I am having such a fabulous weekend - which is exactly what I needed considering we are now less than 36 hours away from determining where I shall be training these next couple of years!

I started my adventure Friday when I met a Rwandan friend at the bus station and rode into Kigali. There the German medical student I was traveling with and I each hopped on the back of a motorcycle taxi to make our way to a suburb to meet friends. Reminiscent of my Cambodian days, I had a backpack on, the girls' wheelie suitcase balanced on my lap, and my phone rang (which I of course had to answer!) Still got it!

We met the American that I had met in the airport three weeks ago (the coach for the National Rwandan Cycling Team) at this lovely, expat restaurant. A little bit of culture shock, I have to admit, but the latte I had was just out of this world! Shortly after arriving the German girl got a lift to Ruhengeri with the American's new mechanic, and I got on the back of the American's motorcycle and we rode the 1.5 hours through the rolling mountains to Ruhengeri. It was such an amazing experience - exhilarating and quite the adventure. We got stopped twice by the police...one time to tell us to slow down, but really they just wanted to stop us and find out what two muzungus were doing on a motorcycle in Rwanda! Once in Ruhengeri, I decided to join Jock (the American) on his venture to Gisenyi, where he was meeting with possible donors. We drove to the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and stopped in a fancy hotel where we met with the investors. There I met many many Canadian-Rwandans, one of whom lives about a 2 minute walk from my apartment in Toronto! What a small world - and hopefully my schmoozing helped the team out a little :) We drove back to Ruhengeri in the rain - which was really quite beautiful, with lightening in the distance over Goma. And you could see the active volcano as well, glowing red in the mist across the border.

The next morning I woke up early, hopped on the back of the motorcycle and made my way to Kinigi where I met up with a group to go trekking for gorillas. This is a ridiculously expensive venture, but I've heard the cost is going to double in the next year - so I took the opportunity to get out and see these lovely animals. And I did it by the cheapest means possible, which I am pretty proud of! We hiked for about 1.5-2 hours up the side of a volcano that borders with the DRC and then bushwacked our way down a slope until we were meters away from the animals. At one point, one of the guys was yelling my name, but I wasn't paying attention until I felt something brush against my leg - a gorilla! haha! Our group was the Amohoro (Peace) group and consisted of 16 individuals. Two fluffy little babies, a ton of teenagers and one silverback. We bushwacked with the group for about one hour before we decided to take a different trail back to the vehicles. This required more bushwacking and was like no hiking experience I've ever had! Aside from a whiny mother-daughter duo from Europe/UN, we had a great great time, and watching them literally summersault over one another as they fell down a portion of the hill kind of made up for their poor company!

I was going to hike another volcano today, but everything is so muddy in the rainy season, and the views would have been similar to what I saw yesterday, so I decided to save myself the hefty hiking fees. Instead I'm going to borrow a mountainbike from Jock and a small group of us are going to try and bike a 40 km route to where we should get a lookout over two lakes up closer to the Ugandan border. The weather looks great so hopefully it will hold out!

I've been thoroughly spoiled these last couple of days. I have this gynormous bed, access to a HOT shower and dynamic wonderful people who are doing some pretty great work in this part of the world. Last night we had a big dinner and we had an 18 year old kid from America over who is teaching 5 year old children in the local school (no teaching education, thought he was coming here to assist!) we also had two CEOs for different African NGOs over...as well as Jock, who is running at least two to three NGOs that I am aware of, Suzanne who is building a prayer shelter for a school and has just finished building a library for another school, myself and another medical student and the brand new American mechanic for the National Rwandan Cycling Team.

I could not ask for a better life.