Hey everyone! So I finally got around to getting this blog started and wish I could say I have a lot of interesting and exciting things to share with you but I actually spent most of the first few days here sleeping, which isn't surprising if you know me =) But to give you an idea of what I've been doing since I got here, here's a quick summary of my life in Kigali (the capital city of Rwanda) so far...
I share a beautiful 5 bedroom house with 2 others girls and I really like living here - it's quiet and spacious, basically the opposite of New York! I've discovered that Rwandans are incredibly friendly and the country definitely lives up to its name of being "the land of a thousand hills". To give you an idea, this is the view from my backyard -
In case you don't know what I'm actually doing in Rwanda, I work at the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP) to help expand services for sexual and gender-based violence survivors in the context of HIV/AIDS. This has been really great so far - I'm already doing cool things like spending the week attending a workshop with experts from all over Africa on violence against women and the role of police, military, etc.
I don't have too much else to add yet so here are some random things I've discovered about living here:
- Street food vendors and plastic bags are illegal
- The weather is really temperate (I actually need a light sweater when I go out)
- Chocolate is not very easy to find =(
And here's a map of Rwanda in case you have no clue where it is or what it looks like...
That's all I have for now!
Lots of love,
