After two years in Rwanda, it feels strange to be getting ready to leave. When I first arrived as a Peace Corps Volunteer, the basic things, like figuring out how to cook with just a stove and a gas tank, in a place where I didn’t know anyone yet, felt intimidating. I remember standing in my kitchen the first few nights, trying to make something simple and realizing how many things I’d always taken for granted. Over time, those small challenges became routine, and life here started to feel more normal.
A lot of my best memories come from the classroom. My secondary 2 students made every day unpredictable in the best way. One of my favorite things was listening to them practice English slang. They’d try out phrases they’d heard on Tik Tok and it would always made me laugh.
Outside of school, I got used to a slower, more flexible pace of life. Plans always change and things take longer than expected. At first that was frustrating, but eventually it just became part of how things worked. I started to appreciate the everyday interactions more like greeting neighbors, running into familiar faces, and feeling a sense of community in places that didn’t feel familiar at all when I first arrived.
