I’m going to take a break from recounting my tales from Uganda (I am back in Rwanda now, just hopelessly behind with my blog!) to tell you all about my first ever birthday away from home. I woke up in the morning feeling a little dazed and weak from my digestive issues (I was quite violently ill on my return from Uganda) but recovered very well throughout the day. I opened up the parcel from Chesterfield Michelle (the only one which had arrived at that point – thank you Michelle!) and ate one of those mini Cathedral city cheeses which she sent me. My taste buds were in heaven. They had forgotten the taste of cheese other than the insipid waxiness of fake laughing cow cheese triangles. I practically skipped around the vso dorm, simple things....
All of the January intake volunteers were in the capital, Kigali, ready to start a week of training so we had a great group together of over 20 volunteers. I celebrated my birthday with Lindsey, a New Yorker vso vol, who had her 28th Birthday just a few days before me. Lindsey was great to share a birthday with as she has an endless appetite for party games, has a great sense of humour and is possibly the only person in the world who would appreciate getting a homemade rice sack version of twister for her birthday. We went to a lovely Italian restaurant called Sol e Luna. While we waited for food Lindsey and myself got into teacher mode once again and gave everyone a quiz to do. I gave out scrambled up names of volunteers for people to unscramble, (spelt most of them wrong – don’t know whats wrong with me spelling wise at the moment!) and they had to name the most corrupt countries in the world. We checked for cheating and shouted out the questions, disturbing all the other good Kigalians just trying to unwind with their pizzas after a long week. I had a whole half and a bit of a carafe of red wine and my pizza came nearly last despite being the birthday girl, boooo!
All of this week I have been having more Kinyarwanda lessons and trying to take in vast amounts of information. We have had presentations and lessons from 8am until 5pm. I went to the post office today to investigate the whereabouts of all the parcels which you fantastic folk had sent my way. Well some of them had been put in the wrong PO box by the post people, some of them had not been written in the collection book and some of them had only just came, but so far I have got ones from Sarah K, Auntie Kathryn and Granny Gore, Mum, dad and Doug and family. And thank you Cheddar Michelle, I enjoyed opening your card too. So thank you all, you have made me feel very special! I will be sending you all thank you emails over the coming week.
The quiz
Lindsey and Nicole's son, Tao
Tammy, Lindsey and me.
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