Koonce Family

The Koonces are like Claudine... they deserve a post all their own. Even more, because they had to put up with a teenage girl that they didn't even know living in their house for 2 months.

It was so hard for me to know how to tell you all about them. Just because they did so much for me, it's hard to explain it all.

I thought I would put some of the little things that they did for me.

- Louise talked to me and kept me company every day. I loved spending time with her.
- Marty drove me to another city so I could go on the gorilla trek.
- Tucker got Christmas songs stuck in my head. They still haven't left.
- Taylor and Tanner were so sweet to me and asked me to jump on the trampoline with them
- Trevor made me laugh and gave me hugs.

Okay, that ended up being one of each person (duh). I really don't know how to describe all the nice things they did for me every day to make me feel like I was a part of their family. I feel like I've known them forever.

Koonces, I hope you're having a great furlough. Ride lots of rides for me at Disney World! Love you all!

People

My post about Claudine made me think of this post. I met so many people who helped me, taught me stuff and became my friends. I'm going to put a few picture on of people I met while I was there.

P.S.- This does not show everyone I met (like I would have wanted it to). Somehow, I didn't end up with pictures with everyone. 

Claudine

I feel so lucky to have met Claudine. She and her mom helped me so so much. I went to her house I think 4 times. One time she took me to the market. Even though she didn't let me buy anything, it was so much fun and so different! Another time, her mom made me lunch. I helped her sister with her English. She told me about her family. Her mom treated me like I was her special daughter and would talk to me in Kinyarwandan every single time I went there. She's the reason I know (or knew... it's getting harder to remember) how to say "I'm very happy". They would make me feel special and loved when I was having "I miss my family" days. They would give me gifts and not expect anything from me. Every time I would go to her house, she would walk me home. That was almost the only place I could go by myself without getting lost. Of all the Rwandans I met, they're the ones I miss the most. I really hope we will see each other again.

School

When I arrived in Rwanda, Louise asked me what I wanted to do there. I said I would love to work with orphanages or really kids in any way. She has a friend who she was going to try to talk to about me visiting orphanages and helping out. A few days later, I had my "interview" at the nursery school and every day after that was busy with school. I love that what God wanted me to do was totally different than what I thought I would be doing.

I have to admit, I'm a school geek. I love buying school supplies, going to school everyday, even doing homework. I love that I got to spend time at this school. (although I have to admit, some days I didn't feel like going there... it's hard work!!) I really don't feel like I helped them at all... it seemed to me like they were doing me a favor by letting me spend my time with them.

The kids were so sweet. Even the ones that had behavior problems gave me hugs every day. I know this is because I'm white, but it still was so sweet. I loved hugging them. They made me not miss my little brothers and sister so much.

I love how we tried so hard to talk to each other, but no one understood a thing. I think it's so funny how I would try to explain their work to them. I would hold their hands and the pencil and try to write, sign language, writing on the tables with my finger. Pretty much anything to help them understand. Sometimes (or maybe most of the time) after a long time of trying, I would just call the teacher over to let her explain.

I love how, when I got to school every morning in my normal clothes, they would say "Good morning!". As soon as the teachers gave me my smock (?) that all the teachers wore, they would come up to me and start talking to me in Kinyarwanda. I guess they thought it was a magical smock.

I loved how, every morning, the first thing they do is sing, dance, pray and sing the national anthem. Every morning.

I miss them a lot. One of the nuns would tell me every day "When you get a break from your university, you will come here to see us. I know it." Who knows?

Finishing Up

This week will be the last week of my blog. I should have done this earlier... and I wanted to, but we've been so busy with just life in general. My parents have been blogging about what we've been doing.

I wasn't really sure how to finish this. Mom gave the idea of talking about what I learned. The problem is I learned so much! It's hard to put that in words. I decided I'll be talking about the favorite parts of my trip. Hopefully I can do all that this week.

After School

After my last day of school, the nuns invited me to stay and eat lunch with them. I did and it was so much fun!

The white one is Brazilian. She is so sweet! She made brazilian food just for me. It was so yummy! I think I was missing good brazilian food. After lunch, they took me to see their garden. It was so beautiful. The flowers in my header are from there.

