Round here

“Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late.
I can’t see nothin’, nothin’, around here
You catch me if I’m fallin’
You catch me if I’m fallin’
You catch me if I’m fallin’ cos I’m fallin’ down on here
I said I’m under the gun around here
Oh man I said I’m under the gun around here”

-Counting Crows “Round here”

It’s 11pm and I’m desperately trying to study for an exam I have tomorrow in WDE which in Afrikaans stands for Pasture Science and Rangeland Management, or something. Stocking rate, stocking intensity, grazing capacity, and carrying capacity are all running together at this hour and leading me to think…why the heck am I studying this crap? I guess the short answer is that “they” are making me. I can’t get that paper without it…and so I study. But since I can’t put anything else in right now I’m going to give it a rest (much like you would do to a pasture in a rotational grazing cycle) and am going to move on to blogging. I’ve been thinking about writing for ages now, but thought I had nothing important to talk about.

While it’s true that I don’t necessarily have large exciting topics to expand upon I guess my own little daily disasters have some merit. My daily disasters (no Philipp family…not running out of toilet paper or a runaway steam roller) mostly involve making sure I get to the dining hall before they close, ensuring I have enough small change to buy scalpel blades and rubber gloves for anatomy class, and making sure my afternoon nap doesn’t last 5 hours…cos that’s a waste of precious study time. Like I said, I thought I didn’t have much to talk about, but when I recently was asked what was happening by a Rotarian at home…I realized I have a lot to say.

As you (hopefully) all know I’m sprouting roots at the veterinary school here in Pretoria. What does that mean? Well, mostly lots and lots of studying. Coffee and noontime naps (if I can get them) are my new best friends. Class starts at 7:30 am sharp and studying sometimes lasts until 3am…energy is at a premium around here. Luckily we are done with lectures for the semester, so my mornings are my own again. What a treat! We are just finishing up our first semester here and, boy, has it been a doozie! Barring Dr. Beverly’s Animal Physiology class at U of IL and Organic Chemistry…I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard at school in my life. It’s been tough to try and discipline myself back into the world of hardcore school. But if there’s one thing I know I’m good at…it’s school. So I’ve still been performing, just not up to optimal capabilities.

I have 2 ¼ exams under my belt at this point (I started writing this when I was taking WDE, which is now done!). Freedom from exams and school (temporarily) will happen on June 11^th (w/my last exam for the semester). Although my teachers for next semester have already assigned 2 major projects…which I didn’t think was possible, but I guess they have a death wish for us. Studying and taking tests here is the most strategic it has ever been for me in any university setting. The university system is such that most classes give out grades like this: 50% of your final grade is from the grades you get during the semester (i.e. semester tests and projects) and 50% of your grade comes from the final exam. Contrast that with what I was used to at home (85% of final grade = semester work, 15% of final grade = final exam…if you have to take the exam at all) and you sure have yourself a different terrain to navigate. Obviously I’ve been doing this “new” system for over a year now, so I’m starting to get the routine down. But overall I think it’s one of the most horrible ways to evaluate the knowledge handed down during the course of a semester. First if 50% of your grade is riding on the final exam then you really only have one chance to get things right (or one chance to royally screw yourself…if you are a pessimist). I just don’t think an “all or nothing” approach to evaluation is that great…and it sure doesn’t give a person much breathing room.

One nice thing that sort of compensates for this “all or nothing” evaluation process is that the grading percentage system is a bit different here. A 75% is called a distinction and is basically equivalent to an A. 50% is passing, just like at home. So if you really want to wow people here then you only need to get a 75%. And that says, to me, that you only need to know 75% of the work. Last year this system showed me that I could skip entire chapters of information (in a pinch) and still get 75% or above on tests/exams. That is completely unbelievable to me! But my little strategy worked…I mean I’m in vet school after all. The emphasis here is more on just “passing,” i.e. getting a 50%. Which can be an uphill mission in its own right. Plenty of people fail classes all the time. This emphasis on simply passing is even heavier in a rigorous setting like veterinary school. There’s a saying on this campus that if you get a 50% then good for you. 51%, you worked too hard. Now that seemed unbelievable and ridiculous to me…until I got here. There is simply too much work (unless you have super human strength) to get through all the information given to us, and to know it well. I think that becomes more apparent in the years ahead (right now I think they are taking it easy on us), but I’m still finding it hard to keep up with all the work being dished out to us. I am passing all my classes right now, but I definitely don’t have higher than a 65% in any of my classes. I don’t even know if I have above 60% in any of my classes. I am comforted by something my dad said to me ages ago: Lynsee, they still call the person that graduates at the bottom of their class ‘doctor.’ Not like I want to be at the bottom…but the bottom is better than not being in the class at all.

