maybe somehow absolutely okay

I'm going to rwanda today!!! to kigale the capital. my bus leaves in literally half an hour and we should be there in 2.5 hours. so icant write much yet~

warren (of organize-your-face fame) walked by us this morning at Edirisa and goes "Ready for Genocide!?" the perkiest way you could imagine. people here have dark humor.

i dont know if i mentioned this before, but noah, our caretaker in Nyakasiru (the tiny farming village where Teach Inn is) was kidnapped by the LRA and escaped. He escaped with two other friends and they got recaptured. he is 20 years old and the smartest most incredible guy ever. i'll bring many stories of him soon.

((also, dad, warren is asking me every 10 minutes about if he could study abroad in america and meet an american professor by e-mail or something. he is VERY smart and fluent in english (hence why he knows words like 'umbilical cord') but i was wondering if you could put him in touch with some professor in business or international students forum or something at UCSD or even if i can put him in touch with you. he says every time he e-mails US universities or professors they think he is a scam or a junk email. please get back to me soon on this. ive never met someone so eager to learn in my life))

Nyakasiru is unbelievably beautiful. I mean its truly not fair for you all. I wish I could post pictures. Oh I believe there's a picture of my group at edirisa. (www.edirisa.org). Check the Teach Inn blog there, as miha posts things and pictures from time to time of Nyakasiru, where teach in is located.

Where we are staying... the Teach Inn... is really really nice. i mean we even have a few lightbulbs that run on a solar panel. we have pit toilets, no sinks and have to boil all our water. but cpompared to the villagers, we are millionaires. it is kind of frustrating for me because iwould just assume live like them, but i understand many volunteers (with the exception of my wonderful group of volunteers) need 'nicer' accomodations. anyway, the kids will stare at us for sooo long while we are jkust sitting on our porch. there will be like 50 of them (picture a class about to take a class picture, fcing the camera) but facing us as we do things like wash our clothes. they are FASCINATED. i feel like an animal in a zoo. they look at us like we are absolutely not humans, or at least not the same species as them. one of the girls walks up to me and goes "WHITE SKIN (pointing to me) BLACK SKIN! (pointing to herself)" and then she giggled. its so funny how not-PC peopel are here. i like it that way, but its weird getting used to.

last thing, and the best story i have to deliver as of yet.....

at Teach Inn, because people know the muzungus live there (white people), and our village (most villages) runs basically on Martial Law, we have a night guard. Our night guard has two spears, i mean real spears, and a machete, and stands in front of Teach Inn every night. Here's the best part.... his name, his actual birth name, is JUSTICE. HAHAHA!!! So we have a night guard named Justice who bears two spears and a machete guarding us every night.

write more later! off to rwanda to see the genocide memorial. this is going to be reaaaaally sad. i might see the hotel de milles collins as well (aka. hotel rwanda, itself). im going with five other volunteers. i organized the trip myself with warrens help:)

oh yes, i went jogging with a woman named Joan from the secondary school yesterday (around 17 yrs old). she was so good at english and as i was running (we get so made fun of for running) she just joined me. its really funny cuz the women here dont wear bras and only wear skirts, so she wore a skirt and a t-shirt and barefoot as we were running. haha!!!!

love,
suz
p.s. andrew, i have yet to discover what they have 'too many of' here, but i will get back to you shortly on that, as we know that EVERY place in the world goes overboard on SOMETHING