your rwanda blog is unupdated

cries the cacophony of disappointed blog readers.

That's because there's not a whole lot to report. I've got about four months till departure, and that feels a little too far out to be focusing all my effort on this, but not far enough to be letting it move into my peripheral vision. I'm working at MLVS two mornings per week now, and it's been primarily observation so far. Hopefully this week I can convince Dr. Vic to let me help with some of the lessons; my lack of proactivity has been a hindrance so far and I know I need to get over it. I'd like to hold an office hour outside of class to get some one-on-one time with the students, but I'm hard pressed to find one reasonable hour per week that's regularly open on my schedule these days. We'll see.

I'm looking forward to getting out of this all-consuming limbo and reaching the two-months-to-go mark so I can start making real effort towards real plans.

look ma no criminal record

Two steps forward on the planning/preparation front this week:

1. Finally trekked down to the Department of Justice, had my criminal record checked, got it back squeaky clean, and received the resulting police clearance that I needed to kick off my visa application. As expected, the SF DOJ was a barrel of laughs. The guy in front of me speak-yelled for about 15 minutes on the subject of how the brains of the DOJ staff were not connecting to his brain in a way that he thought was respectable and human (his sentences sounded reasonable as background noise but fell apart like wet cake when you actually listened to them, like looking at a baby up close and seeing that it's really an old man), while another fellow stander-in-line waxed eloquent to me about how his summers on a cruise ship in Brazil when he was young were nothing like my year in Rwanda is going to be.

2. I set up my teaching internship! I'll be starting in the adult ESL class at the Mission Language and Vocational School (MLVS) this Tuesday, and going every Tuesday and Thursday morning till I leave for the big RW. It's remarkable how well this clicked together after banging my head against the wall with City College for the whole summer. I wanted to volunteer somewhere that could be useful to my local community - MLVS is specifically geared towards recent immigrants to the Mission (and it's on my street). I wanted to go somewhere where they could actually use a volunteer, rather than just being a burden - MLVS was all over the idea of having someone with my goals willing to help out. I wanted to have a strong mentor with solid teaching experience - the instructor has been teaching this class for 18 years and is a bit of a fixture at the school. I wanted to fit this in with my work schedule - miraculously, my boss agreed to let me start at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays to accommodate this opportunity. The school is small and local and the administration has already gone out of their way to be responsive and helpful. I'm excited to start, and I'm hoping that this change of schedule might be as good as a rest.

supportive parents

My mother, on the scope of my international health insurance: "I don't think we'll have to pay to repatriate your remains, so that's good."

Thanks Ma!