Monday, March 30, 2009
This weekend was so much fun! I felt like I really got to know Kigali well…and we had a lot of good group bonding time. On Friday, after classes, most of the group and I went to market in search for who could find the funniest t-shirt. All of us muzungus were running around market, sorting through piles and piles of t-shirts (they have the most random t-shirts here), and finally deciding on the one that we thought would be the grand winner. Clint, Dwight and Brenda’s son, was the judge. I found a light blue shirt…it had a huge smile on the front with braces and underneath the mouth it read, “Brace Yourself.’’ I thought it was funny…unfortunately, it was not the winner but makes for good memories. Everyone bought shirts with funny sayings about an old, 60 year old woman and monkeys…etc. It was fun to see what all people could come up with. Anyway, the contest took place after dinner. Everyone put on their shirts and displayed them for Clint. Mindi won the contest…a jar of nutella was her prize! After the contest, we had fun playing group games. Have you ever heard of Fishbowl? It is so much fun…it involves 3 rounds of describing words, charades, and using 1 word phrases…2 teams, whoever gets the most points wins. We played 2 rounds before we called it quits. It’s hilarious to see people’s facial expressions…and acting, we have some really good actors. Good times! All the girls wanted to have a girl’s night, so we kicked the boys out of the house, ate tons of nutella (Mindi was nice to share), talked, and watched a chick flick, “The Wedding Date.” It was late and we were all tired from our day of shopping, playing games, and having fun…so we all got situated in the living room. There were a lot of us trying to fit in the small living room...we slept on the floor and couches. It wasn’t the most comfortable sleeping position, but, surprisingly, I was able to catch a descent amount of zzzzzzz’s.
Saturday was Pancake Day! Every Saturday, the girls join the guys at the Jackson’s house to eat pancakes…we woke up to the smell of fresh coffee and warm pancakes. It reminded me of the many sleepovers we had at my house and at friends…good memories. I played Jack Johnson “Banana Pancake” song….thought it was fitting. In the morning, most of us hung out at the house…it was Rwanda’s monthly holiday, Umuoganda. On this day, all transportation, stores, and jobs do not work in the morning. All persons are required to help clean or do some type of service in the community. Everything is closed until 12. The streets were so peaceful…traffic was much less. It was nice to have a relaxing morning.
For lunch, Roanna, Suzy, and I walked to market to find some fresh fruit. Roanna was able to buy some mangos and oranges…me and Suzy were craving apples but had no luck. We rode a mutatu to a grocery store close to where we live and found some lunch….but no apples. We walked back to the house, ate lunch, and hurried off to the World Cup Qualifiers game between Rwanda and Algeria. The streets were already packed about 2 hours beforehand…so we decided we should probably go. We met up with some other people in our group, went through security (ha, that was interesting…felt very violated. No worries, it was a woman security guard), and went to find our seats. We had descent seats that had a good view of the field. Soon after getting situated, it started to down pour. HUGE raindrops and small pieces of hail started to fall from the very dark sky. Luckily, Wes brought an umbrella. It was hilarious….everyone in the stadium dodged down the stairs to hide beneath the stadium roof. But we brave souls, decided to wait it out. Wes, Roanna, Jenny, a random Rwandan couple, and I were crammed under Wes’ umbrella. We were all getting soaked and, after a good 10 minutes of heavy down pour, decided to make the run. We scrambled to the stadium stairs, the part without the roof, and were smashed against the wall. My side got completely drenched…the umbrella was dripping water on me. We were all laughing, shivering, and getting up, close, and personal…let’s just say it was a bonding experience, ha!
After the rain let up, everyone was pushing and shoving through the crowd to find seats. We ran through a section, I hopped over a rail with a skirt on…I call that talent, and found seats in a section closer than we were before! Good deal…we were seated in the middle of the field and had an awesome view. I was sitting shoulder to shoulder between a stranger and Wes…it was quite crowded! For the remaining 1 ½ hours we sat in our seats and talked until the teams came out and we all cheered for them. Rwandan fans are definite supporters…dancing, shouting, clapping, blowing horns, painted faces, dressing up, etc…it was one big party. The game was so much fun. It turns out that neither teams scored, it was a tie. I was surprised that they didn’t go into overtime…thought they would, but they didn’t! The whole time I had to squint because, although our seats had a great view of the field, it also had a great view of the sun…I squinted the whole game. My eyes started to water from all of my squinting…but, I still had fun. When the game was over, crowds and crowds of people gushed out of the stadium…we walked home, which isn’t far from the stadium, and dodged cars, taxis, and people that were flooding from the gates. We got home and had pizza night! In the evening, we played a Disney game called “Scene It” and then a bunch of us girls went star gazing outside. Africa’s skies are beautiful…the stars are so bright. We were able to enjoy the breathtaking view until T.J., one of our guard dogs, sprinted towards us and hoped over 4 girls, landed on Suzy, and ran away. I saw the dog coming and thankfully had enough time to stand up…for those of you who don’t know, I am very afraid of dogs. We put the dogs in the back so they would stop bothering us…the dog took the blanket I was using with him…
Sunday morning, I visited an Anglican church with Danielle, Joy, Roanna, Suzy, Sandy, and Jenny. It was a mixture of English and Kinyrwandan. I enjoyed having a more English service…it is difficult to sit through 3 or 4 hour services of foreign languages…it was nice to understand what was going on. I liked the church and will probably go back again. After church, we walked into town and had lunch and coffee at Bourbon, which is a Rwandan coffee shop that is so good! Actually, they are opening the first Bourbon Coffee Shop in D.C. soon. We sat and talked for awhile and then read for a bit. It was very relaxing. A few of us visited the Craft Coop. across the street. I found some nice crafts including a pair of traditional Rwandan earrings…they are kind of hard to describe but they are basically threaded circles of all sorts of colors. Women wear them everywhere. I was happy with my purchases and we were all done shopping…so we headed for home. I took a quick nap which felt nice…I have been really tired lately, and got some reading done. In the evening, we spent some time singing songs together-so many good guitar players and singers in this group-and loading pics. I finally got the white water rafting photos…I had to laugh to myself as I flipped through the different pics…I hope to load them onto Facebook soon so that all can see what we went through, ha!
Today, I had classes in the morning to afternoon. After school, Suzy, Roanna, and I went to PHARP, which is an organization that leads a sewing class for victims of genocide. They are great seamstresses…many of the girls on my team have already had dresses and skirts made! We visited the class to teach them English for the next 2 weeks. We will meet 3 times a week for 1 hour. Today, we kind of played it by ear. We had no idea how much English they knew so…we basically, did an introduction of greetings, clothing, colors, etc…we thought these topics may be helpful considering that they work with fabric daily. Our lesson went well…it was fun to hear the women recite the words we presented. Some girls seem to be very good at learning languages while others get very nervous speaking. It was a good experience and I look forward to see them again. We meet on Wednesday. Anyway, I think that is a fairly good update as to what we did in the past week. I’ll try to update more frequently in these last couple of weeks! Crazy how fast time flies by….but, until then, ta ta for now!
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