Tuesday, January 3, 2012

New Years


Several volunteers and I decided to ring in the New Year by going into Kigali and clubbing for a night. This decision was made to prevent us from having to take 7 -8 hour bus rides up north meaning that we could go for one night and get home, but because this is Rwanda that is not at all what happened. We got into Kigali during the afternoon on New Years Eve and immediately tracked down burgers at Mr. Chips, easily my favorite spot in Kigali. It’s an American style restaurant run by a Canadian ex-pat who is constantly present at his establishment and loves PCVs, and their burgers taste like real American burgers!!! Most other places here put curry in the meat (no idea why) and thus they don’t taste quite like home. After our burgers we headed to the hotel where we immediately hopped in the pool, despite the fact that it had just started to rain.
            For the actual celebration we headed to a swanky bar named Heaven that was doing a cocktail countdown where a different cocktail was on sale every hour and came with a complimentary appetizer, aka it was the perfect situation. After we rang in the New Year, a little after midnight, we headed back to our hotel where there was another nightclub so that we could keep dancing. Some highlights:

-       Being, by far, the loudest table of people at Heaven even though most of those present were Americans and there were only 6 of us.
-       The group of other PCVs that were present commenting that we were “ an interesting group”
-       Being the only people dancing
-       When our Rwandan friend who was with us decided to get on stage and sing with the band.
-       The free cheeseburgers that came with the last drink! And us eating them extra fast and claiming we didn’t get them!
-       The large group of Christian missionaries who were there who didn’t drink, and were thus offended most of the night. Also, they all were women with buzzcuts.
-       Kim and I getting drinks with the owner of the second club until he delved into some 1994 related topics that we decided we were too drunk to discuss and then had to hide from him all night.

The next day we were, understandably, hungover and thus slept until the last possible moment. Instead of heading straight to the bus stop we went to Bourbon coffee because we had met one of the baristas the night before and knew we could get free caffeine (Bourbon is very expensive so it was a big win). Once we did head to the bus station we were alarmed by how empty it was, Nyabagogo is never empty, at least half of Africa is there milling around at any given time. This was a bad sign. We soon discovered that all buses going anywhere outside Kigali had stopped for the day. Luckily one girl we were with lives 20 minutes outside the city, and thus we headed there and the adventure continued.
      We were so exhausted we spent most of that night watching silly movies and lying on the floor. In the morning, one we felt better, we decided to head out to another PCVs site on Lake Kivu and have a nice afternoon  enjoying the view. The lake was gorgeous and definitely worth the adventure to sit and enjoy it all afternoon. That night we made pizza in a Peace Corps oven at Saaras house, it was a huge success and we stuffed our faces! I finally got home late last night exhausted and happy. It was a great weekend and a great start to the new year.

Now I have my first Rwandan Staff meeting in a few hours to decide what I will be teaching this year. There has been some contention on this point so wish me luck, because I will not last 2 years if I really have only 4 hours of teaching a week.

            Happy New years to everyone! Good luck with your resolutions! And I hope it brings you everything you’re looking for. 

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