Rwanda and back.

So first off we got up at 4:30 a.m. to head out on a 15 hour drive to Rwanda last saturday. We drove to the Equator in Uganda first. It was sunrise and that is where the first picture was taken. Shockingly, despite being the equator it was absolutely freezing. The drive was long and boring as we could only have ONE piece of technology and I had to have my camera. There was no way I was traveling without that, thus leaving my poor ipod back on campus. Not only was it long, but it was excessively dusty. When we all took our cold showers later you could literally see the red dust just pouring off of us. They when I (hand washed) my clothes today the water was brown. So nasty....

So the second day in Rwanda was a Sunday and therefore we went to Africa church. The above pictures is the crazy road we had to drive on... I hope you can see the giant pot-holes. The Africans told us that on the drive we would 'dance in out seats'.

For our church visits we were spilt into five groups of eight to go to different churches. Mine was more rural and up in a more mountainous area. The church easily had 800 people there. They said that several churches came together that day since we would be there. The church was beyond packed and then as you can see above all the kids were staring in at the windows at us, or else were sitting in the aisles.

They had us sit up in the front of the church in front of EVERYONE. Church was about 2 1/2 hours long and was in Kinya (I think) and involved alot of singing and dancing. They had us each introduce ourselves, and then one girl gave her testimony, one girl gave a short sermon on love, and then we sang Blessed be Your Name, and a rap version of Jesus Loves Me that one of the guys had learned years ago. They LOVED that song cause it had the We Will Rock You beat. We all also had like a dance party in church. It was sweaty and smelly but so much fun. I'm sure all of us Mazugu's looked hilarious dancing with all the Africans.

After church was over the pastor's wife had made us dinner, and wanted to stuff us full! The picture above is me with the man who organized all of church visits in Rwanda.

This girl is not from my church but from one of the groups we picked up. All the kids here yell 'MNZUGU' everytime we walk by or drive by, and then they are either scared of us or want to touch us. These kids loved having their picture taken and all of them had to of shaken my hand about 10 times.

After church we went to the Falls on the border of Rwanda and Tanzania. I crossed the border, and therefore have technically been to Tanzania! The Falls were so beautiful. I loved visiting them.

If you look close you should be able to see a rainbow on the left side. I thought it was so incredible that you could look at these crashing falls and see a rainbow develop... So beautiful. Africa truly has some of the prettiest places I have ever been to.

Our Rwanda trip was filled with alot. We went to several memorials, which I am not going into detail about. If you would like to know feel free to ask, but it was all about the genocide and not something that needs to be discussed in great detail over a blog post. It was interesting and good to learn about, but sad, especially as one of the memorials included a mass grave where we literally looked into the coffin.

Other than that though we did get to do some other stuff. We went to this Quaker place where they talked about their ministry. I am not going into detail about that either because I got a tad upset by the man who spoke.

After that however, we went to the coolest place. It was called Centre C'sar and is a place for widows and for I believe students, where they learn a trade and also help the community. The man above is part of the group that welcomed us with a dance. If I can I will load a video of one of his dances on here. Keep in mind it is not great video quality and you may have to watch part of it sideways but it is awesome. We all ended up dancing with them and had so much fun!

The other really cool thing we did we go to a EXPO trade fair. It was ONLY this week in Rwanda and was so much fun. It was everything from clothes, to chairs, to jewelry, to everything. We walked around for several hours and had so much fun!

The last thing we did was visit a lake. I did not swim cause I have had a cold all week and had no desire to make it worse. However, to just sit in the sun and hang out was SO much fun.

We drove back sunday evening and on the way everyone was talking about how it looked like the Lion King, and then we saw Zebras and everyone was sooo excited. We drove about two more seconds and saw a roadkill zebra.. although sad it was kind of funny. When we got back i discovered that the lockbox they gave us to protect our stuff would not unlock. My roommate and I went to different people trying to get it to be fixed, but it took till after my 11-1 class to fix it. It stressed me out, but I survived.

I began classes today. So far it went well. One of them may stress me out some, but I am hoping for the best. I begin my junior practicum at an orphanage called CHAIN on wednesday with another USP student and I am truly the most excited for that.

That is the most important for now. The rest of this week with our back and forth class schedules should be interesting...!

(For now no video... I am so sorry it would NOT load. I will try again some other time!)