Let's start with the plane ride(s). Our first one to Dulles (Washington D.C.) wasn't too bad...only 5 hours. The
second one was the killer one...14 hours! Fortunately, pretty much everyone on the plane (including me) loaded up on Tylenol PM and were out for a good portion of it. I shared a middle row of 5 seats with another girl and slept on and off for probably 10-12 hours. We left LAX at 8AM Thursday morning (8/28) and arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa at 3PM Friday afternoon (8/29)...31 hours later! We were all exhausted, to say the least. We spent the night at a hotel in Joburg (people here abbreviate everything...Joburg is short for Johannesburg), took a 2 hour bus tour through Soweto, and ended up at the Apartheid Museum. Both of those things were incredible, eye-opening experiences for me. Touring through Soweto, I got to experience the economic extremes of poverty (shacks made out of garage doors) and wealth (million $ homes) only a few blocks away from each other. In the Apartheid Museum, I was able to experience 1st hand the immense oppression of the Blacks, Colored, and Indians of SA. It kind of reminded me of the Holocaust Museum in D.C. We were even separated into Whites and Non-Whites and had to enter different areas of the museum. After that, we headed back to the Joburg Airport for our 3rd and final flight to Cape Town. 
On our way back, we drove by the Nelson Mandela's house. We weren't allowed to stop, but it was still cool to see the house of the man who ended apartheid. When we landed in Cape Town, it was pouring rain, windy, and FREEZING COLD; we found out later that we had arrived in the middle of a double cold front. I was actually scared that we were going to have a crash landing because the wind was blowing our plane so much. Of course, this was the one plane where we had to disembark on the runway, so we got completely soaked as we ran into the airport! We were greeted by a bunch of students/mentors from Cornerstone Christian College, loaded up another bus with our billion bags in the pouring rain, and drove to CCC. After bringing our luggage in, we all met in a big room, played some "get to know you games", and split up into groups of 5 with one mentor (who are students at CCC). We are going to be with these groups for the rest of our stay in Cape Town. Emma, my mentor, is a 20 y/o white South African girl from Cape Town; however, the majority of the mentors are from different countries in Africa like Uganda and Kenya. We then ate dinner and moved into our dorms. The dorms are cute but very cold; they have 4 beds, 1 bathroom, and no heater. The sink has separate faucets for hot and cold, so washing my face/hands was a bit of a challenge (which I have currently mastered!). 
The showers are very tricky too; they go from scalding hot to freezing cold, so you have to do tiny turns of the dial to make it perfect. The first night (Saturday, 8/29) was literally one of the coldest nights in my life. I was definitely not prepared for this weather; I only brought like 4 long sleeved shirts, one sweatshirt, and one raincoat! On Sunday (8/30), a group of 17 girls (4 mentors included) all went to the same church. We walked for awhile to get to the taxi, and when we finally waved one down, there were already 7 people in it. But we really needed to get to church and were freezing our butts off, so we all piled in. There were 24 people in a 14 seat van...it was ridiculous! I wish I could've gotten a picture, but was practically buried under girls haha. Christ Church Kenilworth is an Anglican church that is made up of mainly white people. It reminded me a lot of a conservative American church. It was a great message on faith (Ephesians 2:8-10), which I felt was really applicable to me and how I need to have faith in Christ in all aspects of my life (especially in SA). Later on, we were split up into 2 groups. Half of us are staying at the dorms for the next 2 weeks.
