Spiders, Workshops and dinner with some Canadians!

Thursday October 1, 2009

It’s October and the leaves are changing colour – green to red and yellow and brown. The air is crisp, with a hint of snow in the far off mountains. The days are getting shorter and we’re bringing out our boxes with toques and scarves and mitts.

Oh wait. That’s what you’re all doing back home in Canada!

Me, I’m enjoying the coolness of the early days of the rainy season – before the real rain starts. Rwandans are putting sweaters on. I’m just happy to not be sweating! Last night I settled in with my nail polish, a cakey snack, my computer. I was going to watch a video when….wait for it….the power went off. So, I dug the keronsene lantern out of the dodgy room (so called because I’m it’s really dodgy…), cleaned it up and lit it. I brought out my book and hunkered down. It wasn’t until about an hour later when I realized a light had gone back on. I hadn’t even noticed! So, I took out Season 1 of CSI, which Tina had here, painted my toe nails and relaxed. At one point I even asked myself “Am I really in Africa?”

My morning started off with a hung mother of spider crawling in my room. BAM!! I hit it with my shoe before he knew what happened. Sucker. I read an email from a friend in Ecuador. Apparently I must make more of an issue of these creepy crawlies on my blog that I thought. She sent me two pictures of GIGANTIC spiders she saw in Brazil. So, I guess it’s not that bad here….Actually, it’s not bad at all. I had visions of sleeping as they crawled all over me. Honestly….

We held a workshop today and it was a VSO extravaganza! There were five of us in total. So many ideas – it was great. We covered topics like: how to introduce new vocabulary, spelling techniques and speaking activities. It was a lot of fun and I think the participants really enjoyed it. Lunch was provided (yum!) and in the morning we had African tea and almondazzis (double yum). It was a long day and we finally finished at 5pm. It was good timing because the rain had stopped. On the walk home there was a large group of students – teenagers, actually – from a nearby school. Being typical teenagers – walking in groups, boys and girls holding hands (never happens in Rwanda), listening to IPods, talking on cell phones. Thought I was in Calgary for a moment! Of course, they all wanted to talk with the mzungus. Nice kids. One the VSO volunteers was telling me about students who got in trouble at school because they drank alcohol. Isn’t it funny that we (meaning “I”) would never think that would be an issue here. That all kids would be “hungry for learning.” I guess kids will be kids.

The gang all came over for supper (volunteers, not the kids) and I made my specialty. Pastas with vegetables and absolutely no flavour. It’s really quite unique, actually. I buy the only things at the market that I recognize, fry/boil it all together, don’t add any flavouring and call it a meal. Thankfully, Epi brought lentils with seasoning and egg. It was good so we all mixed it with the pasta. Jason brought over beer and we all relaxed after such a busy day. It was nice to be in the presence of two Canadians – even if they are Francophones!! Ha ha! In seriousness, it was nice to be with people who say “truck” instead of “lorry” and “washroom” instead of “loo”. And what in god’s name is an Aubergine anyway?? (As I type it, it gets a big red line under it CLEARLY indicating that it’s not an English word at all….)