Sorry for not posting sooner!!!

Igitagangurirwa! No, it does not mean “welcome” or “hi” in Kinyarwanda but it is the longest word I have learned today. The length of the word, which means spider, kinda makes me wonder about the size of these creatures in Rwanda but I guess I’ll just have to find out.

Well, for those of you who have been following my blog (or one post), I have finally left my home in the United States and have arrived in Rwanda to begin training as a Peace Corps volunteer. And so far, (not to sound clichéd) it has been an amazing experience. I feel like I have met so many new people, experienced so many new things and learned so many Kinyarwandan words that I don’t really know what to do with myself. I don’t know where to put all this new information and my American routine has been disrupted so badly that it has taken awhile for me to adjust. Who am I kidding? I am still freaking adjusting and I will be for a loooong time.

My American routine was pretty consistent. I woke up late in the morning, drank some coffee, sat on the couch, watched television or read a book, ate lunch, then drove to work. After work, I would usually hang out with friends and eat dinner. Then, I would go home and go to bed sometime around midnight or 1 am. It was a pretty comfy life, I will admit.

Now, my schedule is sorta like this. If I sleep through the night, I wake up at 6 am. I grab my shampoo, soap and bucket and rush to the communal bathrooms before the other volunteers get there. Not that there is not enough showers for all of us. It is a question of having enough water for all of us. I turn on the faucet and a fast dribble of cold water comes out. I fill up my bucket and shower from that. I usually need around two buckets of water to shower. If there are too many people showering, I have to wait until water reaches my stall. The positive part is watching the sunrise from my stall. I get an awesome view from my window. Then, after I’m done “showering” comes the tricky part. I grab my flashlight and start hunting for a suitable toilet. I look in one and no toilet paper. I look in another one and no toilet seat. I look in another and it hasn’t been flushed in the past three days. It usually takes me looking in about eight stalls to hunt down the amenities I need for a toilet.

Around seven o’clock, I join the other volunteers for breakfast and enjoy hot tea, Rwandan coffee, little sweet breads, passion fruit and something that tastes like goiaba. I take my malaria pill and then head to class.

Class is a mixture of exhilaration, exhaustion, frustration and complete incompetence on my part. I have language class three times a day, each one lasting about an hour. The teachers are bright young university graduates and I have to admit, they have a lot of patience. So far, I have been studying Kinyarwandan for a week, and I feel like I have learned a huge amount of information. At the same time, I realize how much I need to know.

Tech training is also part of our schedule and it is my favorite part. In another blog, perhaps, I will go over in detail what we might be doing in our site. We have received some more information about it, and it is pretty exciting. Our main trainer is a woman from Zimbabwe and she is amazing. She has a Master’s in Public Health; she was a nurse and midwife in her country for many years before traveling around Africa and the rest of the world gaining more experience and education. She is a great teacher and her excitement is infectious. I wish I could attend tech training all day but there is that little matter of picking up a whole new language. And it is not like Kinyarwanda is a piece of cake either. For example, there is no frame of reference between Kinyarwanda and romance languages so I can’t use my Portuguese to remember words. In addition, they have something called “noun classes,” 16 in all. Depending on the noun class, the prefixes of every word in a sentence will change to agree with the noun in the sentence. We haven’t gotten to “noun classes” yet, but learning it has become very ominous indeed.

Our language and tech training ends around five o’clock in the afternoon. We have a two hour break until dinner. After dinner, we usually hang around in small groups and pretend to study Kinyarwandan. I usually head to bed around 9:30 ( I start yawning at 8:30) and I tuck myself into my mosquito net and I read John Grisham until I pass out. Then, I wake up again at 6:00 and the whole routine is repeated.

The days differentiate a little and I am still trying to figure out a personal schedule for myself. (For example, when do I wash my clothes.) Hopefully, I can get it figured out in a week or two and I can start posting more regularly on this blog.

I feel like I have so much information yet I do not want to bore you. If you have any specific questions about Rwanda or you want me to write about certain topics such as food, culture, taboos, just let me know. I will try to get around to them, sooner or later. For now, I need to head to bed. It is 10:39, way past my bedtime. Enjoy the read, and your hot showers and cheeseburgers. Good night.