Easter Break

Term 1 is officially over here in Rwanda and we are on break until the middle of April. I will spend a day in Kigali next week, and I'll cat-sit Lucy while Stina goes to Madagascar (so exciting!), but other than that I have two free weeks to fill! I think I will take a lot of naps.

For fun, here are some of those candid pictures from IST.

In Service Training

We have reached the sixth month mark of being in Rwanda. In the grand scheme of things, that's about one-fifth of my service completed.

And because we have had three months of pre-service training and then three months at our permanent site, it was time for us to come back together at another Peace Corps training. This time it was In Service Training in Kabgayi in the Southern Province. Kabgayi is a little outside of Muhanga, where we had the Primary Teachers TOT, but this was for all volunteers.

Some of the training was a repeat of the Primary Teacher training, but there was a lot of good information, particularly regarding grants. Peace Corps does not allow us to directly fundraise for any project, but we can provide the email addresses or mailing addresses of those who may be willing to donate. Therefore, if that's something you think you might be interested in, feel free to send me your information.

We also the opportunity for a teacher from our school to come to help identify projects we may want to work on. We have a few ideas in mind, so stay tuned!

I took lots of pictures during the training. Mostly silly candids of people when we got a little sidetracked during sessions. I'm not going to post those. I'm just going to post the nice group picture we took in our nice matching t-shirts that made it to the official Peace Corps Facebook!

Nyungwe Marathon Pictures

The finish line!

I just passed out water, but these ladies did the half-half!

Lake Kivu from Kamembe

The forest

Gabi after running 7 miles

And We Keep Going

We are now about two weeks out from the end of the first term (out of three), and we’ve barely finished one unit (out of ten). No one really seems concerned, so I’m not too worried.

In addition to classes, we also had a session about violence, specifically gender based violence, and how to be kind and respectful instead. Thanks to my co-teachers, it went better than expected, and I am excited to see how our initial meetings about English Club will go. We’ve identified several students with good English who work hard to be our leaders and we will meet with them twice before the end of the month.

This weekend I will be volunteering at the Nyungwe Marathon (because we know I ain’t running) in Nyungwe Forest. The forest is supposed to be beautiful, so I will post pictures when I can!

Then, the week after next will be In-Service training, or IST. A whole week when all of the Ed9 volunteers to learn about what I am sure will be a variety of things. We just learned the location two days ago, so we’re getting ready!

In other news, I finished the first month of Insanity! It was seriously the most intense workout I’ve ever done, and that’s going at my own pace, not the pace of the professionals in the video. I yelled at the video regularly.

Here are some pictures!

Done with month 1!

Our teachers' room

The school

The school

Getting ready for English Club

The most common and majestic of the Rwandan animals: the goat