At this campus if you fail a class then you fail the entire year. At the point I’m at right now, this means that you have to be considered in the re-selection process and if you get re-selected then you have to repeat the entire year. Once I get in the higher vet school years then it will mean that I will just have to repeat the year, but I won’t have to be considered for re-selection with prospective vet students. After the 3^rd year here, though, if you fail a subject (and consequently the year) then you get kicked out. Yikes! Failure is not an option…I’m getting too old to still be doing this school thing!

I failed my first test ever a few months ago and I'm sure it won't be my last failure on this campus. It was an anatomy/physiology/histology semester test on the brain. That would have been a hard test no matter what way you sliced it…but I also only studied for 2-3 days because my friend was visiting from the USA. It was a failure I took gracefully. 39% for only 2-3 days of studying the complex minutae of the brain isn’t too bad, believe me. Cos some people studied for weeks and still got a grade like that. Luckily that class is a year long subject and we have 8 semester tests to make up for any bad performance on one single test. I’ve been passing all the other tests, so I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble in the end. And it’s a subject I actually like so it’s not as hard to conjure up energy to study (like it is w/a subject like pasture management…).

I’m sorry I’ve spent all this time talking about the lame aspects of school. Alas, I have turned into the person I hate to meet in the hallways. The person who only asks you how your test went, how much have you studied, did you print the notes for such and such class yet?? There are too many people here only talking about school. I kind of hate it, but really it’s the one thing we all have in common and the one thing that makes up our own common daily disaster. So I guess I understand. I just wish sometimes we could find something else to talk about cos I’m pretty sure there was a day at some point in the past where my life was bigger than school. But that day is just a hazy mirage now…

And now some wacky, weird, wonderful parts of being in school. Yeah, seriously school is the only thing happening to me these days. I live on the campus, go to school here, spend late nights in the anatomy hall looking at specimens…and sometimes (like maybe once a week, if I’m lucky) do I leave this place. I promise there will be some non-school things at the end here…so just bear w/me.

Anatomy class aka VAP 300

My dissection group (L-R): Isabel, Jeanne, me, Glynis (Doris in the foreground)

VAP is the main class we are all taking this year. It’s a mixture of anatomy, physiology, and histology (the study of tissues). For the first 2 units we just had lectures, but now we are in the midst of dissecting our very own dog. Actually we have 2 dogs: 1 for muscles, 1 for nerves and blood vessels. Our muscle dog is called Doris and our nerve/blood vessel dog is Napolean (Blownapart or Tornapart…if we are feeling particularly long-winded). We also had some random rear leg that was given to us for the nerves/blood vessels. I called it Chopper because the leg was really small (like a terrier or something). The dogs are animals that were put down at shelters and such, so don’t think we have some army of vet students out patrolling the streets for specimens. Gross.

There was some debate as to what we should call our first dog. I suggested Doris because it’s the first name that came to me. We accepted it in the interim, with the hope of deciding on a cooler name. After a lot of input from various sources, the names “Patricia Delicia” (because our dog strips) and “Paris Hilton” (cos she takes off her clothes easily) were thrown around. But in the end…Doris stuck. 2 of my dissection partners are not happy with Doris as a name for our specimen…but honestly, it’s just a dead dog we are cutting up for study. I don’t think the name is all that important. They’ve tried to stick w/Patricia and/or Paris, but Doris keeps on keeping on as a name. Because I named the first dog I bowed out in naming the second dog and Napoleon became the accepted name of our nerve/blood vessel dog.

