ruminations and dispatches

Mysteries and Mash-ups

2012-02-29T00:04:00.000+02:00

There seems to be a growing shortage of Rwandan milk and cheese. Rwanda produces gouda in large quantities. I've tried it, and it's ok. I decided last week to buy a wheel so I could make cheese sandwiches for lunch and afternoon snacks. I went to the store, and to my amazement, I found no Rwandan cheese. This was very odd, since usually there are stacks and stacks of mediocre Rwandan gouda. Not this time. There was Kenyan and Ugandan cheese, and even some from Holland. But it was all too expensive---about twice as much as I wanted to pay.

Rwanda milk is also disappearing. I usually buy Inyange milk, a local Rwandan producer. I haven't seen any Inyange milk for almost two weeks, except for some small containers of skim milk. (Almost all milk here is the ultra-pasteurised stuff, solid in sealed cardboard containers.) The last time I bought milk I had to buy a Ugandan brand. There does not seem to be a shortage of Rwandan yogurt, however. I asked at a store the other day what was going on with milk, and one of the store owners said that there weren't any milk shipments, and he didn't know why. I read on a blog a brief mention of a "cheese strike." But that is all I know. Searching online reveals that last week there was a government report about how milk can help fight malnutrition. There is no other word about disappearing cheese and milk, but this is not surprising. There is not much news here.

Early afternoon yesterday I went to grab a moto to go to a hotel where I like to work. A group of street kids appeared and greeted me enthusiastically. This is not that unusual, but it is not often that I see street kids in my neighborhood. As I was negotiating the fare with the moto driver, I realized what was going on: the kids had a little puppy that they were trying to sell me. It was quite small, and looked generically beige. It seemed to be ok. I think they wanted 2000 RwF for it. (This is about $4.) The puppy had some sort of a colorful homemade leash on it. I declined the offer and motoed away.

Where did the kids get the dog? I'm guessing that they stole it. The leash didn't look like something they would make. Street kids here are not at all menacing. It is somewhat hard to picture them stealing a puppy. The kids seemed friendly and not desperate. Maybe they weren't street kids, but were just kids who lived in the neighborhood? Seems unlikely. They should have been in school. Should I have purchased the puppy and tried to find it a home? What was the puppy's fate? If I bought it, would I just be encouraging puppy theft? And what would I do with the dog, anyway? I haven't seen the kids since.

Yesterday I had a burrito (of sorts) and pasta salad for dinner. (I was recently reminded, while watching a video of a talk given in Maine about geology in Peru, that "burrito" means little donkey in Spanish.) The burrito and pasta salad came from a grocery store called La Sierra. It is near downtown and is run by Indians. The burrito was good. It had cheese in it. The pasta salad wasn't bad, either.

When I run I go past a large church. There are often choir groups practicing outside. I am impressed that different groups congregate fairly close to each other---certainly within earshot---and sing different songs. It makes for nice listening as I plod by. From my balcony I can hear the calls to prayer from the local mosque. Sometimes two calls for prayer occur at the same time, I presume from two different mosques. It is not as sonorous as the choir groups, but it is interesting to listen to nevertheless.

Solitary Sunday

2012-02-26T23:32:00.000+02:00

It has been a solitary Sunday for me in Kigali. I have said hello to the guards at the university gate as I left and then returned from a 5-km run in the neighborhood. And I said hello to two of my students I happened to pass in the science building. That was it. When Doreen is traveling, a not infrequent occurrence, Sundays at home are often solitary as well. So something about the rhythm and quietness of the day reminded me of home.

Perhaps it was the weather. In the early afternoon the grey skies darkened a little and there was a steady rain for an hour or two. There was thunder and lightning, but surprisingly little wind. It wasn't a storm by any means. The rain was incongruously gentle given the dramatic thunder. But it was cold, at least by Kigali standards. The temperature dropped to 61, but it felt much colder. I was chilly while I read on the balcony, but I delayed putting on another layer, since being a little cold was making me pleasantly nostalgic for home.

It was a nice enough weekend, but not as productive as I had hoped. Saturday I went to dinner at my favorite Chinese restaurant. I had some good eggplant under a thin crescent moon, fuzzed out in the cloudy Kigali sky. This upcoming week is the first of the two-week exam period here. All of my exams are in the second week, so I my week is pleasantly unscheduled. I have one meeting with my Statistical Physics students, but other than that my week is open. I need to focus and use the time wisely. There is a lot of stuff I want to get done, including prepping for next semester's classes.

Things move along here. Things are sometimes absurd, sometimes annoying, most of the time just fine, and sometimes things just don't make sense. As an example of the latter, a few days ago someone came and changed all the bulbs in the ceiling fixtures in the upper hallway. I don't know why this happened, since the bulbs seemed fine to me, and almost nobody spends time in the hallway. But the hallway is now blindingly bright. It might be the most well-lit space in all of Kigali. Seriously. I can't think of any place brighter except for Nakumatt, the big grocery/department store downtown. Our kitchen, however, could use some new high-power bulbs. It's a little dark in the kitchen at night. And people actually use the kitchen. To cook and stuff. But no new lights for the kitchen.

General Physics

2012-02-25T18:10:00.001+02:00

One of the classes I taught this semester is Phy 3114, General Physics. This class is taken by all first-year students in Applied Biology, Applied Chemistry, and Food Science & Technology. There were 195 students in the class. I gave a two-hour lecture once a week in a large lecture hall. There was also a weekly two-hour "tutorial" session. The students were divided by major, so each tutorial session had only around 60 students. I didn't do the tutorials; other instructors led them. Once a week there was a five-hour lab session. We divided the class into eight groups of approximately 25. Each week we did a 1.25 hour lab with four of the groups. Over the term each student did four labs.

The lectures were held in an auditorium that seats around 400. Above is a picture I took of the room before the last class while students were still filing in. Typically the room ends up around half fill. Attendance was low on this day, however, perhaps since it was the last day of the term. I stand on the stage and write in large letters on the two small blackboards. The first half of the term there was only one blackboard in the room, which posed a bit of a challenge. I was happy when the second blackboard appeared.

This picture was taken from the front of the classroom--i.e., onstage---right before I ended the last lecture. One of the blackboards is just visible on the left of the picture. I would guess that only 75% of the students were there that day. Usually the front part of the class is more densely packed.

