5K in Rwanda! ....yep that's right!

So one night while we were all hanging out, Thomas, Kate, and I decided that we were going to do a 5K. It was an event that had a marathon, a half marathon, and a Fun Run (5K) on the same day, all to promote international peace and raise awareness to end violence against women and children. It was sooo cool and I think it will be one of the things I remember most about Rwanda.
When we arrived at the stadium where it started (Amahoro stadium, which means "peace"), we were too late to register for the race, so we just decided to run it "bandit," which means without numbers (that is what most people ended up doing anyway). When we got to the starting line, we realized that we were by far the oldest and tallest people that were doing the FunRun. So basically we ran a 5K with about a thousand African kids. We ended up with a group of about ten kids surrounding us that we talked to for the whole race. It made the time go by faster. Since I hadn't run in awhile, it was hard, especially since Rwanda is sooooo hilly and Kigali is almost a mile above sea level. We ended up finishing in about 30 minutes... is that good?! It was amazing.
Afterward, we went to get a soda from a little convenient store across the street (lime fanta is the best thing ever!) and we watched the marathoners run by. Oh my gosh, they were so intense ( I bet you looked like that dad, when you were running your marathon!), they were all running faster than I could ever ever run, and they were pouring water all over themselves to cool off (it was really hot that day). Most of the runners were from Africa, and I think the winner was from Kenya. While we were sitting there watching, we met a cool DJ named DJ focus, who plays at a club called Papyrus. He invited us to go see him, but we haven't gone yet so far because we are sooo busy! We also met a women that writes for National Geographic, my dreeeeeeeeaaaaaammmmmmmmmm. Unfortunately, I didn't know she worked there until right after she left. I suppose I could have run after her, and maybe I should have. But I talked to her friend and gave her my email address. She probably won't email me, but it would be sooooo incredibly awesome if she did. That is seriously my goal in life, oh my gosh.
Then we came back from the 5K/marathon, and it was still really early in the morning! So we hung out and did some wash. Around dinner, Jenny and I left our guesthouse to look for other people in our group who were at a play. But we got completely lost! I tried to call the people in the group that were already at the play, but most people had turned their phones off. I tried to call one guy named Doug, because I knew he was there, but I guess I had mixed up numbers in my phone book, so I actually called this guy named Serg (who works at the genocide memorial) instead of Doug. It took me like five minutes of talking to Serg to figure out that it wasn't Doug (even though I was wondering why Doug suddenly had an accent and was stuttering). It was a mess!
So Serg offered to come show us where the play was. That is seriously how all Rwandans have been; they will just drop everything they are doing to help us. We ended up finding the play (and I accidently walked on to the stage), but it was in French, and all the people in our group looked so incredibly bored. So Jenny and I just ended up getting dinner with Serg at the Blues Cafe, which was so much better than the play probably was. We had a really interesting conversation with Serg about racism. He said racism is just an example of one group of people trying to dominate another group, and if there were no such thing as race, we would just find other ways to categorize and differentiate ourselves. But Serg doesn't like that, because he says we are all just human. I totally agree. Serg lost almost his entire family in the genocide.