We made it!

Wednesday:

Good morning from a rather balmy Kigali! The past two days have been such a whirlwind. America seems so far away right now. So, from the beginning:

As evidenced by my mom's pictures, my parents dropped me off at DFW around noon on Monday. We said goodbye, then I headed to Chicago to meet up with everyone else on my trip. We were delayed in Chicago for at least an hour because of mechanical difficulties, and we were worried we weren't going to make our connection in Brussels--and the next flight out was two days later. Thankfully, since there were 32 of us going from Chicago to Kigali, they held the plane for us. The flight to Brussels was alright. It was just super long (8 hours) and I wasn't able to really sleep for more than an hour. The flight to Kigali was better. It was 8 hours as well, but I managed to sleep through most of it. I also probably had my last ice cream and cheese for the foreseeable future. We arrived in Kigali around 8 at night on Tuesday, cleared customs (which was almost too easy), met up with our program directors, and headed to our hotel.

We went out for our first Rwandan meal shortly thereafter. The food is really delicious. Usually, they have a salad of sorts with finely shredded lettuce and carrots, rice of some sort, beans, banana or some sort of starchy root, sauces made from cassava leaves and/or peanuts, the best french fries, and a few other things. The bananas here are the best. They're so sweet and flavorful! And everything we drink here is, by necessity, bottled. We usually have water, soda, juice, and occasionally beer. We got back to our hotel and crashed. I was only really able to sleep for 4 hours that night, but it was alright. Our hotel rooms are pretty basic--two twin beds, two desks, a bedside table, mosquito nets that hang from the ceiling, and a cement floor. The bathrooms are pretty interesting too. I've come to learn that toilets in Rwanda flush either by pulling a string or a knob on the top or by pushing a button. And most of them don't have toilet seats.

I woke up with the sunrise yesterday morning at around 6 am and couldn't get back to sleep. My roommate Alissa woke up then as well, so we just hung out, unpacked our stuff, and took in the beautiful view we have from our balcony (pictures to come!). I was able to skype my parents for a bit, which was cool. We have wifi here, but it's not too strong or reliable. I tried skyping Marvin later, and before we could even get a good conversation going beyond "I can't see you" "what did you say?" "are you there?," the wifi went down and didn't come up til later that night. Breakfast yesterday was good too! I've learned, though, that I probably ought to take my malaria pills after eating. Makes life a lot easier. For breakfast, we had an omlette, tea, bread, and tiny bananas. After that, I walked around the hotel for a bit and sat down to read. The view from here, and from all of Kigali really, is amazing. I now get why Rwanda is the land of a thousand hills. There are hills everywhere, and even though they've been developed and people live there or there are businesses there, much of the greenery is still there, so there are basically rolling hills of houses and tropical trees everywhere.

Speaking of the tropics, it really feels tropical here. The temperature ranges from the 60s to the low 80s, and the humidity is pretty high. Year round! Last night, we were talking to some Rwandans, and this guy was telling us how "cold" it was--at probably 65 degrees with high humidity. But even though it's so warm, people still dress really well. Men wear slacks or nice jeans with a collared shirt, and women wear either western style business clothes--skirts or slacks with a nice shirt, or more african style clothes--printed dresses and head wraps or wrap around skirts and a shirt. We try to dress as similarly as we can, but of course, we get stared at wherever we go. It's a bit weird being the center of attention like that, but I guess it's not terribly common to see a mizungu (white person) walking through your neighborhood either. On the way to lunch yesterday, there were kids out playing in front of a house on the road we were walking down. We greeted them in Kinyarwanda, which made them laugh, and kept walking. We soon heard feet quickly following behind us, so we turned around to see them all running toward us. We gave them all high fives and hand shakes and asked them their names, but that was about all we were able to say. They were adorable though! I really hope I get to work with kids for my internship.

After lunch, we went to Town to get our currency exchanged and buy phones to use while we're here. The currency, Rwandan Franc, is really pretty. But the way we're used to thinking about the value of money here is all off. Things are worth thousands of francs here, where as things are generally worth less than a hundred dollars in the US. A beer is a thousand franc, sunglasses, 5000 franc, etc. but a thousand franc is worth about $1.65. Thank god (or imana, rather) for the currency converter on my phone! We went to Bourbon, a coffee shop, for tea and coffee, and just as we sat down and tried to get on the wifi, the power went out. Had it not been for the lights going out, you would have never known. Life just continued as normal, no one really reacted much. TIA (this is africa, hakuna matata--which is actually a real swahili word!).

After that, we came back and had dinner, then went to a club called Shooters about a mile or so away. When we got there, they were having a spoken word night--all in English. As we learned the next day, we'd found the diaspora bar--a place where the young, educated people of Kigali and those who have been abroad go. They did a bit of poetry, then Joseph, a super outgoing guy in our group got up there and sang Kanye West's Heartless, and everyone just went crazy and started singing along. We got a few drinks, danced, and hung out til about 1 when we left. The walk home took us about 30 minutes. The club was a ways off the main road, and anything off the main roads are bumpy, packed dirt roads. We got to the main road, passed the US embassy, met a rather, er, charming lady who had had one too many to drink, got back to our hotel, and crashed.

It's early friday morning now, and I started this post on wednesday! So much to say :) I'll talk about thursday on my next post