Teaching General Physics was incredibly challenging. It is hard to teach 190 students. It is impossible to get to know so many students individually, so the class had more of an impersonal feel than I would have liked. Another instructor and I shared grading responsibilities, but grading still took an incredible amount of time. I am not looking forward to grading the finals.

There were other challenges, too. Most of the students do not have good English skills. This is not their fault. They simply don't have much experience learning in English. Rwanda technically switched from French to English instruction in high schools and higher education several years ago. But such a transformation does not happen overnight. My sense is that my general physics students have learned in high school in a mixture of Kinyarwanda, English, and French. They certainly haven't had a foreign instructor with an American accent before.

I am impressed with how the students seemed undeterred by this. By and large, they kept coming to class. There were a handful who consistently asked good and helpful questions. I think their comprehension improved over the eleven weeks, and I also think I got a little better at figuring out how to make myself understood. They never exactly laughed at my jokes. Humor is probably one of the hardest things to comprehend in an unfamiliar language. But I was able to get them to laugh with/at me, as I acted out physics scenarios, pushing on imaginary boxes, kicking things across the stage, throwing erasers, and so on. When I drew a stick figure of a lion (it was part of an analogy to explain surface tension) it led to much laughter and a smattering of applause.

My sense is that the students' preparation is uneven. Most have had quite a bit of mathematics---more than the typical U.S. student. But their problem-solving skills are not strong. I think students do a great deal of rote learning here. On the midterm I asked them to solve some problems they hadn't seen before. The students did not do well. I may have mis-calculated and made things too difficult. I suspect that many students had never been asked to do something like that on a test before.

Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of the course was that I felt there was just no way to convey to students the awesomeness and fun of science. In part this is because of the language barrier; it was just too difficult to explain certain things. But also the format of the course---almost 200 people in one room for just two hours ever week, needing to get through a large list of topics---leaves little opportunity for fun or exploration. I hope that at some time during their careers at KIST my General Physics students get a sense of how fun and interesting science can be.

Trajectory of a Thursday

2012-02-24T00:20:00.000+02:00

I stayed up late the night before, skype-chatting with Doreen as she took the bus to Boston on her way to Kuala Lumpur via Boston, New York and Seoul. Kigali is seven hours ahead of the east coast of the US. So when I was chatting with her past midnight here it was early evening there.

I awoke Thursday morning, and as usual I made a cup of strong coffee downstairs and took it up to my balcony. I turned on the computer and checked mail and ate my breakfast. Breakfasts here are either plain yogurt, or one or two rolls with butter. Today was a roll day. They weren't bad. I bought them the evening before at Nakumatt downtown. Tomorrow I will also have rolls, but they won't be as fresh. Sometimes on yogurt days I put a spoonful of jam in the yogurt. Sometimes I don't. It depends on my mood.

It was cool and gloomy this morning. It was probably cold for Rwandans, but I liked it. It was cloudy and dark, almost like it was twilight. The skies continued to darken. It started to rain. It got cooler and darker. The rain intensity increased. And increased some more. Soon sheets of rain were falling from the sky. The sound of the rain on my metal roof and the metal roofs in the neighborhood was intense. The drainage gullies around the house quickly filled to overflowing.

I had long since retreated inside. It was too wet on the balcony. It was dark inside. The air was cool, and the sound of the rain echoed. I watched the rain fall and did some work. I enjoyed the dark, rainy, ambiance. But then I realized that the roof was leaking a little. Onto my bed. I quickly put a towel where the water dripping. I used a lavender-colored towel with teddy bears on it that I bought here a few months ago. I like it.

I then went downstairs to get a pot to catch the water. I discovered that the hallway on the second floor was covered with water. I think it had blown in under a door from one of the balconies. I'm not sure. The guest house has cement floors, so water is not a big deal. I suspect it is a common occurrence.

The rain eventually stopped. I had some yogurt (with jam) for lunch, and went to my office. It is "revision week" here. In practice, this seems to be the time when students spend time checking their scores, arguing for more points, and mysteriously producing homework assignments that they hadn't handed in earlier in the term. I feel like I spent a few hours getting lied to by a succession of students. One case was particularly egregious; he produced an impressive string of mistruths. I took no pleasure in pointing them out to him.

It is one thing to copy over someone's written work. I suppose it is possible that in the act of copying one might learn something. But taking a series of lab assignments (written up as a word document), and then simply deleting your friend's name and adding yours, does not strike me as a way to learn anything. This seems to be how many students get by. It is frustrating, and I don't like being lied to. But it also seems to be a fairly standard practice here. Students stick together. Failing can have bad consequences and I think makes all students uncomfortable. And then there is the fact that many students, through little or no fault of their own, simply may not have the background to complete the degree program they have been admitted to. So if a lot of students get low but passing grades, maybe this is a less awkward outcome than the alternative. I don't know. I am trying to go with the flow and figure out how things are done here.

In any event, the afternoon was not entirely filled with less-than-believable stories about suddenly discovered lab assignments. I also talked to some students who had come by with good questions on some of the review problems I assigned. I got some other work done as well. It was a beautiful afternoon. The sun came out after all the rain. It was cool and there were purple-grey clouds in the sky.

A little before six I got an email from my copy-editor at Oxford, the main thrust of which was that almost all the contractions in my book had to do. No "I'm", "let's", "I'll", "don't", etc. All too informal for Oxford. It is probably good advice, although I'll also be sad to see them go. Removing them from the draft will be one of my many final editing tasks to look forward to in the next month.

I finally extracted myself from the office and returned to my room. I read for a little bit and then met two people for dinner. They are both professors from the UK who are here for two weeks lecturing in a new masters in traffic engineering program. I like them both a lot. They are interesting, smart, and I enjoy sharing perspectives on education and scholarship in Rwanda, the UK, and elsewhere. We had an excellent Indian meal at a very pleasant restaurant. Sadly, the two Brits are leaving on Saturday.

I am now again on my balcony. There is a puddle of water from all the rain in the morning. I have just been emailing with Doreen who is now in Seoul---seven hours later than me. It is a typically cool Kigali evening. Crickets chirp and the lights on the hills twinkle. I am tired. I will soon go inside, do some reading, and go to sleep. Tomorrow I will have rolls for breakfast.

Crickets and Mondays

2012-02-21T00:14:00.001+02:00

My internet connection has been spotty the last few days. Apparently there is a problem with an undersea cable between Djibouti and Port Sudan. Hard to imagine this will get fixed anytime soon. Nevertheless, the connection is still pretty decent. It is hard to stream video, but most everything else still works, albeit at reduced speeds.

