October 13- November 3, 2011

Once again, I am super behind with the updates!  A lot has happened in the last few weeks.  The biggest news is that I now officially know where I will be teaching after I swear in as a Peace Corps volunteer in December.  My school is called San Francois and is a Catholic all-girls boarding school in the Nyamashake District, in the village of Shangi.  Two weeks ago we had the opportunity to visit our future sites, to see where we will be living and meet the people we will be working with.  I went in with low expectations because I realized I was seven hours from Kigali and two hours from the nearest volunteer in my training class, and also was not thrilled about being with only girls for the next two years.  However, having a slightly negative outlook turned out to be a good thing, because I was then completely blown away by my site.

Another trainee who will be in my region, Tim, left with me from Kigali on Wednesday morning to begin the long journey to our sites.  We took an express bus together for about six and a half hours, two of which were through the rainforest, which was awesome.   I got off at the road to my school, where my headmistress, Sister Edith, was waiting to pick me up.  We travelled half an hour up a dirt road, with an increasingly amazing view of Lake Kivu and the mountains of the DRC.  We arrived at the beautiful school campus and I went with Sister Edith to the convent to meet the rest of nuns who work in the school.  They were all so friendly and funny, and greeted me with cheese, which obviously made me happy.  The volunteer I will be replacing, Christa, also met me there.  She then showed me around the school campus and took me to the market about fifteen minutes away.  We came back to her house where I met her English conversation group for teachers, which I will be taking over next year.  Christa shared a lot of her experience and insight with me, and hearing what a valuable service she has had really made me excited.

On Thursday, Christa and I went to the school to meet more of the teachers, who come from not only Rwanda, but also the DRC and Uganda.  It was great to meet the people I will be living and working with come December.  We also visited a couple of Christa’s classes.  I found out I will be teaching English to secondary levels five and six, which is basically the equivalent to juniors and seniors in high school.  Christa showed me the curriculums she had developed so I could get an idea of what I would be doing.  Even though most of our Peace Corps training is geared toward lower levels, I am happy I will get to teach S5 and S6 because I will get to do fun things like reading books and doing debates. 

We walked to the sector office to meet some of the officials in our area.  On our way back, Christa showed me where I can walk down to the lake, which is about an hour hike, and I’m excited to explore down there.  Back at school, we met with two of the student clubs that Christa works with, English Club and Girls Leading our World (GLOW) Club.  The students seemed enthusiastic and I am looking forward to working with them.

My headmistress showed me where I will be living when I come to teach.  I will be in teacher housing, in a duplex-type situation.  I have my own house with a big main room, two bedrooms, and an indoor shower space.  If I walk out my back door there is a small patio that leads to my kitchen and my latrine, and an awesome panoramic view.  The nuns at the school apparently have great connections, and Christa asked for and received an oven, so I will be inheriting that, which is pretty much unheard of for Peace Corps volunteers in Rwanda, most of which have to cook over a fire.  This is great for me because I’m not exactly an experienced cook, so taking the open flame element out of food preparation is probably a good thing.

On Friday, Christa and I headed in to Kamembe, the city that is about an hour from my site.  I took my first motorcycle taxi ride and I enjoyed it.  In Kamembe there is a Peace Corps regional house since we are so far from headquarters in Kigali.  The house is run by a volunteer who extended his service an extra year and is a great meeting place for the volunteers in the two southwest districts.  I figured out where the bank is, where I will go to get my stipend from Peace Corps, and where the post office is.  Tim and I stayed the night at the regional house with some of the awesome volunteers in our region, and then headed out early the next morning, back to Kamonyi. 

Last week was a little rough coming back to the structure of our host families after a much freer week at site.  We had long training days that included around six hours of language class.  One bright spot is that I am finally getting more comfortable with Kinyarwanda.  We had a practice speaking test with our Language Culture Facilitator, and I was able to carry on a semi-natural thirty minute conversation using present, past, and future tenses.  I am definitely able to get my point across better at home as well, but there are still many, many frustrating moments when I just can’t understand or make myself understood.

Last week on Saturday, two of the trainees who live near me, Michelle and Kim, came over and helped me cook dinner for my family.  We managed to make spaghetti with delicious fresh tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, and garlic bread, all over the fire.  We cooked enough for about fifteen people and still had leftovers, and I bought all the ingredients for around eight dollars!  Everyone really enjoyed the meal and it was a wonderful break from rice, beans, and cassava.

This week we began our “model school” training.  Students are on vacation right now, so Peace Corps rounded up a bunch of kids to come attend a few hours of class each day for the next four weeks so we can practice lesson planning and presenting.  Kim is my partner so we’ve been creating lessons together and presenting an hour each.  It has been really fun!  This is great, because after my site visit I was so excited but still really nervous about teaching, but getting up in front in a big group of teenagers did not end up being nearly as scary as I’d expected.  Our class is awesome and they have been great participators.  We introduced “trash”ketball today, and they loved it and got so into it.  We asked introductory questions such as “What do you like to do?” and “What is your favorite food?” and whoever was the first to stand up and give an answer had an opportunity to shoot a ball of paper into a box to score one or two points for their team.  The kids were competitive and we had a lot of fun with it. 

Model school also makes the days go by faster because we are so busy planning and giving lessons, which is awesome, because it makes site seem much closer!  It’s good that I’m so ready for site, because it makes me so excited for the next two years of my life!