Monday, January 26, 2009

My School and Home for the Next Year

So my school, I don't even know where to start.
I guess the logical place to start would be the location of the school. My school is in the north west section of Kigali, called Gisozi. If you are ever looking on a map of Kigali and you find the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi, well my school is up, up, and away on the hill that the memorial is at the bottom of. By foot it is about 80 minutes away from Town, aka the area we did our orientation training at.
So the layout of my school is actually very large. There is just over 700 girls boarding and attending the school, so you can imagine the amount of dormitories are needed. Then there are all the classrooms. The classrooms are generally built 2 or 3 together(the same building). The design of the school truly takes into account the land the school is on, meaning that the buildings are tiered-like on the hill. Now the main entrance to the school grounds is at the 'top' of the hill, while a good portion of the grounds is then on the north-sloping side. This means that from my front door I face out of Kigali, so its a nice change of view [the hills I can see are not city-hills].
That then takes me to my house for the year. So in the rear of the school grounds, the farthest part down the hill,there are a set of teacher homes. The best way I can think to describe them are like one floor duplexes. I'm in the second duplex. I have 2 doors into my house, one from the side that enters into the kitchen and one from the front that enters into the living room area. When you walk in the front door there is a living room that has a couch, 2 chairs, and coffee table. Then the room next to it, it is open, not closed off by doors, is the dining room. I have a long table with 6 chairs. Off the dining room is a kitchen area, which does have a door. The kitchen has shelves and then a sink. And off the kitchen is a closet/cleaning room/I don't know what to call it. Now if you go back into the dining room there is another door that leads you into a hallway. Off this hallway are the 2 bedrooms on either end of the hallway, and in the middle is the bathroom. I do have running water, a flushing toilet, and electricity.
In my room I have a full bed, with a horrible mattress, aka foam, bureau/shelving unit, and then a desk. It took me forever but I did end up riggin my mosquito netting, so I'm 'safe' from them mosquitos at night. :)
Literally as I am writing this is my living room I found out that my neighbor, the other half of my duplex, is the Headmistress of my school. Guess that means I can't have any raging parties on a school night.haha.
And to end the entry about my school and home I must mention the fact that my school has cows, yes that is right, cows. And as many as you can guess that thrills me. And as if it could not get better, every evening the cows are brought right infront of my house so I can look out my window at them :) .

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