Saturday afternoon we walked around a really active neighborhood, Nyamirambo, and saw things like a mosque (1% of the population is Muslim), a movie theater, and bootleg DVDs with every season of 24 (I still haven't seen the season finale!!).

Saturday night we headed out, first to try our favorite cheap restaurant, but there was some kind of sketchy meeting going on. We knew some government ministers hang out there (and actively harassed people from another ethnic group), but were not even allowed in. I don't really care, the food's still good, we'll just have to go during the week. We went to another local place, moved to a sports bar called The Executive Carwash (although they only had soccer on, we were hoping for the Braves game), and then the most popular club, Cadillac. It was really fun, drinks were reasonable, it was similar to going out in the U.S.

I think we've now basically explored the whole city, and since this isn't really a tourist town there's not too much else to do. We of course have homework and sports, but I'm excited for a change in scenery- going to a resort town this weekend, our homestays on Sunday, and then next week we head south to Butare.

Sunday we headed to church to see what it was like. People had gone last week and said it was awesome, but we checked out a new one this Sunday and it was disappointing. It was just like a contemporary worship service in the U.S., I recognized a couple of tunes, but the whole service took two hours. It was in Kinya-rwandan and English, which meant the pastor gave a fiery sermon in English, and the translator would basically yell over him. It was really hard to pay attention, but we all perked up when he mentioned the American government. He was talking about powers that be, talking about the U.N, America, Rwanda, and God. At the end, I actually saw people I knew. We ran into the three person crew from UNC doing sports through an organization called Play For Hope, and even though I didn't really know them it was cool to see someone I recognized in the middle of Kigali.

We headed downtown later, and actually someone else recognized me. We were crossing the street to go to the bus stop, and a truck driver leaned out the window "Hey Thomas, I remember you". Luckily he zoomed past, because I had no idea who he was. The other funny response I've heard, walking back from golf when I greeted everyone in Kinya-rwandan, was a five-year old girl who turned to her mom and yelled in English, "How does he speak Rwandan?"

Later Sunday, we went downtown for a big lunch- most of our group was craving hamburgers, but I got an omelette and ventured into ice cream, which tasted like absolutely nothing. I hear it's better other places, so I'm not discouraged. I still need to mail a letter to Dr. Siriri in Uganda, who we brought to UNC in April, so I went to the post office but it was closed. I stopped on the street and talked to this group of about 7 guys just sitting on the corner. It was probably a really funny site to see me sitting on the curb in the middle of them, but we had a really great conversation. We talked about sports of course (they knew of Michael Jordan and American football), travel, America, life stories (they grew up in Burundi, the country that borders Rwanda to the South, and like so many people here, always considered themselves Rwandans (which I find really interesting) and returned to start a new life after 1994). We also talked about the genocide, and how they said they forgave the people who killed some of their families because they had no other choice. We talked about religion (they had all gone to church that morning), and then offered me marijuana. I of course declined and we continued talking, but the conversation ended when one of the guys jumped in the prison van that had just rolled up and I decided to leave.

We sat around in the city mall, and I played snake, the long-lost game that lots of people have on their Rwandan cell phones and has become an obsession of our group. There's two versions, and I doubled our groups previously high score on the version I remember from home.

That night our group got together to discuss our proposal for the U.N. on genocide intervention. I had been frustrated the whole time because our group's suggestion of a standing army is not politically feasible in my opinion, but we were supposed to work in an ideal framework. We had a great conversation that night about global politics and eventually the state of the poorest and most discriminated against in the U.S., which was really interesting.

I woke up with a stuffy nose Monday morning, which has been going around our group and isn't too big of a deal. I'm headed to the pharmacy this afternoon, that should be an adventure. We continued working on our proposal during class, and spent the afternoon with a guy starting an NGO called "Mind View". We couldn't get him to explain what it was, but decided it would be an adventure if we stumbled on some meditation or something. The guy was definitely legitimate, and we thought we gave him some great ideas about empowerment of children (the teachers are oppressive in the classrooms here), building trust within a group, but it was also a ridiculous adventure to understand him, asking a non-religious guy to pray for the group, and admiring his logo created in Word that he was so proud of.

Last night we went to a restaurant we had heard great things about and it was fantastic, although I can't taste everything with my cold. The view was amazing, the lasagna and American food was quite welcome, and the view was awesome. We again got into a deep conversation about the sites we had been to, our feelings about the whole situation, and then moved outside and our conversation digressed into high school pranks.

This morning was a fun debate about our proposal. Our professor Donna grilled our group on the political feasibility of our section, which everyone laughed at because they knew my opinion on the whole assignment, so I had plenty to say. I'm also feeling better this morning, just an annoyance basically now.