Monday, 9/1, was our first day of school. From 9-10:45AM, I had History & Culture of SA with an awesome colored man named Quinton. He totally reminds me of my dad, which is why I think I like him so much. We did a really neat exercise where we got together in groups and wrote down our top 3 goals for the semester on a poster board. Mine were 1) Build relationships with people that last beyond APU; 2) Make a difference in someone’s life, whether it be in nursing or somewhere else; 3) Grow in my relationship with Christ, learn to
be completely satisfied in him, and trust in his plan for my future; and 4) Run with the wild animals of Africa and potentially train for the LA Marathon at the same time. We shared our goals with our group and then made a common list of goals in the middle. It was pretty neat to see the hearts of these students; we definitely have a great group going on here and I'm excited to get to know them better. After that class, we have a tea break from 10:45-11:15AM. Tea time is really big here (since SA was colonized by the British and Dutch) and I'm really starting to love it. After tea time, I'm supposed to have nursing from 11:15-1:00PM, but today we got to do something even better: CRICKET! We went to a sporting center pretty close to Cornerstone where there were 5 courts of astro terf separated by nets. After a long process of learning how to play, we split up into teams and started competing. It's kind of like baseball beacuse there's a bat and a ball; other than that, it's totally different. There's a bunch of crazy running around and ball throwing and trying to get people to lose points by hitting these wickets before they cross a white line. We also played a few games of soccer, which is definitely not my sport, but was still a lot of fun. I'm a very competetive/aggressive person when it comes to sports, so I ended up with a few bruises by the end of the day :)
second one was the killer one...14 hours! Fortunately, pretty much everyone on the plane (including me) loaded up on Tylenol PM and were out for a good portion of it. I shared a middle row of 5 seats with another girl and slept on and off for probably 10-12 hours. We left LAX at 8AM Thursday morning (8/28) and arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa at 3PM Friday afternoon (8/29)...31 hours later! We were all exhausted, to say the least. We spent the night at a hotel in Joburg (people here abbreviate everything...Joburg is short for Johannesburg), took a 2 hour bus tour through Soweto, and ended up at the Apartheid Museum. Both of those things were incredible, eye-opening experiences for me. Touring through Soweto, I got to experience the economic extremes of poverty (shacks made out of garage doors) and wealth (million $ homes) only a few blocks away from each other. In the Apartheid Museum, I was able to experience 1st hand the immense oppression of the Blacks, Colored, and Indians of SA. It kind of reminded me of the Holocaust Museum in D.C. We were even separated into Whites and Non-Whites and had to enter different areas of the museum. After that, we headed back to the Joburg Airport for our 3rd and final flight to Cape Town. 
On our way back, we drove by the Nelson Mandela's house. We weren't allowed to stop, but it was still cool to see the house of the man who ended apartheid. When we landed in Cape Town, it was pouring rain, windy, and FREEZING COLD; we found out later that we had arrived in the middle of a double cold front. I was actually scared that we were going to have a crash landing because the wind was blowing our plane so much. Of course, this was the one plane where we had to disembark on the runway, so we got completely soaked as we ran into the airport! We were greeted by a bunch of students/mentors from Cornerstone Christian College, loaded up another bus with our billion bags in the pouring rain, and drove to CCC. After bringing our luggage in, we all met in a big room, played some "get to know you games", and split up into groups of 5 with one mentor (who are students at CCC). We are going to be with these groups for the rest of our stay in Cape Town. Emma, my mentor, is a 20 y/o white South African girl from Cape Town; however, the majority of the mentors are from different countries in Africa like Uganda and Kenya. We then ate dinner and moved into our dorms. The dorms are cute but very cold; they have 4 beds, 1 bathroom, and no heater. The sink has separate faucets for hot and cold, so washing my face/hands was a bit of a challenge (which I have currently mastered!). 