Last night I was skyping with Doreen. As usual, I was on my balcony. Crickets were loudly serenading me. I could hear an echo of the crickets coming back to me via skype. The delay was about four seconds. It was slightly distracting. And then I stopped and thought about it. The sound of a cricket chirping in Kigali is picked up by my microphone. It travels approximately 11,000 km to my home in Maine. The sound is played on Doreen's speakers. Doreen's microphone picks up the cricket sounds and transmits it to me, back in Kigali 11,000 km away. The entire process took around 4 seconds. So the signal traveled at 5500 km/s, or about 1.8 % of the speed of light. This is difficult to fathom.

In other Kigali news, I seem to be having a string of bad Mondays. Today hasn't been as bad as a few previous Mondays, but it has still been somewhat annoying. I've done a lot of work the last two days, the majority of which seems pointless. I have done lots of grading of labs and homework assignments the last few days. More than three quarters of my general physics students still do not know the difference between precision and accuracy. It is clear that they haven't encountered these ideas before, and that the language barrier does not help.

I would estimate that around half of my computational physics students do essentially no work on their own, but instead get solutions to problems from other students. This is a common practice here and is not necessarily viewed as dishonest by everyone. I will structure things differently next term to minimize this. (There will be a lot more quizzes and less homework. I don't prefer teaching this way, but I don't see that I have a choice.)

A highlight of the day was a tasty, quick Indian meal for dinner. I was going to cook at home, but the kitchen was in heavy use so I zipped downtown and had a nice veg thali for a little over five dollars. It was definitely worth it.

Done

2012-02-16T22:47:00.000+02:00

I'm done! Well, not really. But I taught my last class of the term today. Next week is a "revision week," when students prepare for their exams. Then there are two weeks of exams. Then there's a two-week break/marking period. So while I have a lot of work to do the next five weeks still---I'm teaching around 240 total students this term, so grading is no small task---I actually feel like I have time to do it.

I will have time for some other work, too. I hope to digest and process some thoughts and observations and post some more in-depth entries on this blog. If there is anything you particularly want me to write about, let me know in the comments and maybe I'll be able to do so.

As usual, I am writing this from my balcony. It is pleasant and there is a light breeze from the south. Crickets and other chirping insects predominate the soundscape, but I hear a faint radio, some distant cars, and the murmerings of students as they study outside the science building.

I am exhausted, but mostly in a good way. It has been a long and, at times, difficult eleven weeks. I survived. Teaching generally went well, although some things went a lot better than others. I will make a few adjustments next semester. I will also only have 72 total students. This is still a lot, but it's a lot better than 240.

I went for a hilly run in early evening, and it was a bit of a struggle. I then went to my favorite Chinese restaurant and had some great spicy tofu. It was very spicy---more spicy than anything I've eaten in quite a while. I had a very cold beer. The coldness partially makes up for the beer's mediocrity. And they brought me Chinese-style peanuts, which I take pleasure in eating with chopsticks. Eating peanuts with chopsticks requires focus and a gentle touch. It is almost meditative. I only dropped one the entire meal.

Words for the Day

2012-02-13T21:39:00.000+02:00

Invigilator. This is the term used here for exam proctors: people who keep watch over students while an exam is ongoing to ensure that they don't cheat. I gather that this is a British term. I had never heard of it before. I will be the main invigilator for my exams. I may have a second invigilator assigned to my exams as well. It is unclear if I will be a secondary invigilator for another staff member, but if asked, I will serve.

Dolorimeter. This is an instrument used to measure pain threshold. I found mention of it when I was looking through an intro physics text. The dolorimeter I read about exerts a pressure on ones skin. (It was an end-of-chapter exercise in a chapter about pressure.) Apparently there are other types of dolorimeters, as well.

The root of the term is the Latin word dolor (doloris), whose first definition is pain, ache, or hurt. The second definition is grief, sorrow, or anguish. (Why do people name their daughters Dolores?) Anyway, it was the second definition that came to mind when I first saw the physics problem: I imagined a device capable of measuring someones sadness.

Miscellaneous Updates and Things

2012-02-13T00:47:00.000+02:00

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.

I am Mulder. I am Scully

2012-02-09T00:51:00.000+02:00

Warning: This post is deliberately somewhat oblique. It might not make complete sense, especially if you are unfamiliar with the X-files.

The last 4-5 weeks have been weird. Hard-to-describe weird. But yesterday right before I went for a run, something clicked and I have a new way of thinking about what is going on: I am in an X-files episode. Perhaps more than one episode. There has been a somewhat grisly medical mystery that has been solved by science. There are aliens, of a sort, although they are leaving the scene. And there is mystery, intrigue, and shifting and uncertain alliances.

The medical mystery was debilitating and uncomfortable. The initial mystery was solved, but the solution was false. The malady returned in force, in a way that contradicted the original diagnosis. More doctors, and science soon triumphed. It was a highly toxic little bug. Well known to science---and to East Africans---but not well known to me. And extremely toxic.

Now I am in the midst of a different and trickier sort of intrigue. This much is known. My department chair, a friend and much-admired colleague, resigned Monday morning. By Tuesday he was back home in Kenya. The same morning the head of Chemistry resigned as well. What is not fully known is why they left. And will anyone else leave? I sense tension and shifting alliances. I have several informants. Something is going on, that's sure. I am, at most, a very minor player in what is unfolding. But it will be interesting.

Mulder had Scully, and Scully had Mulder. But I am alone here. So I must be both. Mulder brought intuition and instinct to the partnership. Scully, science and rationality. As often pointed out, one of the interesting things about the duo is that Scully possesses the traits that are typically thought of as masculine, whereas Mulder's traits are perhaps gendered feminine. Regardless, the two make a good combination.

So I must try to summon up the best of Mulder and Scully to continue to navigate unknown and possibly turbulent waters. I have survived the mysterious toxic insects. And I will, of course, survive whatever is to come. But a combination of intuition and rationality will likely serve me well in the months ahead.

Clouds but no rain

2012-02-06T01:50:00.000+02:00

My main activity the last few days has been grading. I've graded about 140 exams. I have almost as many yet to go. So there is not much exciting to report from the weekend. There will probably not be much exciting to report from the week.

The weather the last month or so has been dry. I don't think it's rained since early January. It has also been unusually hot. Highs have been in the upper 80's and perhaps occasionally it has hit 90. Rwandans have been commenting on the unusual heat. It hasn't been oppressive or terrible, but in the mid-afternoon sun it is pretty intense. The air has been fairly dusty and hazy, and the vibrancy of the greenery has been turned down a few notches.