Our daily disasters in anatomy mostly involve breaking our gloves (which we call “getting pregnant”…think about it), making our scalpel blades dull after tons of cutting, transecting the wrong muscle or cutting in the wrong place, knowing that the muscle we ID’d as the Trapezius really is the Trapezius, and falling behind in our dissections. They keep us on a pretty rigorous schedule so we can get through all the assignments. Another major bummer is if you get a big fat dog cos you have to cut off all the fat before you get to any structures (and that takes a lot of time and blades). It also sucks to get a tiny dog because all the structures are super tiny…not cool if you are trying to locate A. circumflexa profunda brachii pudenda whatever. I find nerves and blood vessels to be annoying all the way around cos by the time you’ve gotten to that part of dissection your skills and information retention are pretty shot…and those nerves are freaking tiny (especially if you are working on a tiny specimen like Chopper). And we have to remember all the muscles and structures they innervate…plus the names…which are usually huge and Latin. D’oh!

I did learn recently that “pudenda” refers, in Latin, to something that is shameful. The nerves and blood vessels that run to the external genitalia of the dog are called the pudendal nerves/blood vessels (okay they have longer names, but you get the point). It’s interesting to think about the societal factors that came into something that seems so clean and pure…science.

Luckily I have pretty cool dissection partners. This is a blessing cos we spend between 1-5 hours a day dissecting. But tensions can still run high on some days. I named one of our partners “Wild Scalpel McGee” because she can be particularly reckless with her scalpel blade. She used to use her blade to point at things and sometimes the scalpel would just fly out of her hand after some clumsy maneuver. We used to always warn her to respect her blade (cos it’s damn sharp) but she typically has her head in a cloud and the warnings fell on deaf ears…until the day she cut her hand and had to get 5 stitches. She left her scalpel blade loose (!) in her bag and when she pulled out the lanyard w/her keys on it the blade flew out and cut her. She is less and less deserving of the title “Wild Scalpel McGee” these days…thankfully!

The anatomy hall itself is a pretty interesting (and creepy) place. If you ever need a good place to make a horror film…do I have a location for you! There is always some weird stuff in the refrigerator room where they keep our specimens after hours (yes we go in after class to dissect and go over the muscles/structures we have already dissected). Dead donkey parts, horses hanging from hooks attached to a track that runs around the ceiling, and even dead lions sometimes. My partner and I went in to review our muscles and came to find 2 dead lions. So we ran back to our dorm, got a camera, and took pictures as if we were wrestling them. Okay, I took pictures of my partner doing this. No way I was going to lie down w/a dead lion on a cold gurney for a photo op…unless my mom made me do it. I think the worst thing I’ve had to do there was dig for one of our legs in a big cement tub filled with water (and legs) outside in the pitch black w/a big metal hook. That was freaking disgusting. But I’m sure it’s just the beginning of an intimate and nasty relationship I will be fostering with the anatomy hall.

There’s a really cool museum in the anatomy hall that’s filled with demonstration dissections of various parts of various animal species. Like close up dissections of the head and stuff. They also have freaks of nature in there which are pretty cool. They have a skeleton of a pig that was born on the farms here without rear legs, some weird baboon skeleton, and a bulldog calf (I don’t know what that means exactly…and the description is in Afrikaans, so I won’t know for awhile). I even saw a baby elephant in a liquid filled box under one of the tables. After you get over the weird factor (it’s always quiet in there even when it’s filled with people), it’s a really awesome place to learn stuff cos the dissections are pretty good…and it’s quiet.

Another interesting part of anatomy is the bone box we were issued at the beginning of the semester. When I was first given this 3 foot by 1 foot wooden box I did what any student would do…used it as a foot rest under my desk. Then I realized that I was supposed to open it and use the bones inside to study the bones that were in the pretty pictures in my study notes. Aha! The boxes are really old and the other day I was just wondering how many students, over how many years, had smoothed their fingers over the various landmarks on the bones in the hopes of learning the internal map of the dog skeleton. Also my desk is really big and I can’t reach the window to close it when it gets cold…but a dog femur makes a really nice poking device. It’s like using a broom to change the channel on your TV only more anatomical!