Okay, I never thought I'd say this, but these nuns are so silly! Like making me crack up at goofy stuff.

After this, it was time to go say goodbye to the teachers.

I miss them all already!

Kids

I normally didn't take a camera to school. It's too much of a distraction for the kids and, since they do the same thing every day, it really wouldn't be that interesting. On my last day of school, I took my camera and took tons of pictures. Here are some of the cutest ones.

Aren't they precious?

Okay, this one has to be the cutest little girl in the school. Her name is Bernadette. 

In this one they're doing the traditional Rwandan dance. 

Singing the national anthem.

Um, so cute!

I love this picture! 

These are my favorite pictures from that last day. I already miss the kids and the teachers. I got an e-mail from one of the teacher's saying the kids asked about me everyday. I don't know if that's true or not, but it makes me feel loved. 

Fun Game

Today we're going to play a really fun game. It's called find the booger picker. Ready?

Wasn't that fun? Raise your hand if you found all of them!

I'm Home!

If any of you read my parents blog (which I'm sure all of you), you know that I've gotten home safely. I should have told you before (oops) but I figured that all of you read Dad's blog.

I don't really want to have this blog for my "normal" life. I'm really not that interesting and I'm not the creative writing Blume child. I still have a few more pictures of my time in Rwanda that I want to show you, so I'll keep writing for a few more posts.

I'm so glad to be home, but I was going through the pictures of my last day of school and I realized how much I miss it there. I really do hope that I'll be able to go back again one day, even if it is just for a short visit.

Oh, and I have a new blog header. It was supposed to be done on the first of May but oh well.

Para as Mulheres

Hoje é especialmente para aquelas mulheres que doaram tanto tecido para as mulheres daqui. Eu queria ter feito isso antes, mas parece que uma vez por semana surgia uma nova idéia do que fazer com o tecido. Eu queria esperar pra poder falar todas essas idéias para vocês.

Em primeiro lugar, a aula de patchwork. As mulheres são tão queridas e realmente querem fazer alguma coisa para se ajudar e ajudar outras mulheres que não tem como se sustentar. A costura é uma coisa que elas podem fazer em qualquer situação... mesmo se estão grávidas. Esse era um problema aqui... quando uma mulher engravida, não tem quase nada que ela possa fazer para receber dinheiro. Tem muito trabalho manual aqui... trabalho em fazendas, plantações, etc. 

Outro trabalho que eles estão começando a desenvolver aqui é trabalho com as prisões. Eu falei pra vocês sobre o genocídio... imagina a quantidade de pessoas que estão nas prisões. Muitas vezes eles tem famílias fora da prisão que tem que tentar sustentar. Tem várias idéias do que se possa fazer com essas pessoas. Uma é uma cesta feito de cordão e tecido. Outra idéia são coisas feitos com patchwork. Muitas coisas!

Um outro projeto é um projeto novo que a mulher da casa que eu estou ficando (Louise) está começando a trabalhar. É um projeto completamente diferente de tudo que podemos encontrar aqui e é um projeto planejado especialmente para a Ruanda. A Ruanda é chamado "A Terra de Mil Montes". O projeto é um painel desenhado com as paisagens de Ruanda, feito em patchwork de mil pedaços. Vai ser bastante trabalho, mas será um trabalho bem valorizado aqui. 

Ontem eu "transferi" todo o tecido para a Louise. Até ontem, nós estavamos usando alguns pedaços mas não tinhamos tirado tudo ainda. Como eu falei, esses projetos vieram um após o outro... nós estavamos bastante ocupados. Cada pedaço que eu tirava, ela dizia como ela achava que podíamos usar. Ela ficou tão feliz. Nós enchemos uma mala inteira de tecido. Isso é MUITO tecido. 

Eu estou um pouco triste, porque não vou poder estar aqui para ver os resultados desses projetos. Eu queria tanto mostrar pra vocês o que vocês fizeram para este povo. Vocês estão dando oportunidades. Eu sei que não parece... só tecido?! Mas é. Vocês estão ajudando de longe. Eu falei pra Louise que ela teria que nos manter atualizados com o trabalho que eles estão fazendo. Nós vamos ver os resultados desse trabalho logo! 