The last few weeks have reminded me of June in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There are often clouds in the sky. Sometimes big clouds that surely have rain in them. They slide across the city in the afternoon, providing some shade, but they refuse to give up their rain. It is hard not to look longingly at them, and also resent them a little for not providing any water. It will be nice when the rains return. They help cool things off and they keep the dust down.

There are just two weeks to go in the term. I have a mind-boggling amount of work to do -- mostly grading -- in the next two weeks. I am choosing (most of the time) to view it as humorous and slightly absurd, as opposed to annoying or soul-crushing. Nevertheless, it is a bit of a grind, to say the least.

It is a little after 1:30, and as usual I am writing this from my balcony. A dog is yapping incessantly a few blocks away, and his yelps are met by other yelps, further in the distance. A radio is playing faintly over by the science building. A new dog, back to my right, just joined the dog chorus. Fortunately they aren't very loud. A loud plane just took off from the airport several miles to the east. It fades rapidly and the sounds of the dogs and crickets re-emerge.

Two Months

2012-01-30T00:11:00.000+02:00

It was two months and one day ago that I left home for Kigali. The first two months here have been fun, interesting, intense and challengeing---both in ways that I expected and ways that were totally unexpected. In honor of the milestone, here's a list of things I like about Kigali and a list of things from home that I miss. This isn't an exhaustive list by any means. It's some of the first things that come to mind as I write this late at night on my balcony.

Some stuff I like about Kigali:

My new colleagues in the physics department. My department chair and my office mate have been especially kind, supportive, and friendly. They've made me feel welcome here and have been tremendously helpful.
One of things I was looking forward to about teaching here was being able to really dig into some physics topics I don't get to teach back home. I've certainly gotten this out of my statistical physics class. I like statistical physics a lot and it's been really fun to teach it and to think about the subject in new ways. The book I'm teaching from is fantastic.
I am grateful for my students' patience as I figure out how things are done here. I am sure it is not always easy to have a professor from far away with a funny accent. I have especially enjoyed getting to know the students in my statistical mechanics class. (This class has only 9 students, whereas my other classes are 44 and 196. So it's hard to get to know the students in those classes, unfortunately.) My statistical mechanics students ask excellent questions and are patient when we have trouble understanding each other. They are a sharp group of students that are fun to work with.
Kigali itself is a very pleasant place. I like the city a lot, especially at night. As I've remarked frequently, the nights here are perfect: not hot, not cold. It is pretty easy and inexpensive to get around, it is very safe, and it generally has a nice, relaxed feel.
There is some great food in Kigali: amazing Chinese food and very good Indian and Ethiopian. I like that there are a few places that I go to semi-regularly that are starting to become part of my routine.

Some stuff I miss from home:

It goes without saying that I miss Doreen. It is hard being in a new and sometimes challenging environment when my best friend is so far away.
My cats. I miss them tremendously. They are a great distraction from life and are a source of companionship and entertainment. In general, I miss a number of activities that constitute down time---things that help me relax or use different parts of my brain than teaching and doing physics.
Cooking. I like cooking a lot. I like both making some standard dishes that I have perfected over the years and also trying out new things. Cooking is fun and relaxing for me. I miss cooking in our nice kitchen with good music turned up loud.
The food here in Kigali ranges from good to amazing. Nevertheless, there are some foods that I miss. The beer here is not very good. I miss good, hoppy, flavorful but not sweet beers. I've had some good salads here, but I miss big interesting salads like I make at home. I also miss whole-grain/wholesome sorts of foods: brown rice, veggie stews, good whole wheat bread, etc.
Watching hockey games. When at home I watch as many New York Rangers games as my schedule permits. It is fun watching games; I can't really explain it, but I like it a lot. It is another activity that is mental downtime; it is not very intellectually demanding to watch hockey. Fun and interesting and exciting, yes. Intellectually challenging, not exactly. The Rangers are having their best season (so far) in quite a long time. It disappointing that I am missing the season, although I do get to see highlight of the games via the internet.

I am unwinding after a long Sunday of work. I am still behind, but less so. This upcoming week is week 9 of 11. Just three weeks to go. Wednesday is a holiday, so I'm viewing this week as two mini two-day weeks.

It is a darker night than usual and the sky has a milky character to it. It must be hazy. I can't see any stars. A radio plays in the distance and, as usual, the crickets are chirping. But tonight seems a little quieter than usual, as well. The air is still.

Where I live. Where I work.

2012-01-28T00:41:00.000+02:00

It is a pleasant Friday evening in Kigali. I don't quite have the energy to write much, so I thought would post some pictures I took a little a while ago.

The picture above is of my room at the guesthouse of the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. The room is small, but it's all the space I need. The bed is quite comfy and firm. In addition to the main room there is a bathroom and a small entryway in which there is a wardrobe in which I keep my clothes and some other stuff.

This is a picture of my bathroom. But you probably figured that out. It takes a little while for the water to get hot, but once it does, there is plenty of hot water and the water pressure is pretty good. I didn't like getting out of a shower and standing on tile, so a few weeks ago I got a towel to use as a bathmat. It is light blue/purplish and has teddy bears on it.

The highlight of my living quarters is definitely my balcony. I do most of my work outside on this plastic table. It is where I am now as I write this. There are some trees in the way, but it has nice views to the east and south. Evenings are very pleasant here, so the balcony is a great place to work. Even at midday, the balcony is shaded and usually quite nice.

This is my office. It is on the fourth floor of the KIST III building, which houses the Faculty of Science. The building is about 200 meters from the guesthouse. There is not too much in my office. There are two desks, one for me and one for my office mate. There is a table and a narrow bookcase that are not in the picture.

I like my office. When I open the window there is almost always a nice breeze. And the view is great. This picture is looking down. One can see the parking lot for my building and one of the main entrances to KIST. It is unusual that it is so empty. I think I took this picture on New Year's day when nobody was around. Usually there would be students and a few cars in this scene.

This is a view from my office window looking out to the east. I get a great view of the city toward the airport. Sometimes I can see storms sweeping across the valley. Of late it has been dry and the view is somewhat hazy.

