Cute Things & Travel

Well, after a few days of ready to blow my cork and swearing under my breath, I want to, again, approach my blog in a positive manner. It can be extremely difficult to feel positive when I feel like I'm running through tar uphill. Sometimes right now I just feel like the forces that be are more or less out against me. Should I even be here?? There are some days lately I just want to quit it all and get into a bed and not be bothered for a week or so, then get on a plane to see The Man. And that's that.

Anyways! So I am going to make a great effort to bring myself back to things I enjoy. Like puppies, and baby pandas...

There are a few cute things here in Rwanda that I've been enjoying recently. I hope you enjoy it, too:

• The goats! There are little goats that graze near the school on the way home. And their tails stick up! UP! Like little antennae. Just happily eating goats with tails all straight and narrow.
• Babies. The babies here are absolutely adorable. Not only because they are wrapped up on their moms, as I have already discussed, but because they just are cute! There was this little baby boy with an adorable face a few days ago. He was learning how to talk, I think. I found him on a couch in a hotel just wobbling around with his legs splayed out. And I started to play with him. "Da da da da!" we would say to each other. I'd stomp my feet and he'd kick his legs on the couch, laughing. We clapped and had the simplest, most fun ever.
• The cars here. I know, I know...how on Earth? Well, the only thing I can describe for the imagery is a little 12-passenger van hobbling up one of the many hills here, with a tilt. It's just cute! Little vans with a bit of a tilted manner is just like watching a little car tutting around with a little song in the background.
• I've already said it, but...the birds.

I really need to get out of the city for a weekend, or a day, or a week, or whatever. I want to revive my humanity and see the beauty that is Africa. The stuff that people go gaga about and take millions of pictures about to show their families in frames at home. The red-dipped sunsets and the electric green jungles. Those things, I want to see. I need to see. I crave seeing.

Places I'm considering to see include:

• Bujembura, Burundi
• The Serengeti in Tanzania
• Uganda
• The Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya
• Goma (in a country I won't currently name) & Gisenyi (and Lake Kivu)
• Butare
• Bugesere
• Musanze
• Gorilla Trekking and Volcano-ville in the North of Rwanda - Virunga?

Of course, this isn't an exclusive list. If there are other places that I end up going outside of Kigali, I am extremely open to seeing them. I want to share a lot of these with The Man, but it's a matter of time and logistics. I have to make sure that I want to be here more than a year or so before I bring The Man to be involved in anything. If I don't want to be here more than that, then I'll happily go home in a while after I'm done here.