This and That

I rolled into the staff room the other day and was warmly greeted with "ah Evans you look fat!" I would not consider myself self-conscious but this did stop me a little bit. I had thought of myself as being quite svelte but dang, called out. This wasn't a translation error either. I laughed it off a little bit but there is a deeper meaning to the term fat here. Fat is associated with being healthy, having enough food to eat. Not the American you eat too much food because it available and artificially cheap in America. (I'm failing here, I just wanted to write a nice fluff blog but obviously struggling to throw in some barbs)

So speaking of food, I'm now switching to entertainment. Now that world cup is over and there isn't football on TV or really anything for that matter. So at our local hotel (which all hotels in Rwanda count as bars and hubs for entertainment) there are two sides, one has a TV and the other has a projector that plays music videos (music videos are insanely popular here). We usually go to the side with the TV to watch football or I usually can finagle tennis but there was none to be had. So we ended up watching the African version of the TV show Big Brother. I have never seen it in the states but it couldn't be as boring as its African counterpart. As we ate and drank in the hotel, they ate and drank on the screen. The entire time. (Average time to bring out ordered food in Rwanda outside of Kigali is about an hour and a half) So we just watched these random people sit in a room and eat all while we were eating in real life and they just talked about nothing. It was awesome.

If only I could get just one Braves game on TV, that would be awesome (Let me remind you that they're 7 games up in the NL East)

So last night we went to the other side which has a projector that plays music videos. Being the only white people in town we sometimes get the VIP treatment. So they exchanged the horribly cheesy Rwandan and Ugandan music videos and put in their international music mix. It was pretty good, playing Jay-z and Rhianna and this boy band from England called Blue. (Also fyi, I just noticed that the band Blue is mentioned in the movie Love Actually (we don't really have many movies to choose from so gifts from friends are always warmly welcomed even if its Love Actually)

So we were having an ok decent time until this song called Party in the USA comes on. (By Miley Cirus or Hannah Montana, not sure which one) But I tell you what, that song is good. I was surprised by how much I liked it. So I got them to repeat it 2 more times. Then I had a really strange moment. I turned around after replaying it the first time and realized that everyone there knew the words and was kind of singing along except for me.

Chew on it.

Ill be gone for almost three weeks travelling around SA, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. We'll see what happens blog