I just moved into my new house: it has three bedrooms, a living room, two-room outdoor kitchen, out door toilet, and out door shower room. This is the family toilet, which is just like mine: planks of wood, mud/poop brick walls, tree branches supporting zinc a roof, and half sheets of paper for wiping (usually we have printing mistakes or graded papers--my favorite is graded papers as they're much softer:) ) My house is in the same compound as my landlord and his wife (the school secretary) and so far I've been eating with them too. Their food is so good! All fresh, farmed on their land, and cooked by the secretary. 
We have corn, beans, and peas in the fields down the mountain where others work the land for them; carrots, onions, thyme, and more corn in our front yard, along with one giant avocado tree; and in the BACK yard is more corn, veggies, banana trees (heavy bunches of bananas are ripe like 5 times a year), avocados trees (in season NOW!), tree tomatoes (disgusting), papayas (I've never really had fresh papaya before Rwanda), peas and beans growing up the stalks of corn (that we pick at 11am, prepare at noon, and eat by 1pm!) and the most gorgeous view of the valley thousands of feet below us (The mountainsides are checkered in contoured lines of farms, fields, and growing foods... Uganda is only 3 hilltops over... and this is all in our backyard!)
We also have a cow, her (recently impregnated) daughter, and a 4-month old calf. The cool thing, besides having fresh milk DAILY, is that this cow makes 9 liters of milk A DAY. So every morning a representative from my host mom's milk cooperative comes around and buys the morning milking from her; after the evening milking she uses the milk for us, to sour it (like yogurt!), to make oil (rich, pure oil!), butter (fresh and delicious), lotion (actually just butter but they use it as body lotion...gives you an interesting smell being covered in butter), or cheese (I taught her how to make cheese!) either for us to use or to sell to the neighbors. 
Ok, so the common practice is to let your beans and peas grow and dry in your field, pick them, then bring them home in big bundles, set them on the ground and beat them. Since the shells are dried, they fall right off, leavingh the beans/peas behind and easy to collect. With all of the food stuffs we produce, our household is literally self-sufficient! The only things that my host mom has to buy are clothes, shoes, meat, and trasportation!
Oh! Transportation! To get here today, to this computer in Kigali (the capitol), I walked to my neighbor's house, found the bicycle taxis infront, got on the little padded seat behind the rider, and we coasted down the mountain to the next big town. I did have to get off at one point where everyone walks for like 20 steps until we get over a little up-hill portion of the road. Then I hopped on this motorcycle (VERY common way to travel) for 45 minutes to the neareset major city (bumpy dirt roads, hugging the mountainside, with sheer cliffs in some places, towns in others, and random people walking everywhere), walked to the "bus station" (a big empty dirt lot in the middle of town), asked for the bus to Kigali, then sat and waited inside of an 18-seater van filled with 21 people. Countless curves, elbows in my face and sides, and one hour later, we arrived in Kigali. Ahhhh! But only for a second! Everyone immediatly notices the two muzungus (moo-ZOON-goo) aka white people, arriving at this bus stop (another empty dirt/mud lot just outside of town) and we are totally bombarded by taxi drivers, yelling people, and confusion as we try to hold on to our bags, make our way to the bus we KNOW we need, and make sure we stay together (I'm with my friend Charissa).And voila! We are in our Peace Corps office! Enjoy!
