2008 Spring Semester over

Now is our time out from school. It has been a pretty busy and challenging semester but now I am glad that it is at its end. Besides having the time out from school, I am excited for an opportunity to go back to Rwanda to see my family, relatives and friends. I guess everyone among us ten who are traveling to Rwanda is excited and can not wait to get there! Though the summer here in US gets too hot, in Rwanda it is not as hot as here. So we are expecting a pretty good summer weather too. Yesterday we enjoyed our adoptive families party that took place at Nathalie's host family, and said "Thanks!" to the families. It was an exciting moment for us all, and we lead the worship time. The other Rwandan Students will be staying on Campus for summer classes, the same thing that we experienced during 2007 summer. They are sad that we will not be around to hang out together with them this summer, so we are. But, we hope to each other again in August during the 2008 Fall Semester.

International Night with Monster Truck Rally

Monster Truck Rally! Last Saturday on February 23rd, Alex Mccumber and Tracy Tindle had organized the transportation to Ford Center, Oklahoma Downtown where the show was going to take place. Beside the majority of international students attendency to this event, some other students came as well and it was fun that night.
The show was mainly about big trucks (with big tires) jumping over other cars. As we were sitting in the stadium watching, everybody was being amazed by the show, especially those who had not seen Monster Truck before. At the end it was robot cars. One was personified as a dragon, an alien and the other one as a human. Those two robot cars unfolded into those personifieded shapes, sent fire and fought. The human one killed the dragon, of course. It was amazing!
Here are a couple pictures:













After the show, we all went back to Campus in the Student Center where we ate a delicious ice cream, and called it a day with a singing devo directed by Alan Thompson from Ethiopia.



Alan Thompson was getting people's attention for devo.

2007 Christmas Break!

Christmas Break has come! It is a good time of the year that most people are excited about. I am excited for this Break as well! I am spending this time with my family in Gatewood! When passing around I saw almost every house decorated with Christmas lights.Inside houses you can see Christmas trees too. To me all of these indicate how people love Christmas holiday! Unfortunately, some people are not having power because of ice storm that damaged a lot of trees outside, and affected electricity as well. This would be a hard time for those people since it is even freezing. Hopefully the power will be restored very soon for all those people. (Some got it fixed already! which is good!)

2007 Thanksgiving Break

Today (November 22nd) is thanksgiving break, and I am excited about it because I am ready to get time off school work. It’s also a great time to me since I get to visit friends, and eat a lot of food as it is common in US. Turkey is the favorite animal meat to eat on this day. As far as I know, most people in US also like this day.
I passed my Thanksgiving in Louisiana, in a city called “Cut off” in Lafourche Parish County. I went with one of my friends from church. It was a long drive. It usually takes about 12 hours to get there, but this time we used a little bit more. Anyways, we got to enjoy our trip (OK-LA), and got to Cut off where people we were visiting live. Amanda, Cody, Dale, Berry… are the people I met. Zeus was the dog I met at Amanda and Cody’s where we stayed. On Thanksgiving Day, we went to Piccadilly, sort of cafeteria where we ate Thanksgiving dinner. We got to eat a lot of food of course, and enjoyed Thanksgiving holiday.
The break started on Wednesday 21st, but we need to be back at school on Sunday 26th for classes on Monday.
JP and Cody by Bayou river
Cody, Amanada and Lorene
Where we ate Thanksgiving dinner Christmas decoration had already started by Thanksgiving (Houma)
Terrorist attack on World Trade Center memory on the wall (Houma)JP in French-quarter (New Orleans) More Pictures from French-Quarter:
Road built passing through Pontchartrain lakeSuper dome (For American Football stadium) By Bayou lake

International Ride!

Yesterday, Saturday Sept 1st it was a wonderful time, when international students went for a ride to Brick Town! There were a lot of students including: Rwandans, Malaysians, Asians, Japanese, Swedish, Mexicans,.... Not only international students but also some US citizen students as well. Tracy, Alex, Mika, Ashley... brought this idea which was appreciated and enjoyed by everyone! We went and walked around in Brick Town, hanging out, and had a lot of fun. Afterwards, we came back on Campus where we ate ice cream. It was wonderful to see different people and socialize with them. Here are some pictures:

New 10 Rwandans on Campus!

