Long time - no blog!

It's been a while since I last had the chance to blog about life in Rwanda. I've been very busy with work and socialising!
Started last month with the memorial at school commemorating staff and students who were lost during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. A beautiful monument now sits in the school grounds to remind us of their untimely end.
Next came John the Baptist's day with celebrations at our school and our sister school. The Student vs. Tutor football match was hilarious, especially as you can't see one corner of the pitch because of the dip in the ground! On our celebration day the students did all sorts of performances, dancing, singing, acrobatics, poetry etc. and a good time was had by all. Quite tough for us, as the whole proceedings from 10am Mass to 4pm closing speeches were all in Kinyarwanda - I got about 30 words I think. Good job the rest of it was very active otherwise they may have found me having a Saturday afternoon nap in my chair. My kinyarwanda is improving, but not that much. I did get a couple of learning tools to help me for my birthday, so hope fully I'll get better soon! 

Since then I've been doing lots of training with the tutors and teaching the student teachers in the Teachers Resource Centre at college. I also went to visit the nursery and plan to do more work with them in the coming year.

Me and Simon also organised a big presentation about inclusive education with all the students at the TTC and followed it up with a workshop yesterday. In preparation for that we moved around half of Rwanda finding information out and filming in Special Schools and at the Rwandan National Union of the Deaf (RNUD). 

Outside of work there have been a few things going on. Mary, another volunteer doing the same thing as me in Matimba, left after her two year contract was finished. So, she came up to stay in Byumba for the day and then we partied in Kigali the following Saturday night. The bar/restaurant had a big sheet against the tree and projected music videos all night, so I danced until 1am from a 3pm start! I'm making new friends in the capital city (only 1 1/2 hours away) all the time and an ex-VSO-volunteer, Amy, who now lives and works there and myself went to cheer on England in a bar for their game against Italy. I don't think the Rwandan fans knew what to make of our singing na,na,na, three lions, and chanting throughout the match but we and about ten others had a laugh! Shame we didn't win!
In all of my travels around, I've been noticing all the amazing t-shirts people wear here. Most of the stuff that gets donated is sold for a cheap cheap price on the market and so people walk around in all sorts of great gear - and they rock it. From old guys in hello kitty hats, to youngsters in domino's pizza shirts - it all makes for entertaining people watching art the bus station.
Oh, also went to watch Rwanda play Libya in African tournament football. Until next time, enjoy the pics!