Accepted!

The news:

I've been accepted as a volunteer on the 2009/2010 WorldTeach Rwanda program! I'll be heading to Africa right after Christmas 2009 for a year of teaching in a Rwandan secondary school, and I'll have the option to stay on for another year after that if I'd like.

I'm keeping this [yet another travel] blog as a nice little vaguely public record of my progress as I prepare for my first step into the developing world. It seems that, while the internet in Africa can be a fickle mistress, regular updates from Rwanda itself will also be doable. I'm confident that I have no idea what I'm in for at this point, but I'm all-over excited about getting this show on the road.

What the next six months is going to be about:

• READ about Rwanda. Due in part to its notorious recent past, there's a good deal of information out there about my future home, and I'm aiming to soak up as much of it as possible before I head out. I'm a bit devastated to have to put some of my other reading projects on the backburner, but I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to pick them up again while sitting under a bednet with a broken radio in Rwanda. And reading is reading is always good.
• Get trilingual. The three official languages in Rwanda are English (aced it!) , French (oy), and Kinyarwanda, a Bantu language which at my first assessment sounds completely beautiful, almost like Portuguese. I'm still not sure whether to focus on French or Kinyarwanda at this point, but I'd love to become proficient at both during my time in Rwanda. Mercifully, the BBC has a ton of radio and written news coverage in both Kinyarwanda and French, so I've been listening to the morning news in both languages daily to get a feel for them. I recognized my first Kinyarwandan word on the radio last week! One correspondent took over from another and said murakoze, which means thank you, and I was all over it. Pure joy.
• Learn how to teach. Yikes. Somewhat daunting but I'm actually pretty excited about this too. In order get some teaching experience to draw on, I need to volunteer in an ESL classroom for at least 25 hours (though I'm hoping to do much more, as I have no classroom experience :-X). Planning for this is still in beta stage, but I'll likely be shadowing a teacher in one of San Francisco's many ESL havens this fall, and hopefully taking over a lesson or two before the end of term.
• Shoot up. The menu of diseases available for the having in East Africa is thorough, and I need to get immunized against a l l o f t h e m. Look for many I-just-got-immunized-against-___-and-definitely-am-having-a-negative-reaction-so-see-you-in-the-next-life posts in the future!
• Visa my heart. I've never worked in a foreign country before, so this'll be a great opportunity to get practice going though the notorious visa process with WorldTeach holding my hand. Looking to draw on the extensive experience of Dad, Mum, Ross and Nicki on this one.
• Plan my impact. Participation in/organization of after-school programs for students is a major part of the WorldTeach experience (and seems to be where many teachers feel their most effective), so I'm going to do what I can to gather resources here that will make it easier to implement the programs I want to in Rwanda. I'm most interested in starting an HIV awareness club, overseeing a school newspaper, and organizing a library (depending on the needs of my placement), so I'll be tapping the giant pulsating brains of my connections at SF AIDS and The Daily Cal, along with my bookish/resourceful friends, for ideas and support.

My challenge will be to slow down and enjoy this exciting planning process while living the last six months of my sweet life here in San Francisco. I hope to rope as many of you into it as possible. Please feel free to comment with any questions, thoughts, concerns, tips, or links to photos of Mike Pelayo throwing a hissy fit over a round of hot chocolate, if you have any.

For all the support, well-wishes, and advice I've gotten from many of you already: Murakoze!