Monday, March 15, 2010

It is HOT here today! For some reason we are all just dying here today. Everyone just seems too tired to learn anything! But, attempts at language have been made… it was a rough class today. They’re giving us the language a little at a time, without explaining the grammar the way we’re all used to in language classes… and it’s difficult to say the least, and we’re frustrated… but we have to just put our trust in the language teachers that they know what they’re teaching us and how to do it in 10 weeks.

We have less than 8 weeks of training left… it will probably start to drag by at some point, but for now I’m just freaked out that I only have 8 weeks left to learn enough to get by with! Not too much exciting today… just busy. I need to make more flash cards and work on studying tonight… such an exciting life I lead here. The roommates are watching episodes of Friends… it’s amazing how addicted to that stuff everyone is when it‘s no longer readily available. I rarely watched TV in the states… I haven’t decided if I will get to the point where I really want to watch the stuff here!



Wednesday, March 17, 2010

It has been such an interesting couple of days! It’s one thing to have language thrown at us all day… but so much of the rest of the information we’ve gotten has stressed me out quite a bit. From the medical sessions where we learn about all of the random parasites and intestinal problems we could, and likely will, encounter here… to the technical sessions where we learn about HIV/AIDS and various other community health initiatives that I have no experience with… our technical training has made me stress out about site placement so much. But the last couple of days we had sessions with a couple of volunteers that work in organizational development within health systems strengthening… which is the area that our Associate Peace Corps Director for Health here in Rwanda told me I would likely be working in. So we're supposed to find out our site placements next week and then do site visits the week after that, but we'll see... the Peace Corps loves to change things! :)

Other than that, things are about the same around here. More and more Kinyarwanda… I have to figure out a better way to retain vocabulary because I’m not memorizing things as well as I should be! Things like numbers and time are such a struggle… for instance, thirty six is mirongo itatu na atandatu and I may have possibly spelled that wrong… but it’s just so long! And times do correspond to the numbers… but their “first hour” is 7 in the morning… so one is at 7, two is at 8, and so on. So someone asks you what time it is and you have to check the time, translate the current hour into their hour and then that number into Kinyarwanda! Ok, I’ll stop complaining about how difficult the language is.

Funny thing about being here is the things we miss without even having been gone for very long. Everyone has already started talking about food we miss… food here is pretty bland. And when I pull out my iPod every few days it’s so nice to hear music! I miss country radio already! I think it’s because our days are so structured and the fact that we all know we’re going to be here for more than two years is in the back of our minds. My new favorite things in two years are going to be hot showers and ice cubes.

A few people have complained about the super hard pillows and the wood frame bunk beds with only about a three inch foam mattress to sleep on… but I love it! Apparently the benefit of loving a hard mattress is the ability to sleep on anything. To think that I had a full box spring and mattress at home and I’m perfectly happy sleeping on a few inches of foam…

I’m currently sitting right inside our front door, typing, and one of the neighborhood kids has climbed up to the bottom of our metal fence so that he can look in and is making animal noises at me and some of my other housemates who are sitting on the front porch. And for some reason this is no longer a strange occurrence! Then again, one of my roommates did teach the neighborhood kids animal sounds while she was teaching them English words for animals… but they’ve gotten very good at it!

I know I’m rambling a bit, but I’m making the effort to blog more and share more of the random things that happen here… it’s so easy to get wrapped up in the daily life and not want to write because I can’t decide what to put on the page.

It’s off to dinner soon… we actually have a session after dinner tonight, so it will be a later night than usual, so I have to make sure that my world is in order so that I can crash when I get back… seeing as it’s 6pm and I’m already tired!


Saturday, March 20, 2010

It’s been an interesting day. We were scheduled to go to one of the national parks today and the Peace Corps had negotiated a discounted rate for us… so we drove 3 hours down there and while it’s a pretty drive, it’s not a fun one! Very curvy roads up the mountains… and I get minor motion sickness. So I didn’t feel great. But we got there, they wouldn’t give us the discounted rate, so we drove through the park of the park we could drive through, and then drove home. But, I did get a few great pictures when we were in the rainforest. It’s cooler at the higher elevation, and it’s just so green and beautiful, it’s amazing. I’ll try to load a couple of pictures tomorrow. AND we saw monkeys just hanging out in the trees on the side of the road!

Tonight we’re having a party for the handful of March birthdays we have in our group… so it’s off to dinner and drinks soon. I’m planning to head to the internet café tomorrow, but we’ll see. I need to spend most of tomorrow studying.