MISTI GTL Rwanda
January 21, 2026
Independent Activities Period, or IAP, is a time for students to explore without the pressure of semester-long classes. It takes place after winter break; some people choose to stay home for an extended winter break, while others work on their personal projects. A lot of people also choose to take classes offered only during this period, while some take on research or an internship.
For mine, I decided to participate in MISTI's Global Teaching Labs (GTL) in Rwanda at the African Olympiad Academy (AOA). I'd work with my group and the Rwandan coaches to teach the IMO team, along with students from Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, Namibia, and Nigeria.
1/2-3/26: departure to Kigali
I left home around 7am in the morning to catch a flight to Seattle. While there, I watched Dr. Stone per DottedWave's recommendation, since I've never watched an anime. I still didn't feel the shock of going to an entirely different country for some reason — at least not yet. Not only would it be my first time in Rwanda, but it would also be my first time in Africa.
A couple hours later, I arrived at Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar. By then, I had already spent around 16 hours in a plane, and I had an 8 hour layover. Fortunately, there was a lot to do in the airport to the point it’s considered a tourist destination in itself. It has a few art installations, a futuristic-looking train transporting people between terminals, and an orchard resembling the one in the Singapore Changi Airport.
Soon enough, I was headed to Kigali!
1/4/26, arrived in Kigali
Upon getting off the plane, I bought a visa for $50 and found my checked bag. Obed (the Rwanda IMO team leader) picked me up from the airport and brought me to the house where we would be staying. Apparently, he already knew about me, since Po-Shen Loh visited the school a week prior and talked about LIVE.
I was the first of my group to arrive at the house, so I got first dibs. The MITs (Jadal, Nadine, and Weiduo) and
I went back home, immediately proceeded to fall asleep, and almost missed another message to go out for dinner. We went to Repub Lounge and met a bunch of people! One of them, Jessica (who helped develop olympiad math in Rwanda), knew v4913, who came here last year to teach, and perhaps less surprisingly, the people who did their MISTI GTL in Rwanda last year. I didn’t realize how connected we all already were, which I thought was really cool. I remember reading v4913’s blog post on her experience and even left a comment, not knowing I’d be there a year later!
I had goat meat for the first time, and there were also plantains and this yummy fish stew. The bill took a while to arrive, but it was also raining really heavily, so we chilled for a bit. Supposedly, January is supposed to be the dry season, but it still rained pretty often. And when it rains, it rains a lot and for a long time; the torrent ended up lasting around 8 hours, which explains why it’s so luscious everywhere.
1/5/26, day 1
I woke up in the middle of the night to hear marching and pops from (what I presume) to be from an air rifle. When the marching came around a bit later, I saw the runners were really synchronized and were chanting, so I figured it was probably military training. Our house was near a military hospital, so that might’ve been it.
Our living situation allowed for each of us to have our own bedrooms with single bathrooms, along with a communal living room and kitchen downstairs. Apparently, we didn’t have to worry about cleaning or laundry, since the house owner would do it all for us.
We headed to the school and worked on selecting problems for a baseline test, along with delegating who would teach what. There’s three levels: A, B, and C, such that A is the most advanced class. We split up into who was teaching each level, along with each subject. I took on algebra and combinatorics for the C class. I’m much more comfortable with combinatorics than with algebra (and also think C > A > G = NT), but ended up having to teach solo for algebra.
It was raining a ton again, to the point the power went out at the school. We thought it would be fine back at the house too, but we were unfortunately mistaken. It did help me go to bed earlier though, which was good.
1/6/26, day 2
Today, the A class had a session, while the rest took a baseline test to determine whether they’d get sorted into B or C.
Once they finished, all the MIT coaches had to give a talk, so I spoke about my experience with LIVE. One of the unique parts about LIVE is the instructors get to take improvisation classes, so I let the students play one of the games: Freeze Tag. Basically, two people are acting out a scene at a time, while there are some people off the stage. At any point the two people are performing, someone off-stage can shout “Freeze!” to tag out one of the players and form a completely new scene.
The students really wanted Obed to play, so I let him. At one point, he was on stage, and the other actor, who was a student, took the opportunity to reference the Ugandan interview meme. I was slightly horrified and really hoped people knew the meme.
Anyway, we also found out that apparently IShowSpeed is touring Africa and is going to stop by Rwanda, which is absolutely insane. First of all, traveling to Rwanda, mind you, even Africa, was not something I thought would do so soon. Then, the time I’m here, he’s also going to be here. Preminger joked he was following me, because he was at MIT not too long ago.
