Psalm 28:7: Wild fun.

Some days of fun to share plus some thoughts! (I wrote this Friday night but couldn't post it until today- Saturday- so it might be a bit confusing)

First was two days ago, when Kassi, Ross, Lindsay, and I, decided to go on a walk throughout Kigali during our off time in the afternoon. We walked down our road and found a little dirt path that brought us pretty far into the valley of the area near us. We walked down a little neighborhood area, where we were quite the sight to be seen. People were much less used to seeing muzungus in their neighborhood, so tons of kids and adults were coming out of their houses to see us. We found this little shop where Ross wanted to buy a water bottle, but the two women only spoke primarily French. SO I got to have my first translating experience, as I was the only one with any French knowledge. It was pretty hard to know what she was saying, but I got most of it. She actually ended up typing me what she was saying on her phone, which was worlds easier. It was really interesting, I would give myself a B- for the translating, but we were successful. There were also two little girls who started following us up the road, and we shared a little half English half Kinyarwanda conversation with them. They ended up holding Lindsay’s hands at the end, which was super adorable.
Then yesterday we had "Per Diem" lunch, which means that we are given money to eat lunch off the compound when our cook Aidah goes to the market. I went to this place called Meze Fresh with two other girls, Cosette and Kat. We had an hour before our next class, so we leisurely walked there to eat, which was about a 15-20 minute walk. The outside of the building is bright lime green, and we were super excited when we got there. It's basically the equivalent of Chipotle but with more African decor, but the menu was in English which was super!It was absolutely delicious, but we had to digest it pretty fast since we ended up having to power walk through Kigali and then run down our road in order to get back in time for class. A wonderful first Per Diem lunch- can't wait to explore more of Kigali's culinary masterpieces! I think we're trying a Chinese place on Sunday. mmm....

Today, our 1-3 class was rescheduled to tomorrow morning AND it’s Friday AND we had a delicious lunch, so the recipe for success was already there! We decided to walk to the market in Kigali, which is absolutely crazy! We went to the jewelry/trinkets section, and the women and men just come up to you and say “Sister, come!” and show you everything they have in their little booth of the market. I’m learning the art of bartering, which is not my specialty. They definitely give you the muzungu price, so we were told to break it in half or even more, and definitely not to pay what they tell you from the start. I got a necklace and little wallet thing, for 3500 rwandan francs, which is around $5.70. (615 Francs to 1 American Dollar) I suppose I could get better at my bartering skills, but pretty good for day one. Then we decided to go see a soccer game at the Stadium. Feeling lazy and being the only ones who still wanted to go to the game Kassi, Lindsay, and I jumped on a mutatu. We passed the rest of the girls on the way, who were still walking, and waved from the bus, which was hilarious. The three of us were planning to ride the mutatu to the front entrance of the stadium, but Kassi spotted a stop right by the back of the stadium. So, we only ended up riding the mutatu for like a half mile and paying 200 francs- making us look like stupid muzungus for riding it for so short and overpaying for our ride (apparently we should have paid like 100 or less). We were just being lazy for riding it in the first place…So we got off behind the back of the stadium and followed this group of people through this rugged dirt path around until we got to the side of the stadium. It was pretty crazy because we didn’t even really know where we were going, and people were like jumping over and going through fences to get into the arena without paying (which we didn’t do…), and we passed through the middle of the drivers education place where people were practicing driving (which I can’t imagine any real rules being taught based on their driving…) . We then waited for Mitch, one of our student life coordinators, to meet us because we weren’t super comfortable being the only muzungu, or female pretty much, for as far as we could see. We then bought the 1000 franc cheap tickets and watched the game. We had some trouble figuring out what team Rwanda was, but it was good after that. Although we saw no goals, but we saw a full on tackle and a brief injury! WOO!

Some things I’ve been thinking about this week. In our development class, Dwight Jackson was talking about how one of the characteristics of God is vulnerability. He opened it by saying the time he felt the most vulnerable was when he asked his wife to marry him. He said in that moment, he was putting his life into her hands and basically asking what she would do with it, and he used that to explain God. God puts all of Him in our hands and His entire life, literally through Christ, and asks what we’re going to do with it. In that moment, God is completely vulnerable to us, because we can choose to say yes to Him and accept the life that comes with knowing Him and loving Him, or we can reject all that He has planned for us and turn away from Him. I know that the metaphor of marriage is used often when talking about the church, but I had never heard it in this aspect. Just thought it was interesting and worth sharing!