Murakaza neza Rwanda! Welcome to Rwanda!

Well Everyone.....I Made it! Currently in Kigali, Rwanda with my teaching partner, roommate for the next 2 months and of course, friend, Zach Hynes (<--Read his Adventures)!

It took quite awhile to get here:

LAX-->ORD (4 hours)
ORD-->Brussels, Belgium (8 hours)
Brussels, Belgium--> Kigali, Rwanda (8 hours)

Including layovers, it essentially took me an entire 24 hours to get to Africa, but I'm here! And by here, I mean...HERE!


This is our apartment in Kigali (at least for now). Zach and I actually don't mind it too much, but there is one major problem that can't be overlooked: No Running Water! This is why we haven't taken showers in the last two days/why we have to use outside bathrooms as much as possible. But overall, Africa is great! We walk along the street and people try to sell us maps of Rwanda and this one kid is so insistent on selling us a 32GB flash drive. I just wish we knew how to communicate with people here. People here speak quite a few things, most prevalent is Kinyarwanda, though many people also speak French and Keyswahili. Zach and I are going to try to look into taking a class that will help us learn to speak, especially since that's something I'm definitely interested in.

I woke up Sunday morning around 6am, not too sure why I woke up that early, but the first thing I did was look outside! We have such an amazing view of the Rwandan hills!
I'll try to get a night picture up soon too! Since Zach was still asleep, I decided to work on some pleasure reading, something that MIT doesn't really let me do too much of. I'm currently reading Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, great read about my heritage :) Once Zach woke up (and we still couldn't shower) we head out into the city to get a feel for what's around us. We're actually pretty close to a ton of stuff, the mall, the bank the University we'll be teaching at, even the Swiss, Russian and Chinese Embassies. Our main goal of the day was essentially to get FOOD and INTERNET.

First meal in Africa was....PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH! Mmmm! I don't know if it was because I was hungry or not, but PB & J in Africa is pretty damn good! Once we settled in and got our internet working we decided it would probably be a good idea to go and see the campus we'd be teaching at....and here she is!

The campus is actually really gorgeous. There are so many nice plants and the architecture is so new. We caught the students in the middle of final exams for this past semester. Summer session starts next week with our class. We're actually going today to meet the people we'll be working with, see our facilities, check our classrooms and just run over logistics. Things are starting to get underway!

After visiting KIST (Kigali Institute of Science and Technology) we made a stop at Bourbon Coffee, which we quickly found out was the place where all the foreigners hang out. We basically just wanted to grab a quick snack, but we ended up staying to watch the FRENCH OPEN FINAL! Since Djokovic lost to Federer in the Semis, I was rooting for Rafael Nadal (Who ended up winning his SIXTH French Open Title)! We went back to the apartment, kinda relaxed a bit, talked about the curriculum, sent some emails and ultimately I went to bed around 11:30PM.

So far, Africa is proving to a very interesting and exciting experience for me. I can't wait to actually start teaching :) It's 4:09AM in California and 7:09AM in Boston...good night, America!