It was in the evening when we went to the Oklahoma City Airport to wait for the second 10 new Rwandans to come at Oklahoma Christian University. We as the first 10 Rwandans at OC, and people from International Programs office(John, Greg,...) went together to bring them to Campus using two big vans!
It was a pleasure to meet them! They were all tired though because of flying. Fortunately they got here, even though it was a little late for school.(They should have gotten here earlier, but for some reasons they delayed) Here are some pictures:




Greg introducing himself to Pacific.
Yves greating Tangent (Daniel)

Philibert greating Dina.

From left: Richard, Nathalie, Arlette, JP and Tangent


International Programs representatives

Below: Newcomers were getting instructions from Tammy.


When eating Cake in Fails (at very left: Samuel Wawire)

Moving back to the dorms

Now it's time to move from apartments back to the dorms. The Summer seems to be almost over, and School is almost ready to start for 2007 Fall Semester!
Me and my colleagues had to move from Phase 6E apartments back to Wilson East dorms. I was used to apartment life, but now it's going to change. I actually like apartment better than the dorms, because they are bigger in size, and nice! Anyways, there is no choice I have to live in Wilson West during school time.
My roomates are getting back to school too! Yves Mujyambere, Tracy Tindle, Alex Maccumber, and Mike Coghill are already with me now! So, it's not bad we can have fun before the school starts in about a week! We are still waiting for Caleb and Seth to come as well.
It's exciting for me also, because we are done with summer classes this last Friday. (Friday 17th, 2007) I hope to see more OC students coming back, and I am glad to meet 10 more Rwandan Students coming to Oklahoma Christian pretty soon!
Here are some photos: Tracy and Mika are already back!
Alex and Dallas are back as well as Ashley and Nadine (below)

At Laser Quest

Mika, one of our friend who goes to OC as well came in vacation with her family from California to Oklahoma to visit her grandmother! Mika, her brother Zacharia, her little sister Kyla, and her dad and mom came to see us, and then we went to play Laser Tag together at "Laser Quest". We had a lot of fun playing! It was cool! We went at 3pm and came back later on after we finish playing. Me, Alex and Yves did not play Laser Tag before, but at the end we liked it! Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera with me in order to take some pictures, Dang! (Anyways, Sorry for pictures!)

At Karen

It was at Sunday last week when we went to Karen's house. Karen is a Registration Coordinator for Administrative Serv. at Oklahoma Christian. She invited us, Rwandan Students to go and eat dinner at her house. It was a delicious one! We had a fun time with Karen and her family!! Tan(Karen's husband), Karen's daughter and Daniel(Karen's Son in law) were all there. We also teased about Heather (Karen's daughter who wasn't there), and many other stuff! We saw a lot of their photos, and they were nice! We also had fun playing guitar, even though we are bad at it...

Daniel plays Guitar
I had fun playing Daniel's guitar!
Alain had fun with Daniel's guitar too!
Tan, Karen and Alex
Arlette, Alai and JP
Alline, Karen's daughter and Daniel
Phil, Christelle and Placide
Alex, Yves and Eva
Karen, Alline and Karen's daughter
We enjoyed Karen's invitation, and we thanked her, of course!

Placide's Birthday!

Saturday, July 21st was Placide's birthday. He was excited, because of his birthday of course, but nervous about getting old. He turned 21. He invited all his fellow Rwandans, to come and go to celebrate it. His adoptive father came to pick us up in his van, and Paige carried some of us in her car. We went to swim, and later on we ate dinner then a birthday cake. It was much fun!
Placide

Placide when swimming

JP (with goggles), Phil(in front of JP)then Alain

Ladies were having fun around the table

After swimming, now it was dinner time
Arlette and Philibert (they were having fun at dinner!)

