Father's Day

I said goodbye to Amanda yesterday morning and I am really sad because she was my first friend and ended up being my closest here in Rwanda. I know its cliché to say that I really hate goodbyes but in the past 6 months of my life I have had way to many with people I really care about. Its going to be good to go back to the states for a while and then hopefully move to Ireland for a long time after that. I have been doing a lot of searching for jobs in Ireland for after I graduate in May, so say some prayers for me cause the job market is impossible there especially for an American. I ended up not going to the Gorilla naming ceremony yesterday because I’ll be making that trip out there next weekend. Supposedly this week Akon will be coming to perform in the Stadium by my house as well as professional soccer players including Renaldo. We had a good week this past week with…the boys started filming interviews with the women and getting some good footage. We don’t have much to do at night during the week so I have been designated storyteller every night. I have started on display designs for our retailers... one of them being a large branch that I found in a trash pile. My plan was to hang the necklaces on the branch after varnishing it but I came in and the women had used my branch as firewood. They thought it was so funny…now I have to find a new branch.

Today we all went to church in our community, only about 5 houses down. It is something that we always wanted to do because we can hear the choir practicing everyday from out house down the street. When we came in they made us to come the front of the church so that they could welcome us. They even put two translators in between us all so that we could understand. During the sermon, there was a woman who came up who was from the Congo and talked about her family there. They continued on to talk about how in 94 the genocides often took place in churches like this one and how we can never forget. After church I took a moto to the genocide memorial by myself. It told the history of the genocide and was actual the site of many killings. It was not to far from my house that I live in now so it brought me back to reality. In one of the main testimonial videos a woman spoke of her father that was killed and how he was a quite man with many many friends. It made me think of my dad today on Father’s Day and how much I miss him and am so lucky to have him in my life. I will try to get a hold of him later today. If you are reading this Dad,… I love you!