I found chocolate!

Yesterday was a big day for me. I’m pretty sure I almost perfected my bucket bathing which is definitely exciting and something to be proud of. The water is cold and there’s not an endless supply but the best part is I didn’t get the floor all wet. Hey, it’s the little things in life that keep us going right? know I mentioned before that we live at the Kitchen House so food is prepared here but we no longer have every meal and tea break here! THANK GOD. There is still a lot of traffic since we have the closest bathroom to the school (I live across the street!) but when people were here all the time we didn’t have any space and Mupemba, our training director made some changes. It also sucked that our toilet was gnarly messed up the other day and some men had to use tree branches and sticks and what not to plunge it. My whole room smelled like stank. So now no toilet paper down the toilet. Imagine that guys…Some of the transfers from Mauritania just wipe with their hands. I’m not that gnarly yet. We have no furniture besides our bunk beds so I got some cardboard boxes from the backyard and made 2 little cases. I wouldn’t call them shelves but one just has clothes in it and the other has books but its better than just a cluster on the floor. Okay, there is still quite a cluster but its organized.


Yesterday was also the first day of training classes and it was hard. Besides being out of school for 2 years it is just sooo long. 8-5 and it’s intensive learning! The Kinyarwandan teachers teach in ONLY Kinyarwanda. It’s ridiculous trying to learn verb tenses being explained in a foreign language. Ugh. I am not yet being proactive and using the index cards I brought to study but it will happen. After having hours of the language you kinda just want to get away from it. We also had our first medical training sesh and we got these medical kits that have everything from Tylenol to ace bandages to condoms to chapstick…they are pretty intense not gonna lie. Best part is they were packaged in EL SEGUNDO, CA. Says right there on the label! I mean really? Do these coincidences happen to anyone else? So weird. We also get to practice pricking our fingers so we can put blood on slides to see if we have malaria. How fun does that sound?


I am trying to enjoy the free time I have by llistening to music, journaling, and reading. I am currently reading Emptiness Dancing by Adyashanti (thanks Grahams) and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (thanks Jana) in case anyone wants to have fake book club meetings via email. We also started a book co-op in our room so we can exchange books. I also walk into town when I can which is nice and I fould a little shop with these fake blow pops twice the size and some milk chocolate. I tell ya that chocolate never tasted so good.  I actually walked someone there after dinner so he could get into the candy boutique also. One of the workers asked how much the suckers were and I said 100 and all the people laughed because I knew how much and the one guy didn’t. Ooops. Forgot to mention in Kigali we went to a little bar (I think it was someone’s house) to try banana beer. It’s 14% alcohol and it is nasty! It burns your throat. We weren’t doing well drinking it so a group of us played ‘never have I ever…’ we learned a lot about each other real quick! I tried to upload pictures to the blog but it literally was taking forever. I don’t think it was ever going to go thru so I just put 4 pictures on facebook. I was very rushed and yea…that’s all I got for you guys to look at for now. Be peaceful.