Most weeks I spend around 16 hours teaching or in lab. I go shopping a few times a week and eat out a couple of times as well. But aside from that, I spend the vast majority of my time either sleeping in my bed, or working on the balcony or in the office. I am getting to know these spaces quite well. It is late, and so I will soon make my nightly transition from balcony to bed. Tomorrow morning I will do it in reverse. After I awake I make a cup of coffee downstairs in the kitchen and then have breakfast and coffee on the balcony as I begin a new day.

Mantra

2012-01-26T23:47:00.001+02:00

My mantra for this week, and for the weeks ahead:

done is better than perfect.

Chinese Food

2012-01-23T23:58:00.000+02:00

Finally a picture. And it's of Chinese food. I'm sure this will disappoint and possibly annoy some readers of this blog. I know, you want gorilla pictures, or pictures of Kigali or the university I'm at or something. I have some of those, and I'll post those later. But I like the idea of having my first Kigali picture be of Chinese food. There are many reasons. Let me explain.

Chinese food is comfort food for me. I grew up eating Chinese food in New York City. We would occasionally eat out, but quite commonly order it in. Sometimes I would go out for some quick Chinese during lunch when I was in high school. I'm not sure what it is, but Chinese food almost always is satisfying and comforting. Even "bad" Chinese food is good. Some people feel this way about macaroni and cheese, or maybe pizza. For me, it's Chinese food. I don't know that I have "roots" in any normal sense. But if I do, Chinese food is part of them.

So Chinese food is a connection to comfort and home. I also feel a connection between China and my work here in Kigali. I had essentially no experience working internationally, and only modest international travel experience, when in 2004 I was invited to lecture at an interdisciplinary, international program in China. It went well, and I had a great time. I lectured again the next year, and then was co-director of the program for three years. It was hard work, but incredibly satisfying and rewarding. I came to like China a lot. When the program faded away due to lack of funding, I felt a surprising void. I had gone to China every summer from 2004 - 2009. The summer of 2010 felt a little empty. It was time to figure out what the next adventure would be.

So I applied for a Fulbright Fellowship. In my application I discussed in some detail my experiences in China. And a colleague from China, the professor who co-directed the program with me, kindly wrote a letter of recommendation. So it was in many ways my work and experiences in China that led me to where I am now: on a balcony in Kigali, overwhelmed but mostly surviving, teaching far too many students, and learning a lot by being in a new and different place. So some Chinese food seems like a fine image for this blog.

And it's really good Chinese food, no less. I found an awesome restaurant, Tangren. The food is excellent. They have fish-flavored eggplant, which is the dish pictured above. Fish-flavored eggplant, which doesn't have any fish in it, is eggplant cooked with lots of chili, garlic and ginger, and also some vinegar and sugar. This gives it a tart and tangy taste to go with the sweetness of the sugar and eggplant, together with a big spice kick from the chili and ginger. It is a great combination. I ate it all the time in Beijing. But I haven't found it outside of the China. Until now. It is awesome.

Today is the Chinese New Year. It is now the Year of the Dragon. This is supposed to be a good sign; the Dragon is the luckiest year. I don't know that I believe in omens like this. But it is hard not to like the idea of a lucky or auspicious year. The last year hasn't been bad, but it has been challenging. Lots of hard work. Maybe too much. So I am happy to welcome a new year with a post about Chinese food in Kigali, Beijing and New York.

Maybe not the Midpoint

2012-01-12T22:13:00.003+02:00

In my last entry I noted that I had passed the midpoint of the term. Maybe not. I have been told repeatedly that the semester was ten weeks long. But last night I did some subtraction---end date minus start date---and came up with eleven weeks. I asked my officemate and he also concluded that the term is actually eleven weeks. I have queried my department chair and not heard back. So I'm not sure exactly how much longer the semester will go.

I usually write blog entries from the balcony outside my room, but today I am in my office. It is a nice night and my office has a great view to the east. The not-quite-full moon is rising higher. It is white now. Earlier it was a big orange smudge against the Kigali sky.

This weekend will be the weekend of writing exams. I am teaching three classes (one with a co-teacher), and I have to write my final exams for all three. Why so soon? They need to get looked at by the department and then sent to an external examiner for further review. The former is largely pro forma. I'm not sure about the role of the external examiner. He or she is supposed to look over the questions and see if they adequately span the syllabus. I don't know that the external examiners intervene too heavily, and likely they wouldn't with me since I am a foreign visitor with a PhD, but I'm really not sure.

Regardless, I need to write all three exams and get them to my department chair sometime Monday. I also need to write solutions and the grading scheme. And as if that's not enough, I also need to do the same for three supplementary exams. These are exams that are given as a second chance to students who fail the first exam. Failing is not that unusual here, so it is highly likely that my supplementary exams will be needed.

I also have midterms to grade for two of my classes. One class has 44, the other 196. That will be the fun tasks I'll turn to after the final exams are written. Work seems to be never-ending, and now I don't even know when the term ends. I think once I get through the crush of writing finals and grading midterms things will get a little better. At least I hope so.

I had dinner tonight at the Shake & Sip It is a little place opposite the UTC building downtown. It is sort of a cross between a burger place and Indian snack bar. I like it a lot. I get an "aloo pindi burger," which is a veggie burger with some sort of Indian spices. It's quite good. It comes with some good fries (chips as they're called here) and the burger has sautéed onions along with lettuce and tomato. It's a tasty and satisfying meal for just 2000 RFw, which is $3.33. Not bad. They have a bunch of other veg Indian dishes that I am tempted by, but the aloo burger pleases me so much that I haven't ever decided to try something else.

I will wrap up this entry and turn my attention to a few quick tasks I hope to complete tonight before sleep. I should get to bed early, since tomorrow I have labs from 8am - 1pm. Four different lab groups, totalling almost 100 students, will test Hooke's law.

Midpoint

2012-01-09T01:28:00.001+02:00

Tomorrow is the sixth week of the ten-week term. So we are at the halfway point, at least as far as classes go. Classes are followed by a week-long study period and two weeks of exams. It is hard to believe that the first semester's classes are half-done.

I spent the weekend working. I had a bunch of COA work that I should have finished long ago that I finally finished. And I did some class preparation and wrote the midterm exam for my huge general physics class. It was a pretty dull weekend. I did very little beside work and sleep. I am fighting a cold, and there has been a lot of haze and smog in the city the last few days, which isn't helping. Judging by the coughs and sneezes I heard in my classes last week, I'm not the only one struggling with a cold.

