Playing with our pet geckos and embracing my roots

As I mentioned in one of the first blog posts, we have a number of geckos on the walls outside our house, and in the evenings there are normally a couple in our common room. Chris and Alex finally caught one last night, and since then they've figured out the trick to catching these baby reptiles, and we've had even more additions to our full house! (Today's newbies were two geckos named Owen and Wilson.) The house with all six of us has been a blast - it's great to have so many people just chatting in the common area, and we've had some really fun conversations.

This morning Jamie taught an accounting case called Caribbean Internet Cafe, one that we had all done in our Financial Fundamentals course in HBA1, and that Chris and Jamie had also done in Business 1220 in first year. I was so impressed at how fast the students were at their mental math, and was extremely proud when one student, Theogene, had the guts to raise his hand and tell Jamie that the class did not understand a portion of the lecture. He came up to the front and explained the way they have been taught to approach this particular calculation, and Jamie was able to use that valuable information to tailor the calculations moving forward.

We ate lunch at the downstairs canteen again today, and although we still got hundreds of stares, we were super excited to be joined at the lunch table by two of our students, David and Wellars. We had a great conversation with them, and it made us forget about the staring for a little bit while we ate.

In the evening, Dr. Murty and his wife had us all over for dinner again. He and his wife were dressed up in beautiful traditional Indian wear, and his wife made the most wonderful meal. It was a bit surprising when Dr. Murty suddenly asked me to go to the kitchen and help his wife serve the appetizers, but it was endearing at the same time. He has mentioned to me that I remind him of his daughter, which is why he was asking me to help out. I of course obliged, but it was quite funny to see the boys' reactions as I bent down with the platters to serve them their appetizers. Each of them were biting their lips to prevent a burst of laughter and I had to avoid eye contact otherwise I too would have laughed as I served each of them!

The dinner itself was absolutely delicious, and we were all stuffed when left a few hours later. Dr. Murty's wife does not speak much English and has been finding it quite lonely during her visit to Kigali. She was therefore very happy to have a helper in the kitchen, and we enjoyed talking about saris and other Indian wear, that she recommends I wear more often! It was a lovely evening overall, and I'm now finishing up the preparations for tomorrow's case. It's about a start-up in Rwanda, so I'll need to be on my toes, as the students will know much more about this business and its external environment than any of our previous cases, and I'm therefore confident their contribution will be fast-paced and content-heavy! Can't wait!