Sources of Happiness

• Learning to carry a baby on my back while at my host family’s house
• Wearing an igitenge (fabric wrapped around as skirt) and cooking Rwandan food (think starches and almost no vegetables) with my host family in their outdoor kitchen.
• Talking to the cute old lady who sweeps the drainage gutters every morning
• Walking past the old man by the training center that wears a crazy hat, no shoes, and carries a walking stick every day.
• Successfully having a basic conversation in Kinyarwanda
• The game of determining which type of greeting is about to happen in a split second. Rwandans have a million ways to greet (touch cheeks 3 times while hugging and then shaking hands, tight hug, distant hug, hand shake, and more), which causes great anxiety and excitement whenever I greet someone.
• Pineapples and avocados – they are so cheap (less than 50 cents for a pineapple and about 10 cents for an avocado) and so good. The cooks at Peace Corps learned how to make guacamole, which makes any Rwandan meal a million times more delicious.
• Looking at the mist-covered mountains when I walk out of my house every morning.
• Starting to understand 4 of the 16 Kinyarwanda noun classes.
• Looking up at the stars. I will fall into a ditch one of these days.
• Tide room. Our house is called Laundry House, so each room gave itself a name. We are Tide and the others are Woolite and Downy.
• Beginning a walk alone and ending with a following of children. They are the best language teachers and provide an immediate link between myself and the adults.