Weekend Amazing

As my kettle soy sauce and peanut butter noodles cook, I thought I'd give a "what I did this weekend" typa post.  Tomorrow I'll be back at meetings and such, but this weekend kept me on my toes (one time literally).

Friday, after some morning meetings and challah making, the volunteers were treated to a mid-year excursion to a nearby lake for food and relaxation.  The most notable part of this lovely trip was that I saw an otter!  Sea mammal spotting is a favorite activity, so you can imagine my happiness!

Saturday, ASYV was hosting a regional competition in traditional dance, karate, songs and poems and 10 secondary schools came for the event.  Since the event was all in Kinyarwanda, I naturally needed a translator.  Much to my delight, one of the girls who has never translated for me took a turn at it!  I was quite lucky too, as because of her I learned that one of the slam poetry-esque performances was about bettering the world, including Rwanda, America and Israel.  This was NOT one of our kids (who live with Israelis and Americans), but one from another school.  The global perspective these kids have is pretty impressive.

I spent the rest of the Saturday watching kids in karate outfits and traditional headdresses perform.  By five pm, the canteen, which I and a couple other staff oversee as a group of kids run it, was supposed to open, but the event was still going and many staff wanted fanta at the event.  The kids adjusted quickly, setting up a table from which to sell Fanta, Coke and Chapati (a cross between pitas and pancakes) to everyone at the event.  The rest of the night at the canteen was busy as always, but it was fun to watch the kids adapt and innovate.  The next effort: figuring out how to make lines...or some orderly method so everyone who wants can buy food at the overcrowded but busy place.

This morning I went on a hike with two other volunteers with the goal of reaching a nearby spring.  We walked down the main road for a bit, but then veered onto a path down into a valley, and soon we were surrounded mostly by scenery of lush farms, wild flowers, awesome birds and astonished kids.  We made our way into the valley and met a farmer with some neat cows (African ones, with horns like viking hats) who, through some charades and three languages gave us some advice about how to get to the spring.  After more hiking we reached the spring, which was mainly underground water run-off, and through some miscommunication tried to proceed home by going up a steep hill, this time surrounded by acacia trees.  Near the top we realized we went the wrong way and followed a 4 year-old, bringing a small jug to fill with water, back down to the spring, where we continued our journey towards a road that we thought would lead home. 

Soon we could see rice patties covering the valley, big flat expanses of light green and yellow, with paths and straw huts for the women and men who work to the fields to take breaks in and let their children play in.  We meandered in and out of paths around the patties, getting lost, wondering why the workers were all yelling (likely to get rid of birds), and getting friendly directions from little kids and elder women...all in Kinyarwanda.  Finally, thanks to the varied input, we decided to cross the rice patty valley to reach the opposite ridge.  Since the rice patties are very wet and muddy, we had to walk along a mud ridge, basically the size of a curb, for 70 yards.  This ridge was NOT meant for walking on as it was covered in grass and not very stable.  We walked along tightrope-style, and when we made it to the middle divide (where it looked like potatoes were growing or a more raised bed) without falling in, we felt good. Upon turning right, however, the the ridge again became small and slippery and eventually we all had fallen calf-deep into rice-patty mud.  Adventure! Finally we made it across the patties with our friendly child guides and walked along the other ridge to our road.  Motos (like mopeds) picked us up and we headed back to the village, muddy but happy about our grand journey!

Upon returning home, practicing some new kinyarwanda words with the kids (the word for rice, especially), and washing off, I headed over to Family 7's house - the family I'm assigned to be a "family friend" to.  I like to check on their homework, but often have trouble coordinating schedules with them during the week, so it was great to get a big chunk of time to work with many of them.  They are a joy to be around, and it was great to translate math terms into kinyarwanda, quiz them on geography and just sing songs with them.  AND, as I get to do at least once a week, I got to pull out the all-important math order of operations pneumonic device - Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally (parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction).  Any good week in the village includes getting to use this phrase.

So that was the weekend.  Pretty excellent.  My friend here recently said that it seems like I'm new to earth, given my enthusiasm over many things...and when we have weekend as diverse and interesting as this one, it seems to be no wonder that I act martian-like!