And now onto more social creatures…those crazy Christians!

The campus I’m at is extremely Christian. I would have to pin it on the extreme religious fervor and conservatism of the Afrikaans people in general, but there may be other reasons for it too. For a secular American like myself, it can be a bit overwhelming at times. I guess I’m used to people sort of keeping their religion to themselves…and especially in a school setting. I may have had a different experience if I attended a university in the south, but I didn’t. I mean separation of church and state, right? Not in South Africa. There are prayer meeting flyers slipped under my door, announcements about prayer groups on the speaker system in our dorm (oh yeah…big brother is after me. There is a speaker box in my room…it sure freaked me out the first time someone spoke on it.), a computer program on our school computers that is all about the Bible, a Christian newsletter posted in the bathroom stalls, and plenty of other things. There is nowhere to turn that doesn’t have a cross pasted up. Heck some people even got baptized in our dormitory’s swimming pool on a chilly evening a few weeks ago. These people are relentless.

Most organizations here have a Christian slant to them…which is probably the thing that bothers me the most about the Christian presence on campus. I mean I don’t mind if religious people of any sort are out doing good things in the world, but if I also want to do good things then I don’t want to only have the option of doing them with Christians. Almost all the clubs doing things I’m interested in doing on an extracurricular basis are also Christian. D’oh! There’s a tutoring group that I started to volunteer for (until I realized I have no time for anything buy my own school work) that goes out to a local school to tutor kids in various subjects. Cool, right? I thought so too until everyone started praying before and after the first organizational meeting I went to. And when we went to the school we sang, prayed, and clapped for Jesus. I have a problem with that personally because it’s not me. I feel like I’m a liar if I’m not there with Jesus. I don’t want to undermine the Christian presence in front of the kids, but I also don’t want to pray and clap if it’s not my thing. Also I have some ideological beef with missionaries in general…but that’s for another time. This is one reason why Rotary is so cool…because there are no strings attached to their kindness. They don’t make you sing about Jesus so you can get their help. They just help.

There was a note that went around our classroom a few months ago about an outreach program going to Lesotho (a neighboring country). I was so psyched cos it sounded like a really cool opportunity. Until I thought about it and realized it was probably a Jesus outreach (w/a built in humanitarian component). I asked a girl next to me if this was a regular outreach or a Jesus outreach. She said she thought it was for Jesus, but wasn’t sure. I said that I wasn’t interested if it was for Jesus, but if it wasn’t then it sounded cool. About 20 minutes later the guy sitting next to me asked me why I asked if the outreach was for Jesus. And did I have a problem with that? I looked him up and down before answering, saw his humongous necklace of the cross, and proceeded to choose my words carefully. I told him that I wasn’t a religious person and didn’t think it was right that I go and carry the gospel to people if I wasn’t a believer myself. Then he started to ask me why I wasn’t a believer and all that jazz. This is when I got pissed off, but still chose my words carefully. I don’t mind being indoctrinated on the gospel of Jesus Christ (because no matter what you say, I’m not going to be won over like that)…but he could have at least waited until after class. Like I said, these people are relentless.

I guess this is a cultural difference I am adjusting to.

One nice thing about the Christians here is that they give out free coffee and tea on Wednesdays at tea time. We have a break in the late morning for tea. You don’t have to have tea at tea time…it’s just a 20 minute chance for us to get out of class. Before I knew anyone, I noticed that big group of people were giving out free coffee every Wednesday. Well, really I was drawn to the gigantic kettle that they use to pour hot water into the cups. Seriously, it’s the biggest kettle I’ve ever seen. It probably has like a 6L capacity or something. Huge! So I stopped to ask about it. They asked if I wanted free coffee and that was the start of a beautiful Wednesday relationship. I didn’t know a soul here at the time, so I was only too happy to have coffee and a chat with someone. It wasn’t until weeks later that I realized it was the churchy people. And at that point I didn’t care anymore…as long as there was still free coffee and cookies on Wednesdays. My one friend here thinks it’s the funniest thing that I go and get free coffee from them and then run away…but to me it’s just free coffee and a cookie. And since I’m becoming addicted to coffee…any excuse for more caffeine is welcome, even if it’s at the hands of Christians.

