6 weeks already?!

So it's 6 weeks since I left Stirling - feels like longer in some ways, but the weeks are passing quickly too.  I'm over a third of the way through now!  Some of the team have received letter parcels, so if you would like to write to me (I've yet to receive anything, sob sob) my address is:
Katie Smith
Transform Team
RDIS
BP 142
Gitarama
Rwanda

Since I last blogged we have:
- planted more trees  (avocados and papaya)
- labeled more pineapple juice and some passion fruit juice (yet to taste this, but I'm sure it's also great)
- helped carry more chairs
- celebrated Alice's 19th birthday with party games, jelly and a cake made from biscuits and nutella
- helped builf (well, moved mud and carried water) a kitchen for a family in Kagarama.  Their sense of community is incredible - where people work together to help someone in need, despite them all having a lot of needs themselves.  That afternoon the people who'd been working at that house were going off to help a man who'd lost his wife and children during the genocide and needed work done on his house.  What sense of community do I have back home?  What do I do to help others where I live?  Or do I just think about my own needs and wants...
- written a sermon together,which Alice gave at Zion church (our local) on Sunday.  I think it went down well.
- taught at Compassion on Saturday, which was both awful and great.  The teaching part was so hard.  We'd been asked to teach on 'preventing the mistreatment of those with HIV and AIDS', so decided to teach about stigma and acceptance etc.  It's just so difficult trying to come up with good, challenging lessons that will translate into another language and culture.  So much of my lesson fell completely flat and I just wanted the ground to open up. Afterwards we went back down the hill and helped cook and serve lunch to the kids.  There are about 200 of them, so it takes a bit of time to plate up everything, but it was great fun.  All the kids who go to Compassion are sponsored and some had received letters from their sponsors - people from all over eg Inverness, Colorado etc.  It was great to see the kids proudly show us the letters and photos that they'd been sent, but also strange to see child sponsorship from the other side.  As we left to go back for our own lunch, we saw a family of kids who we know sitting watching.  They are not sponsored so don't attend any of the Compassion activities.  As fantastic as it is to see so many kids being helped, there are always more out there who still need it.
- attended some of the genocide memorial week meetings last week.  Over 100 people from the local community were there each day and different topics were discussed, such as the definition of genocide,how to help people affected by the genocide, the effects it had on poverty and the economy, and how to deal with those who still deny that a genocide took place.  Hard to believe that some people still won't accept/ admit it.  There was also talk of the government's '2020 vision' to see evryone with accessto clean water, electricity, education etc by 2020.  Tomorrow we are going to a genocide memorial in Kigali, which I expect will be a very sobering experience.
- saw the president's car and large entourage drive past, at very high speed!!

On the whole, I feel I'm getting on better than when I last wrote.  I have happier days and some down days.  I sometimes find it hard not having my own space, but I also know I spent too much time on my own back home so it's good for me to be in the company of others a lot of the time.  We do get on well as a team, which is great.  We've had a couple of dvd nights where we pushed the beds together and made a 'den' from our African fabric and treated ourselves to biscuits and chocolate.  We've also been round to the house of one of our friends from RDIS for snacks and a quiz, which was fun.  I'm getting more used to 'African time' and the fat that sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't.  We're all keeping well too, which is an added bonus.

This Friday I have an interview for a place on the internship program with CAP.  Feeling nervous about it and really hope the phone line works ok, as it doesn't always when I'm speaking with my parents.  It's not an ideal situation for an interview, but I'm encouraged that they're going to effort to talk to me rather than wait till I get home.  Working for CAP would be a great experience and it would be great to know that I have something planned for when I come home other than a dentist appointment!  Hopefully I have something to offer CAP too!

In many ways I feel very comfortable here in Rwanda, so it would be good to continue to remember to challenge myself while I'm here rather than coast through the experience.  Hope all is well at home.  Thanks for the comments, emails, facebook messages.  I love to hear from people!! x