After a month's absence

Since coming back from IST (in service training) at the end of April I’ve been at my site and have only left for one night, thus the long absence from posting anything.  Here’s a quick overview of my month:

§  Painted my accent wall in my room, pictured below:

§  Went to Primus Guma Guma Superstar (a concert contest where the winner gets to make a music video or something with a Rwandan celebrity singer I think) held at a bus station in Kamembe

§  Learned how hard it can be to cook chili when beans won’t soften after eight hours of soaking, two hours of being in a lightly boiling pot, and another hour cooking to become chili

§  Started my Spanish club for my teachers (at their behest, not mine). They also told me that they’re not really interested in having an English language session but that I should just teach them better English through Spanish

§  Read several books (Invictus, The Burning of the Vanities, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the last two books of the Chronicles of Narnia, and The Innocent)

§  Taught my students some of the common pronunciations of fast, informal speech in English (e.g., hasta, gotta, hafta, gonna, wanna, etc) through Rihanna’s Please Don’t Stop the Music, which has all the grammar points and pronunciations I wanted them to learn

§  Went to a Genocide remembrance event held by my school. It was two nights long and consisted of poems, song, talks, candle lighting, a bonfire (the light of hope I think it’s supposed to symbolize), and a long walk to a memorial site.

§  Have been hanging out with my students after class listening to music (primarily Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Akon, Chris Brown, Jay-Z, and the like). Surprisingly, I haven’t been asked about Lady Gaga’s and Chris Brown’s influence on the Illuminati lately (something about their desire to murder Jesus and bring about the reign of the antichrist), which was always a topic of conversation they were eager to jump on

§  Started doing P90X and learned that an hour and a half of yoga really kicks your ass

§  Had a sex talk with some teachers and a graduated student from last year at my school, over a few beers until 1am