Recently we had a barn dance here. It was a straight up flashback to 6^th grade gym class and doing the do-si-do with Brandon Hernandez. Yikes! This was a dance held by our dorm that involved dressing up in your finest cowboy/girl gear and square/line dancing the night away. One girl has family in Texas and had the most ridiculous (but appropriate) fringed orange/fuschia get up. It was awesome in its gawdiness!! I thought it was kind of a hilarious theme for a dance, but maybe that was just me. People seemed to have fun square dancing (obviously they were never forced to do it in middle school) and getting drunk while sitting around on hay bales…so who am I to turn my nose up? One thing that was really annoying though is that everyone kept asking me if the dance made me feel like I was at home. To which I replied “Dude, I’m not from Texas!” Hey, here America is America is America to most folks. Nevermind that Illinois is wildly different to Texas or Rhode Island or Oregon.

On the American tip, there is apparently another American studying here. But I have yet to meet her. She’s in one of the classes above me. There’s a rumor that she’s also from the Chicago area, but I think people might have that confused. Like I said America is America is America to people here. It’s like a person coming up to me at home telling me they know someone in Africa…but when I ask what country they just return my question with a blank stare. Okay, maybe not exactly the same thing. I mean Africa is a place with over 50 countries and the USA is a place with 50 different states all sort of doing the same American thing. Okay (update) I have contact with the Chicagoland American girl. I sent her a text message the other day and it turns out she was born in Waukegan! Whoa! I’m going to meet up with her this week. I also found out there was another American here from Cali. I met her today (randomly) and had a nice long chat with her…it was so refreshing!

My histology teacher is also from the USA. Jersey to be exact. The first day we had class I just kept thinking to myself “Is this dude from America? No way!” I get really confused sometimes when I hear someone else speaking “American” here. I usually think to myself “wait I know that tongue…is that?…it is!” The teacher is a really great teacher and it’s nice to reminisce about submarine sandwiches (sandwiches are not popular here…people eat things like hand held pot pies instead) and root beer with someone. My teacher even said he makes his own root beer and that he’d hook me up here (oh yeah, there is no root beer here). He studied in Ames, Iowa at ISU and so he totally knows what’s up with the Midwest…which is pretty nice sometimes.

One really interesting thing I did in the last few months was to visit a township nearby my campus. If you will remember, townships are the “ghetto” areas of South Africa that black people were forced to live in under apartheid. Different tribal groups were forced onto different “homelands” regardless of whether or not they actually came from that region of the country. They are typically nearby cities/towns and during apartheid this facilitated cheap labor near big city centers without actually having to have black/colored/Indian people in the city (by white people). Nowadays they still serve as pools of labor but people aren’t forced to live there because of laws. Now they are forced to live there due to poor economic conditions cos it’s relatively cheap to stay in the townships. Housing, etc. They are still pretty rife with poverty, crime, and the like…although now everyone is free.

I’m seeing a guy now who is originally from the township right by my campus. It’s called Mabopane and was historically a place where Tswana people were made to stay. A lot of the workers at my campus (cleaning ladies, security guards, kitchen workers) come from this township. The guy I’m seeing (Kefilwe) invited me to come visit his family and check the place out. So, a few weeks ago I went to his family's home in the township to meet his people. It was my second trip there (previously I took my visiting USA friend there to chill with Kefilwe and his friends) but my first time staying overnight. It was a really good time!