1/726, day 3
I was jumpscared in the morning by being told I actually had to teach algebra. Apparently, there was some rescheduling, because the only person teaching number theory would’ve otherwise had to teach back to back, which would’ve been exhausting.
I didn’t realize how tiring it would be. Four hours is much longer than I expected, and on top of teaching, there were problem solving sessions. There was a session in the morning from 8:00-10:00, followed by a break, and another session from 10:15-12:15. I taught Vieta’s Formulas, which took up the whole time. I was told I should’ve done more proof problems, since it’s the first time a lot of these students have a chance to play with olympiad math, but I slightly disagreed because a lot of them weren’t familiar with the foundational theorems.
After that was problem solving from 15:45-17:00, during which I gave students problems to do. Honestly, it didn’t feel too different from the sessions in the morning. There was another problem solving session from 19:45-21:30, but I didn’t have to be there for that.
I was very impressed by the persistence and eagerness to learn of the students. Aman was teaching a student on this one number theory problem, and they were saying they didn’t really mind bashing out 10-15 cases, which is already a lot. When prodded further, they apparently said they wouldn’t mind bashing out problems with less than 30 cases. When we were grading the papers later, there was a really persistent student on a factoring problem, and they somehow wrote out 11 cases when they did not need to. They turned out to be the same person. It reminded me of a story Po told us about how the
1/8/26, day 4
Today was a combinatorics day! I was teaching with Jadal, and we went over combinations & permutations along with problems about traversing a grid. The students didn’t seem to be familiar with how to arrange letters when they are indistinguishable from one another, which is really important for explaining
For any meal we didn’t have out, we ate at the school. Dinner for the day was at Indian Coffee House. Once again, it was raining a lot, and the traffic was crazy. Arun (one of the co-founders of AOA) drove us through it all, and I don’t know how he did it. Apparently, the driving test in Kigali is really difficult, because you’re tested on a lot of minute details, but high-density areas are still quite chaotic. At some intersections, a police officer has to direct the flow of vehicles instead of the traffic light.
But I digress; the food was pretty good. It took over an hour for the food to arrive though, like most restaurants do. Arun said that because people don’t really go to restaurants, they don’t have an incentive to keep a stock of items. As a result, they buy the groceries only after you order. I was told this was false later though, so I don’t know what to believe.
1/9/26, day 5
Pretty much all the coaches were free today, so I went out with Nadine to exchange for some Rwandan francs, since neither of my cards were working. We traveled via motorbikes; this was my first time ever riding one, and mind you, a motorcycle as well. At first, there weren’t many motorbikes around, so we had to
We then headed to Kimironko Market. I read the reviews before heading there, so I had an idea of what to expect. But actually witnessing it in-person is different from reading about it.
Literally not even after two seconds of getting off, I was swarmed by around five people offering to guide me around the market. In reality, these people probably will just guide me to their own shop. I also learned from Nadine that some of them offer to carry your items for you, but that means the vendors will charge more, because the carriers sometimes make a deal with the vendors to help them out in exchange for part of what they earn.
Anyway, they were trying to guess my nationality, and I’m pretty sure almost everyone got it wrong. For some reason, they thought I looked Japanese or Korean? The number of times I heard kon'nichiwa and annyeong was crazy. It took a while before some people figured out I was Chinese; I guess I don’t look Chinese? Thai and Vietnamese were some other guesses. Maybe Chinese people don’t typically travel to Rwanda. I think only one person got that I was Chinese first try, and it was in the craziest way possible; he just came up to me saying
Nadine bartered for me, which I really appreciated because I had no idea what each item was supposed to cost. I got this figure on a bicycle made out of straw, and we also bought back an assortment of fruits: mangoes native to Rwanda, guava pear, passionfruit, and tamarillo. Most of them weren’t really in-season apart from the mangoes. It was my first time having all of them, and they were okay. Actually, I really didn’t like the tamarillos; they were sour, but the seeds also somehow had an umami taste, kinda like soy sauce. It was truly perplexing.
Then, we spent around two hours watching IShowSpeed touring Zambia. We tried ordering dinner, since we weren’t going back to the school. I used
Speaking of which, there is no concept of addresses here, which has been interesting to navigate. The best you can do is list streets near where you want to go, like KK 11. The streets are also based on the district you’re in, so as an example, KK represents the Kicukiro District. Though the houses have numbers, people don’t really use them.
Typically, what happens instead is you describe the landmarks around the area, then direct the driver to the specific location once you’re closer to it. This was a huge challenge, since we were unfamiliar with the area, and people don’t seem to know how to use Google Maps. We got used to it after a while though.