After dinner

Cake time draws near

Placide with the cake

Now it's cake time!JP eating the cake

Phil and Arlette eating cake

After eating cake, it's more fun time!Placide(left),Paige and Alexander(right)

Christelle, Placide, and Alline(right)

JP, Christelle(right)

Arlette, Placide (left)

JP and Placide

After Placide's birthday party was over, it was time to go back home!

Laura and Hallie visit

Laura is one of my friends, also Rwandan students' friend. She is studying electrical engineering. She was in Oklahoma together with her sister Hallie visiting their aunt. As a friend, we welcomed her idea to come and see us yesterday (Saturday) in our apartments. I was very happy to see Laura and Hallie! I was missing them. Usually, once the school is over, Laura goes to her home in Midland.(Texas) So, after a while (since the end of 2007 Spring Semester) we got to see her again on July 21! It had been a while! I made some food for lunch, and we had lunch together with them. After lunch, we hanged out and they even went to see the Rwandan girls in their apartments. Hallie (left), Laura (middle), Philibert (right)

Oscar is a new comer to OC, he is from Sweden, and he plays golf. So he got Golf scholarship to come study at OC! He was also with us on Saturday 21st. Alexander(left), Oscar(right)

Paige, one of our friends also was with us on Saturday. She is holding a small dog:

Later on in the afternoon around 3 p.m, Laura and Hallie had to leave and go back to their aunt. I enjoyed their visit!

July 4th

July 4th is one of the days that most countries all over the world, especially countries who gained Independence celebrate. I was able to attend one of the things that Americans do on this day: FIREWORKS of course!
Before watching fireworks: me, Philibert, Christelle, Alline, and Arlette went to Dr. Mike O'Neal's house to visit, as he had invited us. He provided us dinner. It was fun to go to his house! His house has a pretty big back yard, and a pond where he raises some fishes. When he went to feed the fishes, we went together with him. I saw some of his fishes coming up in the water to grab their food! Here are some pictures:















JP at Dr. O'Neal's house

After the visit to O'Neal's house, we went to visit Greg as he had invited us as well. There were a lot of people at Greg's, including Mendy (International Programs), John (International Programs), Rico, Oscar, kids, etc. Greg provided us some deserts. We also played some soccer with John's kids (Sam and Seth), Phil and Oscar. After a little while we went to the University of Central Oklahoma to watch FIREWORKS. They had good ones!


When playing soccer with the kids at Greg's front yard!


Greg and a Japanese student


FIREWORKS OVER, everybody is ready to go home. From left to right: Mendy, Seth, Rico,JP and Oscar)

Evangeline's Birthday

On June 25th, it was Evangeline's birthday. She invited us to go and share with her the birthday cake. It was a lot of fun when we were there wishing her a happy birthday. All the guys were there. We ate the above Delicious cake. We also took some pictures:


Evangeline


When eating the cake


JP,Eva, and Alline


Alex, Eva and Alain


Jessie and Eva


JP,Eva and Alex


Guys together

Midwest city

It was Samuel Wawire (from Kenya), who invited us to go with him to Midwest city where his adoptive parents live. His dad came, and gave us a ride to there. There was going to be an AIR SHOW, and we were excited to see it! It was Tuesday June 12Th. It was a sunny day even the time when we got there. The sun was burning. But, we were still excited to see the show anyways. Phil, Alex, Placide, Alain and I went around watching different kinds of planes, and different things that were there. Blue Angels were the ones to show us amazing things with their airplanes. It was so cool!! A lot of airospace technology! If you were there, you could think that the airplanes were about to collide against each other, or other different kinds of accidents might occur. Fortunately, the engineers (Aerospace engineers who flied them), have a lot of experience in order to not do such mess. It was scary though, because of the way they were flying closer to each other. If you want to visit blue angels website, please go to www.blueangels.com
After the show we went to Sam's dad, and he gave us some food. He is a nice guy!
I enjoyed the AIR SHOW, and my colleges did as well! I appreciated Sam's invitation! It was the first time I watched a real AIR SHOW!