I took a taxi there from my campus (it's about 20 minutes away) and it was pretty hilarious cos white people don't take taxis and especially don't take taxis to the "ghetto." The taxi ride was really fun because the driver was really fascinated by me. He kept looking at me (I was sitting just behind and to the left of him) and smiling. When I confronted him he was like “are you going to visit your boyfriend?” I asked what he thought. He replied that he thought I was. I said he was right and he just smiled and smiled. Then the guy sitting next to him also smiled his best giant smile. I asked the passenger if he was happy now, he said yes, and he proceeded to ask if I have any “friends.” Black men are really interested in dating white women here. It’s sort of like a fantasy they have or something. Like the something they can’t have, so they want it more. I told the guy that, regrettably, number 1 he lives in South Africa (so it’s almost impossible) and number 2 he lives in Pretoria North which is super Afrikaans (making it even more impossible). After that I just wished him luck.

When I was there I was like a celebrity. I spoke to these little girls on the side of the road and they were really excited that I was from the USA. As soon as I left them I saw one of them run off and tug at the coat of a man nearby...I know she was going to tell this person "oh my gosh...I just met someone from the USA!" People were even asking Kefilwe if he could hook them up with white girls like me. It's very rare for a white person to visit the townships here and especially not as the girlfriend of someone living there. It sounds ridiculous, but I think the people in Kefilwe's neighborhood think that he has super powers for getting a white girl and for getting her to visit his home. It’s going to take a long time before I get sick of messing with people’s heads regarding racial ideas here…a LONG time.

Kefilwe's family was really cool and very excited to meet me. They were having some sort of ceremony or gathering (I missed that part) so there were TONS of people around having a good time and drinking homemade African beer (seriously the nastiest beer I’ve ever tasted, but when in Rome…). The beer is usually made from fermented sorghum (you can buy the grains at most grocery stores), has a milky consistency, and usually small chunks or fibers from the grain you make it from. It makes you really drunk (because it’s not refined) and leaves you feeling very bad the next day if you drink too much. There’s a brand of beer called Leopard Beer that is a commercialized version of this homemade brew. It’s slogan is “the one with punch.” I kept joking that it did have punch, but only the next morning when you woke up. The joke went over well. People all drink from the same container (traditionally a calabash, but now just about any tub or whatever you can find in your house. The one we used was an ice cream container that said “Only Jesus Saves” on it…appropriate, huh?) and there is a special method for drinking it. You take the container and swirl it around a bit before taking a sip. I think it helps to mix it up so that the chunks/fibers don’t all settle to the bottom. Since I had drank the beer before I knew the procedure and I think people were dually impressed that this random white girl knew how to drink beer properly. If there’s another thing I’m good at…it could also be claimed that I know how to drink a beer properly. School and beer as my specialties…do I smell a student?? This type of beer is traditional, but also during apartheid it had a place because black people weren’t allowed to have regular beer (or something like that). So they made their own. Beer always finds a way!

It was sort of overwhelming to meet Kefilwe’s family cos people have really huge extended family groups...so I met lots and lots of sisters, aunties, uncles, and other people. Plus neighbors are often considered part of the family, so the “family” might not just be blood-related people. It was hard to keep everyone together. But people were really nice…even the guy who kept speaking to me only in Afrikaans (cos I’m white, so I am supposed to know Afrikaans). And the auntie who is the matriarch really liked me...and she's apparently a hard person to please. Kefilwe said that she's the one who holds back the cows (for paying bride price to the bride's family) if she doesn't like the woman in question...so he said it was very good that she liked me!

The best part of going to visit Kefilwe's home was that, ironically, it made me feel the most at home than any other place I've been in South Africa. At times I feel incredibly hindered here. Not free. It's because of the security situation in this country. I have to do things during the day (if I do them alone) or in groups. I can't afford (for my safety) to be independent like I am at home. I miss the peaceful streets of Urbana so much sometimes. I miss being able to walk to downtown Urbana, go to the library, have a meal at Strawberry Fields (although I heard the deli counter was no closed in the interest of progress, d’oh!...no more fabulous garlicy humus!!), and then catching a bus to downtown Champaign to do whatever. As dumb as it sounds, I really miss taking a walk in the neighborhood at night...going to see my tree at Oregon and McCullough, etc. When I was in Kefilwe's neighborhood we just wandered around at night visiting his friends...just like I would do in Urbana on any given day. We sat outside his home, greeted people walking by. Went to his spots. Listened to music like what my friends and I at home listen to. It was refreshing.

