Last week

Tuesday, I called Abdoul to meet up with him for lunch because he called the night before and wanted to get together and I don’t like leaving my house after dark. He ended up being about 20 minutes late, and since I went to a buffet place to eat, I was finished by the time he came. The buffet place I had never been before, and while I was dishing myself food, a lady came to me and said its 600 francs if she serves me, and 900 if I do it myself. I think they do that because here when people serve themselves they take a massive amount of food! But I wasn’t getting meat or half of the carbs they were serving, so I didn’t want her to serve me because she would load my plate with carbs and give me meat, so I said I would do it myself. Then she asked me after I was done if I was having meat and I said no, and I thought she said it was cheaper without meat. So, when I was leaving, she was no where to be found and I just left 700 francs on the table, cause I took a normal amount of food and no meat, and went to the supermarket to buy some things. She tracked me down and demanded the other 200 and I didn’t have any, so I had to break a bill and give it to her. It was stupid. The rules here are ridiculous. I took a small amount of food and no meat, so I don’t think I should have had to pay 900, but I did in the end. Abdoul finally called while I was at the market and we met at the café in the supermarket and ran into two VSO volunteers. We sat with them and Abdoul ordered lunch and then another VSO showed up, so we had a big table of people. We hung out for a while, while they were eating, talking and I found out that one of the VSO, the last one to arrive, lives here in Butare, so we exchanged numbers and now I might have another friend! She was pretty cool. I wandered around town for a bit and saw the other 2 VSO getting onto their motor bike (yeah, they are not only allowed to ride motos, they get to drive them too!) and so I helped them with their bags while they got on and watched them drive away. Ran into a PCV on her way back to site and then went home and did my laundry and dishes (my maid hasn’t showed up in two weeks), talked to mom and read a bit, before getting a text from the RPCV I had dinner with last week asking if I wanted to meet up. I met him and one of his friends at a motel for drinks and they got brochettes and beer and some chips, which I helped out on. We got one plate of chips and they each got a brochette, then we were still hungry (it was about 7pm), so ordered another plate of chips and he got one more brochette and his friend left. They brought two plates of chips and two brochettes! I guess they know the guy and gave them for free and we did end up almost finishing both plates. I got a call from another PCV who was staying in town that night with her parents and met up with her after leaving the motel and they were having fondue! I didn’t know that we had fondue in this town! It was just the hot oil fondue to cook meat, but they offered me some salad (which I took gratefully to try and get some thing other than fried potato into me) and we had a nice night talking and they bought me dessert and then drove me home! It was a nice night meeting up with so many people. I got home at 10:30pm. I usually get home from work, eat lunch, read for hours, cook dinner and watch something on my computer before going to bed, so it was a nice interruption to my ‘routine’.

Spent Halloween weekend in Kigali. We went to a place called One Love and it was filled with people in costume. It was a lot of fun. We danced and met new people and just had a lot of fun. I dressed up as a Chilean miner (which was easy cause I just put on my hiking boots, my headlamp and tied a rope around me with a carabiner), Adam went as Clayton Bigsby from Chappelle Show and there were a lot of other funny costumes, such as a girl who was John Benet Ramsey, a Baobab tree, a shower, a disco ball, etc.

On the way back from Kigali, I got a double seat to myself and was so excited, until we went down the hill and a grandma with TWO kids got into the seat next to me! It was the seat over the wheel, so there is very little legroom. She sat in the seat, put her legs up on the wheel, then put one of the kids on her lap and the other between her and me on the seat. They were small, so didn’t take up a lot of space, but still. Then someone was bringing back a giant number of cushions, so the guy next to me put one on his flippy seat, the guy next to him put one under his bum, one behind him and one on the side of him next to the window. Then the rest were passed around for people to sit on and a group of 5 tied together were placed in the doorway of the bus. Halfway home, the guy in the flippy seat got off the bus, so I put the girl next to me in the flippy seat, only to have to put her back 5 minutes later when we stopped and picked up more people. Then the girl got tired and leaned forward and rested her head between my backpack on my lap and the seat in front of us. It looked so uncomfortable, she was leaned to the side with her head wedged between the seat and the backpack, so I pulled her up and just had her lay on me; but then I got really hot and the villagers on the bus hate wind. There was one guy who was fighting with the others about keeping his window open because it was hot and they don’t like wind, no matter if they’re sweating or not. I liked that guy.