So this was a really good blog post until it deleted itself.

My first weekend in Butare involved the sun, a party, some hilariously bad karaoke, learning to dance African-club-style, sunbathing, a meeting with the coordinator and vice-coordinator of RVCP, some questionable meat and some al-fresco German dining (complete with German apfel-wine).

Peter, Libby and I

Normally at parties in the UK, you don't really dance until it's late and you're drunk. Here, the whole point of the party is to dance, whether there are 4 or 40 people there. As a terrible dancer, this takes some getting used to! However, good news - there's a traditional dance class at the university that I want to join so hopefully it won't be long before people stop laughing at my dancing.

I had written a really really really long post about my entire weekend but STUPID blogspot decided to delete everything except the first two paragraphs I'm SO ANNOYED because I can't bring myself to write everything again. So bulletpoints are happening instead

- I'm also going to join a choir at the uni. It's not barbershop but should be pretty fun!
- We went to a club which was like a weird hotel reception room, when we arrived there was some very formal karaoke going on (which was terrible, except the Kanye West impersonator singing Coming Home, he was awesome) and everyone was sitting round tables like in a wedding reception or something. After karaoke the place turned into a 'club' - the first song played was Mysterious Girl which clearly meant the DJ peaked WAY too soon, cause nothing else topped that. Also Primus beer was around 50p, bargain!
- On Sunday Miriam, a German girl volunteering at an orphanage, cooked us some German food - fried potatoes and onions and meatballs (fried egg for me (no-one understands vegetarianism here, I told some RVCP guys I have never eaten meat and they genuinely face-palmed)). We stored the meat in our fridge for Mim during the day, but because in Rwanda stuff is stored in paper not plastic bags, the meat bled all over our vegetables. Who stores a chunk of raw meat in a paper bag, no-one will know. The food was so delicious, everything cooked outside on fire stoves tastes so much better! (and takes about 3 hours to prepare)
- We bought a thyme plant at the market today and planted it in the front garden, Nymwaza came over and was laughing at us, we must have looked so ridiculous, two white girls in flip-flops trying to dig a hole in rock-hard soil for a pathetically small and wilted thyme plant. It had better grow but I'm worried it might just be washed away in the ridiculously heavy downpours we get over here!