Amo muito vocês e estou com saudades. Vejo vocês domingo que vem! 

Happy Birthday!!

Ans,

I hope you have a really cool birthday today! I thought about you all morning and I wish I could be there with you. Just one more week!

What kind of cake did you pick? Where did you go out to eat? I love you and I miss you so much!

Love,
The Coolest Sister In The Whole Wide World

Oh yeah... I have a blog.

Oops. I kind of forgot I had a blog. Don't worry Dad, I checked my roots today. No blonde. 

I don't really have anything super duper exciting to tell you guys. When I left this morning for preschool, I figured I would just tell all about my day at preschool. I picked an "exciting" (?) day. I just got back and it seems like the last time I was home was about 2 days ago. Fun, huh? 

It started out like normal. All the kids were in an assembly type thing singing and dancing before class. I've been in Claudine's class for the last few days and I'm really happy about that. After about an hour, the kids started coming up to the board and practicing their writing. As we were paying attention to the kids writing, on girl runs out of the room. Claudine went to see what was wrong with her. 

She discovered a large pool of diarrhea all over the bathroom floor. I didn't know about this, so all of a sudden I was with 30 4 year olds trying to figure out what to do. About 3 seconds (LITERALLY) after Claudine left, another girl puked all over her chair, the floor and herself. Good times.

So here I am, with 30 kids who don't understand a word that I say (and vice-versa) trying to tell them to be quiet while I took the girl to the bathroom. I ran her to the bathroom and left her with Claudine (who was already giving the other a girl a shower). I went back to the classroom and cleaned up the puke. Then I still had another 30 minutes of entertaining them while Claudine cleaned up the 2 girls. 

After she was done cleaning up, it was already time for porridge. While we were fixing their porridge, two boys were being really really bad so she had to put one of them in the front of the room by himself. Porridge time went okay. No more vomiting or anything. We started to clean up all the porridge stuff in the hall. Suddenly we hear lots of yelling from in the room. We both went in and discover that the boy who was in the front of the room had grabbed a stick and was beating the other kids. He (obviously) got in trouble. 

The rest of the morning went okay. When it was time for the final assembly, I was pretty happy and ready to go home. As we're saying the final prayer, 2 boys pee all over the floor. Just to top off the day. 

Let me tell you that my days at the preschool are never like this. At times they can get really tiring or seem to go on forever. But nothing like this ever happens. At the end of the day, Claudine looked at me and said "When you get back to your home, please remember to pray for us. We have a hard job." Believe me, I know. Please pray for all the teachers today. I'm sure they're all tired from our day.

Mountain Gorillas

Man, this is another hard one. I have 150 pictures of the gorillas. I with I could show you all of them.

We started by getting ready. Marty told us to wear comfy clothes, hiking boots, gators and carry a walking stick and a backpack full of food. I thought it was a little too much. It wasn't. It was perfect. I was so glad for everything I had. Thanks Marty!

We met up close to our hotel and decided which group we wanted to see. We decided on the Susa group.It is the hardest hike and most of the time the longest. We were so lucky. We only had to hike 2 hours uphill to find them. It was hard but so worth it.

At first, I have to admit I was a little disappointed. We kept on walking all over just to find one gorilla alone. We had tons of pictures like this. If you squint your eyes really hard, you might be able to see the gorillas.

At last, we got to this clearing in the forest. It was so beautiful. There were probably 15 gorillas. Really cool! Here are some of the best pictures I got.

Look at all the cute babies!

How many can you find?

This one's called Silverback number 1 or The Big Boss.

He's holding his right foot with his left hand. So cute!

For Grandmommy

Sorry to all the rest of you for having to look at pictures of me.

Riding on the roof rack.

With Natalie.

Giraffes!

With gorillas and Pippy Longstocking braids.

Safari Views

Okay, the views from all over Akagera National Park deserve a post of their own. So so amazing.