1/10/26, day 6
I didn’t have anything to teach, but I still went to the school and chatted with a Tanzanian coach instead. He was telling me about a math resource he recently started called Numbers Online School, and some aspects of it were actually pretty similar to LIVE. I showed him our LIVE setup and taught him how to use OBS Studio to achieve a similar look to our classes and livestreams.
In the afternoon, we went to Amahoro Stadium to watch a football game, because apparently, IShowSpeed was performing at the halftime show. However, we completely fumbled and missed him.
1/11/26, day 7
The house we’re staying at was pretty close to the Rwanda Art Museum, so I walked there in the morning. The museum was the former presidential residence, and I was surprised to learn it held the remnants from the plane crash of April 6, 1994.
In the afternoon, I went to the school to grade
1/12/26, day 8
We went on a safari at Akagera National Park! Since the animals came out in the morning, we had to head there pretty early, so we had to wake up at 4am.
We got really lucky and saw most of the animals that were there:
The drive wasn’t too long — around two hours — and we stopped by Bashana Companies & Imigongo Art Center for food. We were in a safari vehicle the whole time, which had a nice sunroof that could be opened for a better view outside the vehicle.
1/13/26, day 9
I didn’t have anything to teach again, but showed up to the school anyway. I spent most of my time writing essays for an application instead.
Jadal, Aman, and I left together to head to the Kayisire Art Shop. I liked how it wasn’t as touristy and crowded as Kimironko market. I bought a pin of the Rwandan flag and didn’t try too hard to barter for a better price.
Afterwards, we headed to Ubumwe Grande Hotel for their rooftop restaurant per The Turtle’s recommendation. The view of the city was awesome.
On the way back to the house, we got the craziest Move+ driver ever. He drove super recklessly and speedily, and it was also rush hour. At one point, Aman said he could slow down, and he did for maybe five minutes before speeding up again.
He must’ve had a vendetta against
He would also honk at every single moto that seemed to exist. But it doesn’t end there! He said that there’s ten moto deaths a week, which I don’t believe at all. He also was texting while driving, and took a call every five minutes. It was just thing after thing after thing, and when we got off, we were all so relieved.
In general, the traffic can get pretty bad, especially during rush hour. The intersections don't have a ton of organization all the time. What tends to happen is people make their own way by forcing their vehicle through.
For example, roundabouts are quite common but a horror to navigate, because the cars entering are actually the ones that have right of way, which results in a ton of congestion.
1/14/26, day 10
This morning, there was nothing I had to do at the school, since the Tanzanians were taking a contest. Unfortunately, the power went out at home, and it was also the one day I decided to not charge my devices. I was kinda sitting around working applications, then joined Weiduo to go to Kivu Noir for the food and WiFi. Afterwards, we headed to the school to grade exams.
1/15/26, day 11
I taught combinatorics with Jadal today, and we went over the binomial theorem and Pascal’s triangle. This was probably my favorite lesson, since there are so many cool properties and relationships that come out of the definitions.
Aman, Jadal, and I visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial after school. I didn’t know that the Tulsis and Hutus were separated based on the number of cows they owned, which highlights just how important cows are to Rwandans.
The most surprising part is how so many people you see in Rwanda were alive when the genocide happened. They probably experienced it, but if you visited the country without knowing the history, you probably wouldn’t know. They’re amazing people despite the horrific tragedy. Ever since being here, I feel so much hope that people can actually do good. People genuinely seem happy here and seem very close-knit.
After visiting the memorial, we went to a clothing shop, then visited the Kigali Convention Center. As we were walking through, we had to pass through security a couple times but didn’t see any other visitors. We thought maybe there were shops, but it’s literally just meeting rooms and an auditorium. One of the desk workers begrudgingly gave us a tour of the area, and it seemed like she didn’t want to say no to us because we were tourists. It was still kinda cool though.
We then headed to a mall where Jadal took off, because he was going to meet up with a friend. He recommended we go to a place called Bunz, which is apparently the best sandwich place in town. Aman and I walked around for what had to have been at least twenty minutes trying to find the place, but to no avail. After climbing up and down four floors, we ran into a boba tea shop, which we decided to try. Arun mentioned there’s only two boba tea shops in Kigali, and neither of which were good. But because they were the only two, people still go. Anyway, it was the most mid boba I’ve had in my life.