The showers are very tricky too; they go from scalding hot to freezing cold, so you have to do tiny turns of the dial to make it perfect. The first night (Saturday, 8/29) was literally one of the coldest nights in my life. I was definitely not prepared for this weather; I only brought like 4 long sleeved shirts, one sweatshirt, and one raincoat! On Sunday (8/30), a group of 17 girls (4 mentors included) all went to the same church. We walked for awhile to get to the taxi, and when we finally waved one down, there were already 7 people in it. But we really needed to get to church and were freezing our butts off, so we all piled in. There were 24 people in a 14 seat van...it was ridiculous! I wish I could've gotten a picture, but was practically buried under girls haha. Christ Church Kenilworth is an Anglican church that is made up of mainly white people. It reminded me a lot of a conservative American church. It was a great message on faith (Ephesians 2:8-10), which I felt was really applicable to me and how I need to have faith in Christ in all aspects of my life (especially in SA). Later on, we were split up into 2 groups. Half of us are staying at the dorms for the next 2 weeks.Monday, 9/1, was our first day of school. From 9-10:45AM, I had History & Culture of SA with an awesome colored man named Quinton. He totally reminds me of my dad, which is why I think I like him so much. We did a really neat exercise where we got together in groups and wrote down our top 3 goals for the semester on a poster board. Mine were 1) Build relationships with people that last beyond APU; 2) Make a difference in someone’s life, whether it be in nursing or somewhere else; 3) Grow in my relationship with Christ, learn to
be completely satisfied in him, and trust in his plan for my future; and 4) Run with the wild animals of Africa and potentially train for the LA Marathon at the same time. We shared our goals with our group and then made a common list of goals in the middle. It was pretty neat to see the hearts of these students; we definitely have a great group going on here and I'm excited to get to know them better. After that class, we have a tea break from 10:45-11:15AM. Tea time is really big here (since SA was colonized by the British and Dutch) and I'm really starting to love it. After tea time, I'm supposed to have nursing from 11:15-1:00PM, but today we got to do something even better: CRICKET! We went to a sporting center pretty close to Cornerstone where there were 5 courts of astro terf separated by nets. After a long process of learning how to play, we split up into teams and started competing. It's kind of like baseball beacuse there's a bat and a ball; other than that, it's totally different. There's a bunch of crazy running around and ball throwing and trying to get people to lose points by hitting these wickets before they cross a white line. We also played a few games of soccer, which is definitely not my sport, but was still a lot of fun. I'm a very competetive/aggressive person when it comes to sports, so I ended up with a few bruises by the end of the day :) Tuesday, 9/2, was my first day of nursing classes. My teacher, Leslie Van Dover, is a really sweet lady in her late 50s who has been a public health nurse her entire life and is obviously very passionate about what she does. She is teaching all 3 of our nursing classes in SA: 1) Senior Seminar: Ethics &
Issues in Healthcare, 2) Nursing Research, and 3) Community Health Nursing. We spent the entire day going over our Ethics syllabus, which looks like it's going to be an incredibly challenging but interesting class. I'm hoping that it will answer some of my many unanswered questions about the ethical side of nursing.
Issues in Healthcare, 2) Nursing Research, and 3) Community Health Nursing. We spent the entire day going over our Ethics syllabus, which looks like it's going to be an incredibly challenging but interesting class. I'm hoping that it will answer some of my many unanswered questions about the ethical side of nursing.On Wednesday, 9/3, we spent the entire class (which, fortunately, is only from 9AM-1PM) on Nursing Research. It appears that we're pretty much on our own in regards to this course (which was supposed to be online but got changed because of the unreliable internet here); we're going to spend the majority of our classtime on Ethics. Going over the syllabus was one of the most stressful things ever because our professor didn't make it herself and wasn't very clear about what most of the assignments/papers even were, but one of the sayings we have here is TIA (This is Africa!); we're all just going to have to be super flexible and roll with the punches. It's a hard thing for me to get used to since I'm such an organized person (as most of the nursing majors here are); however, I think it's going to be really good for me to learn to be a little more relaxed about life when I don't know what's going on and trust that God will take care of things.
Thursday, 9/4, was one of the best days in Cape Town yet. Tuesdays and Thursdays are our "excursion days" for the H & C of SA class, while MWF are reserved for classtime. Today's excursion was a 3-4 hour walking tour of Cape Town called "Footsteps to Freedom." It was the first absolutely gorgeous day since we had arrived: clear blue skies and temperatures up from the frigid 30s/40s to a warm 70-75 degrees. We walked to the train station (only a 5 min. walk from Cornerstone), took it downtown (30 min train ride), and started our walking tour at the Leerdam Castle. This castle was the meeting point for the British, Dutch, and other colonists arriving in SA as well as a holding place for imported slaves. We walked all around the city, which is surrounded by the most beautiful mountains: Devil's Point, Table Mountain, and Lion'
s Head. We visited places like City Hall where Melson Mandela gave his 1st speech after being released from prison; District 6 Museum, which is the area where the government forcefully removed over 60,000 freed slaves/immigrants during apartheid; St. George's Cathedral, which a beautiful old church where Archbishop Desmond Tutu preached out against apartheid; and Goverment Avenue where Parliament, the National Library of SA, the President's home, beautiful Company Gardens, and other government buildings were located. At the end of our tour, we got to briefly walk around Green Market Square, which is a huge open air market in the middle of the city. I bargained a purse down from R120 to R80, which is about $12! It was an incredible day. We were finally released from our "prison" at Cornerstone and got to experience the culture and history of this country.