The highlight of the weekend undoubtedly was finding an amazing Chinese restaurant, Tangren. It is a little far from where I am in Kigali, but it is not too difficult to get there. I had a spicy eggplant dish that was fantastic. I know the dish by the name "fish-flavored eggplant." I ate it frequently when I was in China. The dish doesn't have fish in it, but is supposed to flavored as if it has fish in it. It is spicy with lots of ginger and garlic.

The eggplant at Tangren was perfect. Moist and sweet, but cooked so it was a little crispy, too. Pleasantly spicy but not overwhelming. It was amazing. I've never had a good version of this dish outside of China. Until now. When I was done I found the Chinese guy who appeared to be helping run the place and I tried to explain to him how good the eggplant was and how happy it made me. I tried a few words of Mandarin and also French. He spoke no English. I don't think I got across much of what I was trying to say, but I am confident that he understood that I was pleased.

It is a little past 1:00am and I am on my balcony. I should be asleep, but I was working late writing the midterm exam. I am now unwinding with a beer. The night is quiet, although there are occasional choruses of barking dogs. I can hear crickets and the distant hum of a propeller plane at the airport.

There is much work ahead. I will have enormous amounts of grading the next few weeks, and I have more than a few letters of recommendation to write. If I can keep this momentum going for another week I'll be ok. I am buoyed by the knowledge that there is amazingly good eggplant a 15-minute moto ride away.

Exams and Tests, Then and Now

2012-01-08T01:02:00.000+02:00

I gave a midterm exam. It was timed (one hour and 45 min) and students could not use notes. Midterms here are called CATs. Unfortunately this has nothing to do with cats, but instead stands for Continuous Assessment Test. The idea is that it is part of the assessment that goes on during the term as opposed to the final. Final exams count for 60% of students' final grades here. CATs, which include homework assignments as well as midterms, make up the rest.

I haven't given an exam like this since the 1990's. I have never given such a test at College of the Atlantic, my home institution. Such tests have never made sense given my learning goals for my courses. I want students to learn to work carefully and deliberately, to consult their own notes, and to be able to figure things out by reading books. All of these skills are penalised on timed, closed-notes tests. Challenging homework assignments and open-notes tests have always made more sense to me.

I am writing this while I sit in the front of the classroom while 44 students take my midterm. (I am jotting this down on a note pad. I typed in into the blog two days later.) I fear I made the exam too short and/or easy. Halfway through the allotted time and a few people are already done. It is sometimes difficult for me to predict what students will find hard and how long assignments will take. I maybe have miscalculated. I am still getting to know students here and am learning their strengths and weaknesses.

Except for one class that I taught while in grad school, the last time I wrote and gave timed, in-class tests was when I taught high school math and physics from 1991-93. I tried to make tests entertaining. I would include jokes sometimes and also pictures and cartoons. This was before the world wide web, so my source of illustrations was usually the Village Voice, to which I had a subscription.

When giving a test in class, there is the question of what to do in class when the students are taking the test. Today I spent a while fretting and revising my far-too-long to-do list, and then I started writing this. My writing has been interrupted a few times by students raising their hands with questions. I then try and walk to their desks, which is not an easy task since the room is packed full with desks and students. There is little room in which to manoeuvre.

When teaching high school I would usually bring a book to read. One of my closest friends, an English teacher, encouraged me to do so, arguing that it set a good example for the students. I didn't need much encouraging. It seemed like the natural thing to do.

In the spring of 1993, my last year teaching high school, I remember heading to my classroom to give a test and, needing something to read, I grabbed my Norton Anthology of Poetry. I had it from my tenth grade poetry class. Now I was bringing it to read while tenth graders took a physical science test.

I gave out the test and flipped through the book and landed on "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg. Somehow I had never seen the poem before. I was just 23. I started reading and was captivated. It is hard to explain the feeling I had encountering---experiencing---Howl for the first time in a room full of tenth grade boys, wearing ties and dutifully taking a physics test. It was one of those surreal moments where things are suddenly so unexpectedly strange and awesome that reality seems to crackle and buzz. I read line after line and kept looking up at my students. I felt almost awkward reading such a poem in their presence, and yet somehow it seemed perfect.

And so I look up now at my physics students. Two-thirds of the time is up and about half of the students are finished. I think about this strange university, which of course is not strange at all---just strange to me. I don't know if I like exams, but they are a fact of life here.

Moving Along

2012-01-04T22:43:00.000+02:00

I have several ideas for longer, more interesting posts, but neither the time nor the energy to write them. Perhaps this weekend. This pretty much sums of the state of affairs here. Things move along. I am doing the best I can with a large workload in a different setting than I'm used to. I'm learning how things work. I think teaching is going ok. It is both very interesting and there is also a lot of somewhat dull work. I think I am getting less behind, but it is hard to know.

Tomorrow I give a midterm exam. It is an in-class test, timed, in exam books. I haven't given a test like this since the 1990's. After the exam I have a three hour computer lab session. Friday is five hours of intro lab and two hours of GRE review. I will be happy when the weekend is here.

I have been looking longingly at the weather back home. It was 7 degrees F (-13 C) last night. Although the cold get tiresome after a while, the first major cold snap is always nice. I like how clear the air gets and how everything sounds different when it is that cold. It will be about a year before I experience seriously cold weather again. The last few days here have been free of rain and a haze has settled over the city. The lights on the hills still sparkle, however.

Digging out of a Hole

2012-01-01T22:30:00.000+02:00

The term marches on here in Kigali. This will be week five of ten. Almost at the halfway point. Soon it will be time for midterm exams. Which then means it will be time for grading midterm exams.

I did some list-making and assessing today and realized that I am in a bit of a hole. I'm more behind on a bunch of work things than I like to be. I am quite good with deadlines, but for small things without firm deadlines, sometimes I let them slip and they accumulate. This has definitely happened. (I apologize if I own you an email or some other piece of work.)

It has taken a lot of energy to navigate the newness of Kigali and my situation here. And there have also been some minor logistical challenges; I'm not yet familiar with how things work here. So I have had less energy than usual and lots of things have been taking a little longer than I'm used to.

There is no way out but through, as the saying goes. So I hope that the next couple of weeks I can put my head down and dig out. It's a bit of a daunting task, but I think I can do it. Today was an ok start. I got some good sleep and then had a fairly productive day. Not super, but not bad either. I'm not at full speed, but I think I am gaining momentum.

The internet in my room wasn't working well, so I am in my office now and not on my balcony. The view from my office is pretty amazing. I have a great view to the east. The lights on the hills twinkle and I can see the occasional headlights of distant cars as they snake their way around the city.

