Monday, February 13, 2012

Miscellaneous Updates and Things

Sunday night. I sit on my balcony, finishing a Kenyan beer. I will go to sleep soon. The lights in the science building are off, so there is a black void in my vista where usually there are lights from the stairwells and the ground-level rooms, which students often use for nighttime studying.

The weather is slowly starting to change. The rains are not yet back, but I sense that they are immanent. Wednesday it rained lightly for a few minutes in the morning. It did the same today, and I heard peals of distant thunder in the afternoon.

There is one week of classes left. It is hard to believe the term is almost over. I think classes are ending up pretty well. I am a little behind in Statistical Physics. The other two are right on track. I worry about my General Physics students, however. They did by and large quite poorly on their midterm exam. I think they are not used to an exam on which they have to solve problems they haven't seen before. I hope they are not too disheartened by their scores.

This week I went for two excellent runs. They were neither long nor fast, but by my standards they were quite good. In my run on Tuesday I ended up running for a few miles with a guy who graduated from KIST a few years ago. We both pushed each other, especially as we were running up a long hill. It was the best run I've had in a very long time.

Today I played ultimate frisbee for the first time in Kigali. It was a fun game, and I hope to make it a part of my regular routine. I hadn't gone before since I had been super busy and also pretty sick for a while. But my workload, while still intense, has lightened some and my health is back, so I'm looking forward to being more active.

My main mode of transport is taking taxi motos. These are small motorcycles that zip around the city. It is not the safest form of transport, but so far it hasn't been too frightening. Twice I have been on motos that ran out of gas. I gather that this is a not unusual occurrence. Thursday I was on a short moto ride into town and I noticed that the driver was eating corn on the cob. While driving.

It is later than I want it to be. I should wind down and get to sleep. A big week of work lies ahead.

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