We walked around a bit more to Kigali Heights, which is this other mall nearby, but we still didn’t find Bunz. There wasn’t a map, but there was a directory of all the stores there. Bunz wasn’t on the list, and the photos on Google Maps were from three years ago, so we guessed the place wasn’t there anymore. Instead, we saw this random pizza place and decided to go. It wasn’t too bad, and honestly better than a lot of American pizza.
We then bought some items at the Simba supermarket, since there’s a party the next day. I actually quite enjoyed being in the supermarket; it was interesting to see how the items were different from the US, yet organized like a grocery store in the US.
When Aman ordered a Move+ back, it was in this parking lot that we had to cross the first mall we were at. That’s when we saw Bunz, which was unfortunate. But now we know!
1/16/26, day 12
I went to Pedro’s Coffee with Weiduo in the morning, and she left after grabbing food to get to the school because she had to teach. After working for a bit, I soloed a moto trip home, which was terrifying but worthwhile. The group then reunited to go to Jessica’s house for the party.
After coming home, I was just doing my night routine when I heard some mysterious tapping noises. I thought it might’ve been a lizard at first, because Weiduo also had a lizard in her room at some point. Then, out of the corner of the wardrobe were two antennas and a pair of eyes staring directly at me. It was a massive cockroach; it stopped for three seconds, then flew straight towards me. I screeched, immediately got up with my electronics, and headed downstairs because I was not about to deal with that. I ended up sleeping on the couch for two hours.
1/17/26, day 13
Today ended up being pretty cooked in terms of my cognitive function, but I still had to teach. Jadal and I went over distinguishability and PIE.
After heading home, I encountered a second cockroach and immediately asked the house owner for help. I used a translator to Kinyarwanda, because I’m not familiar with the language. I showed her the Kinyarwanda, and she immediately started laughing. I thought it was because of my fear of bugs, which can be quite funny. However, she asked me what this one word meant, and I assume it meant cockroach. When I reverse searched it though, it meant cat, turtle, squirrel, and monkey all at the same time, so I’m not sure what meaning she actually got.
1/18/26, day 14
I grabbed a meal with Aman and Jadal at K-Address Lounge! The food took a really long time to make, but it ended up being quite tasty.
We then headed to the school and went on a tour to Zipline! I was so excited about this field trip, because Mark Rober’s video about it is actually what inspired me to choose Rwanda as my first choice location for MISTI GTL. It was so cool to see everything in-person and to know the video captured what the company does really well.
1/19/26, day 15
We visited Bigogwe, since most of us didn’t have to teach! The drive there was around three and a half hours. When we got there, we immediately started on a hike, and it was quite challenging. The view was beautiful though; apparently, the top of the mountain can see all five famous volcanoes and is also a holy site.
Once we got back down, we saw many farm animals, and I got to hold a lamb! We stopped by a farm where we ate roasted corn, sweet potatoes, and drank some milk. There were regular cows, and also ones with huge horns. I didn’t realize they ate corn husks. We also got to milk them later on (which was actually really difficult) and drank milk straight from the source. I wasn’t very confident about the fact that it’s raw milk though, so I pulled my lactose intolerant card.
Then, we gathered around the campfire and sang traditional songs and headed back home after that.
1/20/26, day 16
I don’t have anything to teach for the rest of the camp, so I’ve been working on the MISTI GTL report and this blog post! Us MITs also got interviewed by the media, and then Jadal, Aman, and I went to CHIC because Jadal ordered some custom-made clothes there. There was no food in the mall unfortunately — just clothes — so we grabbed dinner at Boho after. It was a pretty fancy place with a nice view of the city.
1/21/26, day 17
Today, we graded exams and attended the closing ceremony. Us coaches gave a speech along with the Tanzanian students, since we were leaving after today.
The five of us (Jadal, Nadine, Weiduo, Aman, and I) went to Sundowner to celebrate the end. Well, at least for us MITs, because the Michigan is still here for five more weeks. Honestly, it felt a little strange, since we didn't really talk to a lot of the other staff members before leaving for good. I didn't feel like we got proper closure, but at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if I went back to Rwanda in the future.
Wrap ups
As my first IAP, I'm really glad I spent it in a fresh environment! I really love traveling and teaching math, so this was the best of both worlds. It was my first time coaching in an olympiad format, but I think it was still kind of similar to how I taught LIVE. It was just that we had to design the curriculum ourselves.
Most of my teaching experience was virtual, so it took me a while to adjust to teaching in-person. Writing on the smartboard and whiteboard was challenging for me, since I had to learn how to physically separate each concept/problem I was going over. I really liked how I could get much quicker feedback from the students though, and getting to walk around to help students individually was also nice.
Until next time!
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