It is time to head back to my room and start winding down. I will start some grading---or marking, as it is known here---for my Computational Physics class, while I listen to some music and have a cold beverage.

New Year in KGL

2011-12-31T23:35:00.001+02:00

The damp Kigali night swallowed up Doreen tonight. A big blue KLM airplane took her up and away and through the mist. She will ring in the New Year somewhere over Sudan.

It is terribly sad to see her go. We will see each other next in mid-March. Most likely we will meet in Europe somewhere. But I am glad that she will be home in our cold but cozy house, will be with our cats, and will cook good food in our nice kitchen. I am hoping that she will teach the cats to skype.

I took my time returning from the airport. I grabbed a bus from the airport. It made many stops and took a route I wasn't expecting, but I made it to the middle of town. I then did some shopping, explored a little, and walked home. It rained heavily earlier, but the night was quite nice.

I am now on my balcony. Usually the lights of the city twinkle in the distance, but it is misty tonight so it is dark and murky. My neighborhood is noisier than usual. Loud church music is dueling with a party or bar that is playing loud rock/reggae music of some sort. Neither music is particularly good, and in combination it may be even worse. I am grateful for headphones.

It doesn't feel at all like New Year's Eve, just like it didn't feel like Christmas. It doesn't feel like December. I'm not sure what it does feel like. I've been feeling somewhat spatially and temporally adrift the last month.

The academic year started in early December here, due to the shift in the academic calendar in Rwanda. And we have had only a one-day Christmas break. It is odd for me to start teaching in December, and it is also unusual to teach right through the holidays. It's not necessarily bad, but it is different. Of course it is also relatively warm here, and while there are a few (fake) Christmas trees around there are few visible markers of christmastime.

And although I of course am fully aware that I am really in Kigali, it also seems somehow unreal that I am here. After fall term ended back home I worked hard (and unsuccessfully) to finish up COA work. And I worked hard (and successfully) to submit my book for copy editing. And I packed and tried to get ready to leave home for seven months. Then, after a few days of little sleep, I took two short flights to Philadelphia and then two long flights, and I was deposited here in Kigali.

I like the city a lot, and I think I will grow to like it even more in the months ahead. But there are times when I am eating a delicious meal at an Indian restaurant, or walking the tree-lined streets in the evening, or sitting on a moto as the city zips past me, or sitting on my balcony while the city twinkles idly, that it is hard to believe I am here.

And so it is almost 2012 in Kigali. I have turned up the music in my headphones. The church singing stopped for a while, but it is now back with a vengeance. The party a few blocks away still rages. I can nevertheless hear crickets chirping. It is pleasantly cool. I have no deep new year's thoughts.

One Month

2011-12-28T21:33:00.002+02:00

It has now been one month since I left home for Kigali. It seems both like I have been here much longer than that and also that I just got here. Time has been quite nonlinear for me of late.

It is almost 9:30pm and I am working on my balcony. There is occasional lightning in the distance and the temperature seems to have dropped a few degrees in the last 15 minutes. I still have a fair amount of class preparation to do tonight, but I feel too tired to work much more. I had an energetic and fairly productive afternoon, but a large dinner at a good Indian restaurant seems to have sapped my energy. I am hoping that writing a blog entry can help me find a second wind.

It is raining lightly now. I can hear drops pinging off my roof and those of the adjacent houses. The rain is fairly gentle. This afternoon there was a downpour for about half an hour. The drainage ditches and troughs, of which there are many here, filled with torrents of water. Then it stopped fairly abruptly and was dry until now. Walking to the Indian restaurant the moon was out. It was a thin sliver, tilted at a much different angle than I am used to back home.

A steady rain is falling now. I should turn my attention to finishing class preparation for tomorrow. I have a two hour computational physics class and later a three hour computational physics lab. Friday I have five hours of general physics lab. My co-teacher is taking the lead on this lab, but I still need to be around to help out. Then Friday afternoon I will hold a review session for students studying for the physics GRE. So I have much teaching ahead before the weekend arrives. I have tomorrow's class and lab pretty well mapped out, but I need to finalize my notes and make a handout for lab.

The rain has let up some, and there is a light, cool breeze on my balcony. Time to prepare some notes and matlab code to help my students understand Euler's method.

Week Four Begins

2011-12-26T23:01:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow I begin my fourth week of teaching. Classes run right through Christmas and New Years, with the exception that this Monday was a day off from classes. As I noted in an earlier post, this is a transition year for the academic calendar in Rwanda. They are moving from starting in January to starting in September. This year is a one-time-only calendar that starts in December and ends in June. The term is shorter than usual, and goes through the Christmas season.

Doreen and I spent the weekend in Gisenyi, which was very nice and relaxing. There were no big adventures. We stayed by Lake Kivu, relaxed, did some work, and explored the town a little. It was a nice mini Christmas break. But now I am right back in the thick of the term. In addition to my three classes, this week I begin meeting with three students who will do their senior research project with me. I will also begin a weekly review session for students who are preparing for the physics GRE.

I am more or less prepared for tomorrow's class---the 195-person mega class of general physics. I generally have a plan for the rest of the week, but I have a lot of notes to prepare to give to students. I also have my first batch of grading to do.

As usual, I am working on my balcony. It is almost 11pm and the hills of Kigali twinkle. It is relatively quiet. I can hear an occasional car drive by, and a radio is playing somewhere. It sounds like a country song, but I can't make out the language. The radio has faded and now crickets mix in with the distant sounds of cars and motos.

Week Three

2011-12-20T15:31:00.000+02:00

I am now in my third week of teaching in Kigali. This morning I taught the 200-person general physics class. Tomorrow is statistical physics, Thursday I have my computational physics class and lab (a total of five hours), and Friday I have five hours of labs for general physics.

I think things are generally going pretty well, but it has been exhausting. Last week I felt fatigued almost all the time. Students here have very limited access to textbooks. This means that I need to provide notes that essentially serve as a textbook for them. Writing these notes takes a good bit of time. I want to make them as thorough and helpful as possible. But I also want to make them short, since students need to pay for photocopies on their own. I provide a few copies to class representatives who then distribute the notes amongst their peers.