So although most people would say I was in the most danger there (being in the ghetto) and the most different from all the people there...I really felt the most at home and safer then what I would feel most times. I often get those types of paradoxical feelings here such that places where I'm supposed to feel/be the most different actually make me feel the most comfortable and vice versa (where I should feel included, I feel strange). And although I know it was "dangerous" for me to be walking the streets of the ghetto at night...I don't think we were in that much danger. One guy even told me as we were walking by that I should feel at home here and that no one would hurt me because people would be looking out for me as long as I was with Kefilwe. I really appreciated that. And it's the type of reaction I've gotten so many times when I've been in rough places in South Africa. That's why I get really mad when white people here tell me how foolish I am for endangering my life by going to these places and doing these things. They say that because of what they've heard on the news...not by experience. And my experiences have always been positive. And not positive because nothing happens...positive because people in those places have actively reached out to me and offered comfort, support, and protection.

On a more philosophical note…I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching these days. Which has been a bit weird for me. I feel a hesitation while I stand at the altar of my goals as opposed to joy, a sense of accomplishment, etc. It’s so strange. Like I’ve been planning and working towards getting into veterinary school my whole life, and now that I’m here I’m feeling doubts as to whether or not this is still for me. I don’t know if it is the intense work load and stress or the indication of a deeper doubt within myself. After speaking to one of the other American girls today, I learned that this feeling is totally normal. Especially at the place we are in. The place I live and go to school isn’t exactly the nicest. I can’t even say I like it really, but at this point I’ve sort of got to keep plugging or give up and go home. I’m not ready to give up yet!

I’ve also had to still do a lot of adjusting here. I know I sort of talked about this in the last posts I’ve done. The atmosphere here is really tough on me. I don’t feel free here for so many reasons: school, my geographical isolation, low money resources, no car, etc. I don’t really have good friends yet and consequently I don’t really have a network here when I need an emotional pick me up…but I’m working on that. It’s really tough. Some days I cry for no reason (which will never stop freaking me out) and feel really down. And then there’s all that “do I still want to be doing this” stuff floating around my head…which adds to the difficulty of staying positive. Like if I’m doing all this stuff…it will be worth it in the end if I get what I want. But these days I’m not even sure of what I want anymore. It’s really tough. Plus I’m surrounded 24/7 by similarly stressed out students who sometimes can’t think of anything more constructive to talk about except more and more school and stuff like “am I passing?” I really need to find some sort of outlet that isn’t school cos life is damn depressing when vet school is all that your life entails.

On a lighter note…I got a haircut. And it looks damn good. Even guys were telling me how bad ass it looks. I’m still digging it after at least a month of short locks. I’ve enclosed a photo below for reference. Enjoy it!

So that’s life on the farm…literally. I have to go study for more exams. Tomorrow I’m being tested on my pig handling proficiency, followed by sheep the next day, and cows the next day. Joy joy joy.

For those of you who may have heard about xenophobic attacks on people here in South Africa…please know that I’m safe and everything is okay w/me on that front. The attacks are directed primarily at people from the surrounding African countries and are taking place in the townships and central parts in the city of Joburg. I have spent too much time talking about other stuff to really give this topic a good turn (maybe I’ll talk about it in another post, soon). But if you want some South African information on the attacks (why, where, how), then go to: 24.com (it’s a South African news website).

And send my mom good vibes! She is coming to South Africa in 2 weeks for her first adventure off the continent we call home. I’m so proud of her and I know we are going to have a good time. More to follow…in bloggy form of course!

Please send me an email to bring me up to speed on your lives…as I’ve now spent like 10 pages making you hear my tales of vet school weirdness

Keep the faith and spread it gently

Much love

Lynsee