Psalm 28:7: A poorly written update!

Welp! I’ve been back in Kigali for almost two weeks and a lot of stuff has happened and I haven’t blogged about anything. Whoops. Well, here goes nothing!

So, we got back from Practicum on the 30^th, right in time for Halloween! Normally, I’m not big into Halloween, but I knew that there was a Halloween party being planned, so I decided to get into. The one problem was that I could not think of a costume. Eventually after many failed ideas, I thought up being Waldo from “Where’s Waldo?” With my limited access to resources, I tried my best to pull together a costume. When a few of us went with Rasta to buy his radio, Madi and I went into the used clothing section of the Rwamagana market to find my costume. My highest expectation was just finding a red tee-shirt that I could paint stripes on or something, but I ended up finding the perfect red and white striped shirt. YUS. Back at the Kimironko market near our home, Mikey, Andrea, Kat, and I went to get our Halloween costumes, Andrea finding a zebra shirt, Mikey his Ace Ventura shirt, and me finding a red hat for Waldo. This guy kept running back and finding them for me and running them to me, and after some intense bargaining, I ended up with a red hat that says Obama on it. Add some paper stripes and pompom, throw on some jeans, get a big stick cane that Aidah had at her house, and put on my glasses and BOOM- Waldo. Other costumes included: nurses, Dorothy, Jack Sparrow, a zebra, a bear, a princess, Miss Rwanda, a pregnant Rwandan mom, a peacock, Field Notes, Justin Bieber, Ninjas, Ace Ventura, and (my favorite) our SLC’s dressed up as our dogs Bubbles and TJ. We watched Hocus Pocus, played games (so fetch.), and ate lots of candy. Good day for sure.

On Saturday November 3rd, I went to ABC Bagels with Kat, Emmie, and Andrea, who had their fundraiser there. For their internship, they worked at Les Enfants de Dieu, and decided to arrange a fundraiser to raise awareness and money for the orphanage. I got the opportunity to visit Les Enfants the weekend I came home during practicum, and it’s really an amazing place. So I boarded the pickup truck with the girls and headed to ABC Bagels at 8:30 Saturday morning to help them set up and keep them company all day. 13 hours, a bagel, salsa and chips, forty thousand cookies, two pieces of peanut butter fudge, The Lion King, traditional dancing by the boys and girls, setting up a ton of chairs and a projection screen, popcorn, washing dishes, taking pictures, chatting, and one African Crowned Crane in the neighbor’s yard later, we were back at home, eating in the kitchen and talking about the fundraiser and then snuggling and watching Avatar The Last Airbender. The girls did and amazing job, and raised a lot of money and support for Les Enfants!

Some more fun from this week: We had the fifth installment of quiz night which I started with my Kim, and this time was led by our fantastic SLC’s Kat and Mitch. I learned a lot about Canada, got some good laughs in about “Hurricane Aidah Meets the Jersey Shore” and Aidah as Tony Perkis in Heavywieghts, and *cough*wonagain*cough*. Another solid quiz night. Another solid event was playing Ultimate Frisbee this past Sunday. I did this one of the first weeks I was here and hadn’t yet been back, so Mikey, Lindsay, and I decided to go along with Mitch this week. The teams were 6 on 6, which was a great size, and then, in typical Rwandan fashion, it began to absolutely pour. One of those “heaven opening, can barely open your eyes and it doesn’t matter anyways because you can’t see more than a foot in front of you, rain in your eyes, OH DANG I DON’T HAVE A JACKET” kind of rainstorms. But I’m not gonna lie, being completely soaked playing Ultimate Frisbee in a big muddy field was pretty fantastic … and a warm shower after was the cherry on top. These past two weeks also consisted of: watching The Vow two nights in a row, going for a late night snack run (I bought peanut butter. What am I becoming?!) with Kim and Andrea complete with a great talk outside our house, a run downtown to visit a craft market, many trips to the Kimironko market, a trip to Juicilicious, several coffee shops, Slumdog Millionaire, hair styling, walking around downtown with Andrea, snarky comments to The Last Song, playing telephone-pictionary with Kat and Mitch’s Korean students, HeavyWieghts, Dutch Blitz, ear piercings in the kitchen (Don’t worry Mom, I didn’t get any!) and the sleeping bag. Side story of the sleeping bag- Kim and I found this orange fleece sleeping bag in one of the closets here and both got in it and were running around the house and being annoying. The thing is SO comfortable though, so I started sleeping with it, and when I asked the SLC’s if that was okay, they said they thought it was mine all along. Bummer, I almost got a free sleeping bag! A picture of us in our sleeping bag is obviously found below… Wednesday we went to play sports together at the Amahoro Stadium, and then found out there was a game of Rwanda’s National Team versus Namibia, so we had to go along. Actually, Andrea and I weren’t going to go, but at the last minute we threw all caution to the wind and ran to catch up with Celestine, our guard, and Mitch, and eventually the rest of our group. We missed the first half, but it was 0-0 when we got there. Then Rwanda scored two goals (which everyone gets SO amped up about), and then Namibia scored one and then in the last minute, literally, scored another. So 2-2. Oh well. It was still a ton of fun!

Some more serious thoughts: Tuesday of this week I went to the German Cultural Center with Kat, Mitch, Lindsay, and Andrea (choose your stronger butt cheek!) to see a movie entitled The Big Sellout. They had one story from the Philippines about the privatization of healthcare and hospitals and such, and one very poor woman’s fight for dialysis for her son. Then a story from a train driver in Great Britain about their railroad privatization and how it’s terrible and dangerous. And then one in South Africa from a man who was helping people get electricity illegally because the electricity has been privatized and was so corrupt and turning off people’s electricity left and right (he later mysteriously died after filming, which was scary and sad all in one). But the last one was probably the most moving, and it was about a town in Bolivia whose water supply got privatized and it was illegal for them to use their water sources and even collect rainwater, and they fought against the police and military for months and finally won. It was terrible to see the scenes of them fighting, but so inspirational that they won. It was something that’s gotten me thinking this week. It’s so sad to see what greed does to people, but furthermore, how people can sit by while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and do diddily squat about it. Makes you really think about what we’re called for as Christians, and even just as human beings.
So that's the past two ish weeks! I know it's been a while and this post is a bit short and not too exciting, but I did my best! :] Hope you enjoyed! Thanks to lots of people for all these pictures!