This week things seem to be going a little better. I'm not sure if my classes are going better, but at least I have more energy. Over the weekend Doreen and I went to Volcanoes national park in the Northwest of Rwanda and saw mountain gorillas. It was amazing. I will write about the gorillas in another post. (There are some pictures up on facebook. I'll post some here when I get a chance.) It was also great to have some time to relax a little. I didn't check email for two entire days. This was the first time I've been away from email for more than a day since early September. I needed the break more than I realized.

I am now sitting in my office which is on the fourth floor of the building called KIST three. It is cloudy out and I can see an impressive rain cloud rapidly approaching from the east. It is getting darker and darker and the rain has now arrived. I can hear students yelping below as they seek cover. Thunder rumbles gently. The rains here are impressive. I like them.

The rain is falling steadily now and the view from my window is wet and misty. I will try now to tear myself away from the view outside the window and to focus on some of the many tasks I need to complete this afternoon and evening.

Tofu

2011-12-10T23:03:00.001+02:00

I have successfully found a Chinese restaurant that serves spicy tofu. It's actually pretty tasty. It was just what I needed tonight. I am happy and relieved to know I have a source of spicy tofu in Kigali.

I am now on my balcony, winding down for the day. The moon is full and the sky is bright. A small dark patch on the hills opposite me just lit up. A local power outage must have just ended.

Eveningtime

2011-12-09T18:20:00.001+02:00

I am working in my office in Kigali. It is 6:20 and not too many people are around. It is already dark and the lights of Kigali twinkle on the hills across from me. I am listening to an amazing Armin van Buuren set from May 2011 in Washington DC. It is hard to explain how uplifting I find good trance music sometimes. It is providing the perfect soundtrack for me right now. Energetic, beautiful, slightly melancholy. It is exactly what I need.

It looks to be another lovely evening in Kigali, but that is a redundant statement, since in my experience every evening here is lovely. My window is open and a nice breeze is blowing through the office. I can see several kilometers away the bright lights of what I assume is the main stadium in town. Perhaps there is a football game tonight. There was an almost full moon out a bit ago, but it has now disappeared behind clouds.

I picked up my long-term Rwandan visa and work permit today. So I am now officially approved to be in the country and work through June. There is no turning back now.

It is now almost seven. I have been catching up on email and such as I write this. I think I will tear myself away from Armin and go for a short run. Then I will make some pasta for dinner and sit on my balcony, listen to the mosque and the church and the sounds of the neighborhood, and try and get a little more work done.

Day one Reflections

2011-12-06T22:43:00.001+02:00

I taught my first class today. General Physics 3114. To around 180 students. The class is taken by all first-year students in Chemistry, Food Science & Technology, and Biology. It was challenging. It was decided that I was going to do the big lecture only 24 hours before. It was a challenging class to teach. Many of the students---through no fault of their own---do not have good English skills. So a two-hour class in Physics in English is rough. And, I have a funny accent here; I do not speak Rwandan English. So I'm sure that made it doubly tough for the students. I hope the class was of some use to them. I don't think it was terrible, but it is really hard to know how it went.

KIST's academic calendar is in transition. Last year, the academic year started in January, as has been the custom in Rwanda for quite some time. Next year, the academic year will begin in September, as is customary in the rest of East Africa, with whom Rwanda is trying to integrate. So this year is a transition year. The classes start in December, and terms are only 10 weeks long instead of 13. But we are still supposed to cover as much material as we normally would. So this poses a challenge for everyone: students and faculty.

Tomorrow I teach my first Statistical Physics class to a small group of seniors. I believe there will be only 9 in the class. I'm looking forward to it. Nine students is so much better than 180. And as I was preparing tonight I was reminded just how much fun statistical and thermal physics is. I like the subject a lot, and the book I'm teaching from is fantastic so far.

I am also teaching computational physics. The class and lab for that course are both on Thursday. I expect almost 50 students.

I am now catching up on email (and writing this blog entry) on my balcony, enjoying a cool Kigali evening. I'm having a cold Primus beer and will go to sleep soon. My class tomorrow is early.

Kigali Evenings

2011-12-04T21:59:00.000+02:00

Evenings and nights in Kigali are amazing. The temperature is perfect and it is neither too humid nor too dry. It is like a summer evening in Maine, but even better. I stayed inside for much of the day, working on narrative evaluations for my COA classes and trying to get my stuff a little more organized. But as evening approached I ventured out for a short run. It was slow and difficult. It had been at least a month since I've gone for a run, and Kigali is at 5000 ft so there's not a lot of oxygen. But it was good to get moving.

After showering and some more work, I ventured out into the night. I found a sorta decent pizza place about 20 minutes from my house. I think it's called Downtown Pizza. It's not great, but it wasn't bad, either. Kigali is notorious for slow service at restaurants, but this place was fine. It seemed like a reasonably friendly place. It's good to know that there is somewhere within walking distance that I can get a quick bite to eat. They're open until 1 on weekdays and 3 on weekends. I don't know how late their kitchen stays open. I was there around 8pm today.

Speaking of food, I've been impressively unadventurous so far. So far I've had a veggie burger (three different times), pizza, and a nice Indian meal (far better than any place in Maine, but that's not saying a lot). I've cooked peanut noodles and also made pasta with a home-made sauce with some tomatoes and onions that I bought at a small local market. I will get more adventurous in the weeks ahead.

Hello Kigali

2011-12-03T22:54:00.000+02:00

I had wanted to start this blog a week or so before I left for Rwanda, so I could chronicle my thoughts as I was packing and preparing to leave. But somehow that never happened. So then I thought I would start blogging as soon as I arrived in Kigali, but that hasn't happened either. It is now Saturday and I arrived on Tuesday.

I don't have any grand first impressions of Kigali. It is both an entirely normal place and also unlike anywhere I've ever been before. I realize that's not super articulate and not helpful for readers looking for a tidy explanation, but that's the best I can do.

I am staying in the guesthouse at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology, where I will be teaching physics for several months. I have my own room with a nice balcony. I am sitting there now. Evenings here are fantastically comfortable. It is neither cool nor warm. Very close to my balcony is an Episcopal church which seems to have music and singing much of the day and night. I can hear them now, singing and clapping. I am also near a fairly large mosque and can hear calls to prayer. Together, the mosque and the church make an interesting soundtrack.

The last few days have been fairly tiring. One of my bags didn't arrive with me on Tuesday. It made it to the airport yesterday (Friday). So for the first few days I was operating with only half of my stuff. It was also only Friday that I moved into the room I'll be staying in for the next seven months. But I am getting settled in, adjusted to the new time zone, and adjusted to life in Kigali.