Magnificently Insignificant Waves

One whole year! That's how long I've been living in Kigali. Technically I arrived on November 1st last year, but I didn't actually stay on my own (well, with my husband, that is) until we got married, and our Anniversary was two Mondays ago.  One year living away from home can teach you a lot. It can teach you a lot about your surroundings and other people within them, but, I find that even more than that, it can teach you vast amounts about yourself. I wanted to write a post about all the main lessons I've learned in a year of being here, but as I began writing (like two weeks ago) I found that each point kept expanding. So over the next few weeks I will enlighten you one lesson at a time about my one year as a Rwandan Honey! Lesson No. 1:  No matter how much advice people give you or how wise said people may seem, "the one", "Mr./Mrs. right", your future spouse/partner, etc., will rarely be found by anyone's set of rules -- even your own. ...

So...I lost it. Totally lost all of my cool. In public. Loudly.  I've heard from a number of experienced expats, read a handful of blog posts, even seen it first hand with a close friend, how living abroad can affect someone over time. And because of that, I thought I was prepared for the worst.  Nope. I have never heard any stories quite similar to my giant temper tantrum yesterday. Maybe no one tells those stories. Or maybe I am just the total worst at this. But all of this is to say...if you are going to live abroad some time in your life, definitely be prepared for some of the best days, but also, be prepared for your absolute worst days. Days that might look a little like this: I moved here November 2015. So I have been here close to a year. That's about the time frame that a majority of people I have heard from say they hit their breaking point while living abroad. For me, though, the first month was extremely difficult. I had come here because I had married some...

I have never been a fan of chess. I don't enjoy games involving intense strategy or attempting to predict people. They stress me out. When I have happened to get roped into a chess game (which was probably like twice), I would overthink everything and worry that there was something I couldn't think of. Before I could get any piece to the other half of the board, I would get overwhelmed and give up trying to play strategically. At that point, I would just move pieces around and not think about it. I would shut down. Luckily, I don't have to like chess, nobody really cares all that much if I don't play, and if I shut down in the middle of a game, it only means i'm not a great chess player. I can live with that. Unfortunately this giant chess tournament called life isn't quite as inconsequential. If you shut down, your moves will effect more than just your Queen's protection squad (not actual chess lingo). If you give up and quit, the game keeps continuing,...

The Sunday before last I embarked on what turned out to be the most difficult hike I have done so far in my lifetime (our Austrian friend who was with us and beat us by an hour both ways would probably laugh at me for saying that). I along with my husband, a few of our friends, and a few other hikers that joined in our group climbed  Mount Bisoke , an active volcano in the northern part of Rwanda on the Rwanda/Congo border. But even though it was many long minutes of pain and frustration and only a few short ones of pleasure, it was and worth every bit of it. What a funny concept! That we will put ourselves through a whole lot of pain for a tiny glimpse of beauty or a sense of accomplishment. I'll come back to that later... I really love to hike. I love being outdoors, and I love getting to the top of mountain and seeing the world below. But unfortunately I don't actually have that much hiking experience. I don't really count the tiny "mountain" near my ho...

I think we can all agree that we can't always agree. No matter how much we love someone or something, there will be something about it that just doesn't agree with you. I absolutely love Rwanda, and I think that moving here was one of the best decisions I made. But not everything about living in Rwanda agrees with me. One of the most difficult things for me has been dealing with the amount of attention attention I get from strangers simply because I am a Muzungu (specifically meaning a white person but used to refer to any westerner or foreigner from a generally wealthier country). Just to clarify before I go on, there's a lot of history that goes behind the mindset that leads people to treat westerners this way. In fact, it's a lot of history that involves a bunch of westerners trying to convince all the locals in Africa that their way is better and that these societies can't survive without outside help. So I can't really be mad at the individuals I encoun...

Although, I would like to have kept everyone a little more frequently updated, I will say, I am pretty grateful for the reason that I haven't put up a post in a long time...I'm BUSY!!! Not just busy doing any old thing either. I'm busy doing things that I really love to do! First of all, I have a job teaching modern and tap dance to kids and adults at a small studio . Secondly, through a few different connections, I have been invited to be a part of a collaborative theater and dance project that will be performed at an arts festival here in Kigali. With all of this going on, I have had so many thoughts on my mind that I have been itching to write about, but the awesome thing is, even within the things that I'm doing, I'm getting to think creatively and share my creative thoughts with people who also are passionate about being creative on a regular basis! This is my drug, you guys! The funny thing is, even when all of this had just begun, over a month ago, I was alr...

I haven't been in Rwanda long enough to merit any judging rights. But, being in the position I am in - not completely able to relate to my Rwandan family and neighbors but also not here for the same reasons as most of the expats I have come into contact with - I am seeing a lot of different things from the outside, and from many different angles. There is one particular thing I am noticing more and more as I observe people around me. I had originally typed up whole stories about the specific occurrences, but to avoid making this a gossip column, I decided to make this a more of a general thought. And the thought is this: It seems to me that people who travel the world, whether for work, religious missions, to study, whatever reason, as they become more experienced with the expatriate life, they begin to develop a certain attitude towards others who are doing the exact same thing. It's an attitude that seems to say something along the lines of "I know the best way to li...

A lot of my time here is spent on motorcycles like the ones in the photo. Commonly known as "motos", they function pretty much like taxis. The only difference is you negotiate the price before you ride. They are a little dangerous, although (knock on wood) I've never been in an accident on one, but they're the fastest way to get anywhere if you don't have your own vehicle and cheaper than an actual taxi car. A lot of thinking happens on these motos. They are my breaks between each reality. My time to prepare. My time to reflect. Something I have been doing a lot of reflecting on lately: I am extremely introverted. Some people who know me well might argue with me, but more often than not, talking to people I don't know terrifies me. Not because I have anything against people. I just get overwhelmingly nervous, and I have trouble forming sentences. And that's just speaking in English. Now take that and add it to the fact that I'm in a country where I b...

Sometimes it's easy to miss what is happening right in front of you. Sometimes you realize that there are chunks of time that you were only doing the necessary things to get to a certain point and you missed a lot of the details in between. Kind of like when you get home from a long drive and you get the feeling that you don't even remember driving. Maybe you were lost in your thoughts, but haven't even really kept track of those either. But when you finally sit down, take a break and rewind back to the beginning, you can fill in the blanks. Well, at least they seem like blanks, but you find that somewhere those moments are stored in your memory. These last three months have been a whirlwind. And now, I'm here. It feels as though I was in Arkansas, fell asleep, and woke up married and living my life in Kigali. Now, I have to rewind and recall what exactly happened in the middle of all that glorious chaos. How everything looked, who I encountered, what I was thinking, ...

This photo was taken at my introduction (Gusaba & Gukwa), a traditional Rwandan ceremony that comes before a religious wedding in which the bride's dowry is settled among the two families. Afterwards she is brought out (I was escorted by my brother, bridesmaids and aunt) to greet her new family, exchange gifts, and share a meal next to her new (official) betrothed. That day, I felt like I was in a movie. In That particular moment, I was trying - and failing - to stop giggling. The second I saw my then fiance sitting in a banana-leaf chair next to a vacant one, which I would eventually occupy, atop a low, covered platform, dressed in his silky, brown traditional Rwandan garments, looking at me cooly, staff in hand, like a king, the realisation that this was actually happening to ME erupted in the form of uncontrollable laughter. No. It was not anything like the twenty-something versions of my future wedding I had conjured up during my childhood. Now it is three m...