hard to leave..

So I've been living the life of luxury now for almost 2 and a half weeks with just a few days of site in-between. I've had mostly-hot showers, running water and things to cook on that don't involve lighting something on fire. It's gonna be real hard now to go back to site for a bit. I've gotten a little too used to all the little things that make life simpler. Even now, after my third conference in a month, when I was living with a host family, things were nice. I had the most wonderful, huge comfy bed and it was cold enough down in Muhanga that I could sleep with a huge comforter (i haven't done that for 6 months). Needless to say, I slept better there than I have since coming to Rwanda. They also had a TV, so for the second time since coming to Rwanda, I got to sit down and watch BBC world news! I also had the opportunity to play with their two sweet boys who loved hide & seek in the dark!
In other news, that conference was an amusing and interesting experience. When I first got there, I was a little worried that it would be overwhelming. 2000 teens are scary anywhere, especially so when you're one of only 4 white people there. It's only disconcerting because you know they're gonna spend the whole weekend staring and laughing at you. It's not usually with malicious intent, but when you can't hear them, what you're used to thinking is that they're saying something mean. Here, laughing is just the nervous response to anything. Don't know what to do? Laugh.
BUT it ended up being a nice week, in part because I had my lovely host family and in part because of what transpired on the last night.
We were having a "closing ceremony" of sorts with cultural representations from each country (Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, & D.R.C. were also represented at the forum) and they wanted us to do our own piece as the 'abazungus.' First of all, it was difficult to explain that Germany and America were not the same. AND even MORE difficult to try and figure out a song or dance that culturally represents America. They simply don't understand how diverse it is. I had one conversation with this lovely guy who said he knew Americans liked to describe themselves by their heritage and asked me mine. I was astounded at his level of American-cultural know-how. So in the end, we just danced the Byumba traditional dance (the name of which I can't remember for the life of me) with the rest of our diocese. It was great fun and they got a hoot out of white people dancing their traditional dance. The bishop even got up to join us! I wish I had gotten a video or pictures of it, but I was too busy living it (which is a common problem for me here). I don't wanna get stuck behind a lens and miss something so I guess I'll just have to give you really detailed stories when I can.