rwanda consists of probably somewhere around one million hills which makes for beautiful scenery but a lot of winded treks up hill. My health center is on top of a hill (no surprise there) overlooking kilometers, in every direction, of tea plantations. But they are planted precariously on the slopes of these hills. It’s quite a site. I’m also within walking distance of Nyungwe National Park, which is gorgeous. There are 13 different kinds of monkeys and chimps in the park, but as of yet, I’ve had no run-ins.

The trip was really awesome and I will more than likely have electricity, which is kind of awesome in regards to computer-ing. I will potentially be working with community health workers CHWs – there are two at the health center, which serves 30 villages (umudugudus) and there are 6 CHWs per village. This means I will be doing outreach and training and similar things with this population which is pretty exciting, but daunting as it is very open-ended. My site visit was amazing and frustrating. My supervisor is currently on maternity leave which left me a little lost at times, but everyone was very friendly. I had the awesome opportunity to help distribute various tools to the CHWs which also allowed me the opportunity of introducing myself to all of them. There was a great reception, especially when I continued to participate and communicate (in Kinyarwanda) with each of them.

The Below picture is of Nyungwe National Park.

Anyways, one of the volunteers who will be close to me and myself spent Saturday in the nearest town, where we went to the market. We both wanted to buy igitenge (sarongs) but the merchants continued to try to charge us white people prices. After we stopped by the bar for some Guinnesses (YES, they have Guinness!!!!!!) and brochettes (commonly known as meat on a stick). They are so good and more than likely they were goat, but I spend very little time dwelling on what it is I’m eating here. One of the downfalls of not having electricity is that there are no refrigerators. But please don’t let this deter you if you have left-overs. All you must do is simply re-boil it the next day! Yeah, as I said, I try not to dwell on some of these details!

I am now back at home with my wonderful Rwandan family who called me all week checking in to see how I was faring. I dove out of the peace corps car with backpack and some other bags through a crazy down pour right into my awaiting family. I am very well taken care of. My site visit really solidified the Kinyarwanda I already know as well as fostered the learning of health-related words which was much needed as now I usually focus on the ones I need all the time. Today we covered past tense, which is kind of daunting.

I’ve shared with some of you, but Kinyarwanda is a very difficult language to learn. In English, there are 2 noun classes, singular and plural. Spanish, French, etc. have 4 masculine plural, masculine singular and the same for feminine. Kinyarwanda has 16! I can’t even begin to explain them! Anyways, I finally understand the difference between learning a language in country versus in the classroom and I would pick it this way any day! I also invite everyone to visit. This country is quite incredible/interesting in beauty, politics, social norms as well as everything in between. I am so happy to be here.

The above is a picture of me with my youngest brother Saj and my sister Chantal, the second oldest girl of my four Rwandan sisters! It's not necessarily tradition in Rwanda to smile during pictures, so I'm always telling them, "Urasecca!" or in English "You Smile!" Then they laugh at me so it tends to work surprisingly!

There have been some flaws of course. One is mold, yeah I know, nothing new in the Willamette valley of Oregon. But we have what we refer to as Lincoln log beds. They are only a couple inches off the floor and have about 25 pieces to them. The design is really cool and great for storage, but they are moldy here. Also, we have to clean our rooms once a week (at least) to keep the chiggers and other scary bugs away! By cleaning the room, I mean removing all the bedding (including the bed) and putting it in the sun to kill, mold, bed bugs, everything potentially thriving there. Then we must sweep and mop the cement floor, which is a lot of work as I have to clean up my footsteps as I walk around as I refuse to take my shoes off out of fear of Chiggers.

OK, Chiggers are evil bugs that are found in the dust that bore into our soft soles of our feet and multiply very quickly. They need to be removed individually by needle. Gross I know. Fortunately my site is colder, so I’m hoping there is less concern of snakes and the like. I do need to be wary of monkey bites though, at least when I go into Nyungwe! I am doing very well although I miss everyone. I do have a cell phone (whether I’ve mentioned it or not, I don’t know) but if you want to give me a call, get in touch with one of my parents! I also just bought a modem so I should be able to skype soon! So that’s an avenue as well.

More to come as always…

Murokose Rwanda!

Africa has been so wonderful so far. As it has been a while, I'm not exactly sure what I have and have not shared in my blog thus far. But to start...

My days are so crazy. Monday through Friday I have class from eight to five and since I get home around five, I only have one hour of light left in the day, which is usually spent being confused about Kinyarwanda and trying to help my family with chores, like cooking over a wood fire. Then on saturday I have class from eight to 12ish but this is usually practical language lessons. The first saturday I learned how to wash clothes by hand, and then (being that it was my birthday) I got to go do some birthday laundry followed by a quest for some birthday pineapple! Which, was totally amazing!

