My illegal border crossing and the United States Marines

While it makes for a good title, these two instances were not related, but both decent stories.
The first is a funny one. The volunteer who worked on the farm before I arrived returned to Kigali last week after traveling East Africa. Its a long story about running out of money and getting back to Rwanda, but he owed a man money at the Tanzanian border, so I agreed to take the bus with him to keep him company. When we arrived after our four-hour "bus" ride (more of a large van) we could not find the man, and decided that he was probably across the border. We went to the offical on the Rwandan side of the bridge, smiled big, played dumb and asked if we could see the waterfall from the bridge (I didn't even have my passport). He obliged, we walked across the bridge and just kep going, only to discover that our man was in fact on the Rwandan side of the border. As soon as we discovered this, the offical came charging across the bridge and up the hill to inform us that we did not have permission to be in Tanzania and we needed to return immediately. We smiled big, played dumb and came back, with him telling us facts about the waterfall and the border. Not that great of a story, but I thought it was kind of fun.

Wednesday night we went to the US embassy because we heard the Marines had parties there every Wednesday. We arrived, and after going though security, still a little skeptical, showed up and sure enough, there was a party! It was held in the Marines' house and while there weren't as many Americans there as we hoped for, the Marines were pretty cool guys and I think Sunday Chris and I are going to visit again to watch some football. Yes I'm still loving Rwanda, but very excited to have some American friends and American Football (tired of international football - soccer).

I'm also writing this as I know all my friends and family are tailgating in Iowa City, and of course because I'm in Rwanda the Hawkeyes are going to be good this year. Alas, I'm following as closely as I can and will have to put all my sports efforts into coaching my basketball team which might actually get started this week.