I look up from my notebook when I hear the sound of feet. Standing in the doorway fifteen feet away is an adult olive baboon. It’s about the size of a large dog, with bristly gray fur and a long muzzle. The baboon surveys the empty library, and it’s head stops when it sees [...]

My students are back! Hooray! As I’m writing this blog post, it is Wednesday, the third day of our first week of school for 2012. Our students (or half of them, anyway) arrived on Monday, and since then my life has been pretty hectic. I’m teaching a total of 15 hours each week- 10 hours [...]

So as promised, here are some pictures of the school! Those buildings down the hill are our school buildings- library, offices, classrooms, etc. The green in the foreground is the tea plantation that surrounds the school, and the hills in the distance are Nyungwe forest. I could definitely do worse than this.

Lots to report since my last post! First, I managed to find some running shorts at the Nyamagabe market a couple of weekends back and I have started running again. I am planning on training for the Kigali Peace Marathon, which takes place in May. I’m trying for the half marathon this year, and maybe [...]

This is a question I have had occasion to ask myself often in the last two weeks. Unlike training, where my life had rigorous structure and I didn’t know what to do with myself when I happened to find two spare minutes to rub together, all I seem to have at site is free time. [...]

For those of you still curious about what our Thanksgiving was like here in Rwanda, I am proud to present a short video put together by a talented member of my training class. Be warned, there are still frames of us killing turkeys. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhAtt6z7_w

Merry Christmas from Rwanda! Hopefully this will be the last post I start off with an apology for how long its been since I’ve posted. Now that I’m moved in to my site, I think I’ll have more time to keep Rwandanights updated. Big things have happened since my last post: I have been sworn [...]

Happy Thanksgiving from Rwanda! I hope you all enjoyed the holiday, wherever it may have found you. I am still recovering from what was easily the craziest Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever been a part of.   About a month ago, I volunteered to be the head of Team Turkey. This means I was in charge [...]

My first attempt at baking in Rwanda was a qualified success. Unfortunately, my camera battery was dead, so I don’t have any pictures to share, but I’ll explain the process. I was able to find all the essentials in my village, except baking soda which I bought in Kigali. After mixing all the ingredients (flour, [...]

Today, after one month in Rwanda, we got our site placements for our two years of service! I requested a site near an ecotourism location (since I am interested in getting involved in some environmental work as a secondary project, and as some of you might know I wrote my B.A. thesis on conditions necessary [...]

Sorry everyone for the long gap between posts. My first two full weeks in Rwanda have been hectic, and it has been hard for me to find access to the internet. Things have started to settle into more of a routine now, and hopefully I will be able to post roughly once a week from [...]

I’m sitting in the A terminal of Tucson International airport at 6:15 and the sky is just beginning to lighten. Because cheap flights from Tucson always have at least one connection, dawn at the Tucson airport has been a staple of my life for the past 4 years while shuttling  back and forth from Washington, DC. This is my last [...]

Baba DAH-duh…. Baba-DUH-duh-duh… In ten days, I will be leaving Tucson for my pre-departure orientation (PDO) in Philadelphia. It still doesn’t feel real, though. I am having a hard time grasping what being away from home for 27 months means. I tell myself, “you won’t see your family, friends, dogs, or saguaros. You won’t eat [...]