This past Saturday we were ordered to buy things at the market, so they drove us there, dropped 11 muzungus (foreigners) off and left. It was intense but I drive a hard bargain. I bought all the fixings to make homemade spaghetti sauce and it was SOOOO amazing. I probably should of prefaced that by what my usual meals are here. Every meal has some combination of beans, rice, potatoes and cassava. Literally every lunch and dinner. There's also sauce, but it's not super flavorful and sometimes there's meat, but it's not my favorite. Not bad, but I don't often opt to eat it. Anyways, that day I went home and took a very long time to prepare spaghetti but it was so worth it! It was nice to have diversity.

The next day we went to Butare in the south of Rwanda, which was nice because we got phones, so I have a cell phone, not that it is cheap for anyone in the states to actually call me. We also went to Murambai Genocide Memorial which was really really intense. It's hard to explain, especially if you know nothing about the genocide, but to generalize, it was brutal, it was violent and it included an entire population. Neighbors killed neighbors. People killed other people brutally and tortuously because of cultural differences. If you want to know more I can recommend some reading, but anyways, back to the memorial. It was so intense. There were hundreds upon hundreds of mummified bodies laying in rooms at this school where over 50,000 people and students were massacred in 1994. We entered each room and saw the bodies and went on to the next one. There was no glass between us, there was no protection from it. It still makes me feel physically ill to think about it. It was so informative and so intense. I will leave it at that.

That night I slept horribly as I also had come down with bed bugs. The past few days have been intense as I had to wash all of my clothing and bedding to try and get rid of them, also had to wash my bed with bleach to kill mold and leave my mattress in the sun to kill the bugs! OY, then I had to go back to Butare as I needed to replace my phone charger because the one I bought didn't work. That was an exhausting day and turned out to be a horrible representation of both cultures as cuss words were thrown around and insults were passed back and forth. This was not on my part, but it was a pretty stressful experience. We did get passion fruit flavored ice cream afterwards which made my day so much better!

I realize that this is relatively vague, but to do a blog affiliated with an experience had in the peace corps comes with much more awareness and more visibility. Anyways, I feel constantly busy, which is nice, but is catching up with me. I feel very tired. I have had so many cross cultural experiences and it has been amazing. I live across the street from the church so all hours of the day, night and everything in between I get to hear singing which is awesome, and also vaguely reminiscent of living across the street from Max's bar in college. Sometimes the singing has been ruined by technology as it's almost as if certain people were never taught how to use the equipment they have and therefore the music is often drowned out by static, poor electronic musical instrument playing and too loud of speakers. But the dancing is always fun.

I am still having trouble uploading pictures on this connection. I do have some up on facebook so if you'd like a link to that and don't have a facebook, e-mail me so that I can send that to you, so you can see them. As always, you are missed and know that Rwanda welcomes all of you! More to come as always!

Mwiriwe from Komonyi, Rwanda

Mwiriwe!!! Which means hello, good afternoon and a pluthera of other things I haven't learned so far. But, either way, hello from Rwanda. It is beautiful here, reminds me a lot of Indonesia but that should be slightly expected because of location in the world. My journey has been amazing so far. Even the things I expected to be really hard like bucket showers and squat toilets have proven much easier tasks than I expected. Kinyarwanda on the other hand is a very hard language to learn. But, it's easier living with a family and learning all the time. Some time soon I should learn how to get water and how to cook over a fire.

It has been crazy since I got here. They held the flight for us in Belgium because we sat on the runway at JFK for three hours so were running slightly late, but because of the close flight, they didn't get anyone's luggage on board. Therefore we got to stay in Kigali another night. Training has been very shotgun. Lots of training, then we were trucked an hour outside of Kigali to Kamonyi where we live with hosts familys. Mine just happens to be the family of the pastor, so when I was dropped off there were hundreds of people outside which was a little overwhelming, but my family is amazing!

I have seven Rwandan brothers and sisters and they all help me learn different things. The two youngest help me go over numbers, body parts and whatever else we can think of. The four girls are in the middle and they teach me chores, how to take care of myself and other words. And finally the oldest is Nafta, a year younger than me and speaks enough English to communicate with me and translate at times which is really nice. My Rwandan Mama is very sweet and I want to get to know her but there is a definite language barrier. Papa Bonkey is really nice and sweet, but he does ask me at least once a day if I pray. It's definitely a positive place though. Every time I'm successful at something, they all clap and cheer. It's almost easier being with my family than in class which is kind of draining throughout the day.

I've learned so much in only a week! OY! Now I can say, I want sleep, I want food, I have this, I have that! Simfite Inzara is a common phrase of mine, I don't have hunger! They're always feeding me! But it's good. I've been eating lots of carbs, beans, rice, cooked green banana, greens, unknown meat, but it's good. And I love the tea! They drink it just like in Ireland. It's only been a week. I have nine more to go with my host family and if I pass the tests and make it through, I will be sworn in to the Peace Corps as an official volunteer in July. We've very unfortunately already had two people terminate early and go home and they will be very missed. It's definitely an intense experience, but I'm happy so far.

Anyways, there will be more later, I promise, this is just an initial blog to let everyone know that I exist, and I exist well so far in Rwanda. I miss my friends and family very much and I love you all. More to come soon and know that in my times of sadness, you are my comfort! Pictures to come!