s Head. We visited places like City Hall where Melson Mandela gave his 1st speech after being released from prison; District 6 Museum, which is the area where the government forcefully removed over 60,000 freed slaves/immigrants during apartheid; St. George's Cathedral, which a beautiful old church where Archbishop Desmond Tutu preached out against apartheid; and Goverment Avenue where Parliament, the National Library of SA, the President's home, beautiful Company Gardens, and other government buildings were located. At the end of our tour, we got to briefly walk around Green Market Square, which is a huge open air market in the middle of the city. I bargained a purse down from R120 to R80, which is about $12! It was an incredible day. We were finally released from our "prison" at Cornerstone and got to experience the culture and history of this country. Friday, 9/5, was a pretty low key day. We had H & C of SA all morning and afternoon, went to lunch and shopping at the nearby mall, and then hung out at the dorms for the rest of the night. Saturday, 9/6, was another incredible day out in Cape Town. After eating brunch at Juicy Lucy, a health food restaurant at the mall (with REALLY good fresh-squeezed OJ), I drove with my mentor Emma and some other girls to the sea (sea=ocean in SA). There were 2 other cars full of students/mentors that followed us. The law enforcement here isn't strict at all in comparison to LA. Seatbelts are not a big deal, nor are the number of people in your car, so we usually stuff 7-8 people in a tiny 5 person car. It's p
retty funny. We got lost along the way, but finally found Green Point beach. It was supposed to have a huge open air market, but they got rid of it ever since they started reconstructing this stadium it's next to for the world cup (soccer) 2010. It's a big deal everywhere in SA and there's a lot of construction going on already. So we ended up walking along the beach instead, which I didn't mind at all. It was an absolutely beatuful day. and we even saw a whale! I couldn't get any pictures because it was too far away for my camera, but it was an incredible thing just to watch. We then drove down to Sea Point beach and climbed on all of the huge boulders and took a bunch of pictures. After that, we went to the Waterfront mall, which reminded me of South Coast Plaza on the inside and San Francisco on the outside. It was an extremely high-end tourist spot on the edge of this beatufiul warf/bay. I spent the rest of that night writing an amazing nursing paper (not) and hanging out with people in the dorm.
retty funny. We got lost along the way, but finally found Green Point beach. It was supposed to have a huge open air market, but they got rid of it ever since they started reconstructing this stadium it's next to for the world cup (soccer) 2010. It's a big deal everywhere in SA and there's a lot of construction going on already. So we ended up walking along the beach instead, which I didn't mind at all. It was an absolutely beatuful day. and we even saw a whale! I couldn't get any pictures because it was too far away for my camera, but it was an incredible thing just to watch. We then drove down to Sea Point beach and climbed on all of the huge boulders and took a bunch of pictures. After that, we went to the Waterfront mall, which reminded me of South Coast Plaza on the inside and San Francisco on the outside. It was an extremely high-end tourist spot on the edge of this beatufiul warf/bay. I spent the rest of that night writing an amazing nursing paper (not) and hanging out with people in the dorm. Today, 9/7, has been a relaxing day as well (which was perfect because it allowed me to write this super long blog) because the weather completely turned on us and is back to the windy, cold, raininess that greeted us a week ago. So that concludes my first week in SA. Now can you see why it has seemed a little longer than just a week? Please pray that I continue to adjust to the new culture, as I'm still feeling some separation anxiety from everyone back home. Additionally, pray for endurance in my school work, which is already starting to overwhelm me. I love you and miss you all!
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