africa stole my heart

the past week and a half has gone by so fast! everytime i slow down i realize the week is almost over! i have been so focused on learning the language and a few things about heath that i forget where the time has gone! the language is coming very well, but can be very tiring too! its almost like a summer class! ive met a lot of friends in the community that quiz me in my language knowlege. Last week we were introduced to the 16 noun classes (i dont think english has them). here is a paragraph i found from a blog to best explain the language:

"as far as I can tell there are three chief difficulties with Kinyarwandan. First, is just the unfamiliarity and strangeness of the words themselves. There are lots of ‘m’s and ‘w’s’ and ‘mw’s which aren’t particularly common in either English or Chinese. These words are so different (and quite long) it’s hard to remember them. Second is the fact that there are ‘noun classes’ which don’t really exist in English. Noun classes like ‘objects’, ‘people’, ‘animals’ mean that verbs and adjectives need to change to reflect the type of noun and with something like 16 noun classes. Finally, Kinyarwandan is a ‘tonal’ language – I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of what this means yet, because it’s not tonal in the same way Chinese is, but emphasis is clearly more important than in English." http://rwandanchopsuey.blogspot.com/

i have very good teachers and great friends to help in this and its really fun when i get to go out in the community and say "miriwe" (good afternoon) + other conversational words and i get crazy stares because a umunzungu can speak their languagae! i love it!

People from USAID, CDC, PEPFAR, and other organizations have been giving us presentations on programs we might be working with and everytime they come i get really excited about the fruits of after training! Which reminds me that in a little over a week and a half we will all be going to our sites for a week, by ourselves, to scope out our communities! eeek!!! im excited!