“You wrote a 200 page paper?... That’s almost as hard as Zulu”

We’re finally on campus and all settled in! On Sunday we flew into Durban and were greeted by Reg, who is in charge of API (Azusa Pacific International, South Africa). Then all 29 of us loaded our luggage and ourselves into a couple vans for the hour drive to Pietermaritzburg. It was a beautiful drive! It’s so green and there are so many different types of trees and flowers everywhere. We were so excited when we saw the sign for African Enterprise, which is the name of the conference center that we stay at! First, we got assigned to our rooms. We’re staying in these cute little chalets that have 2 floors and 4 rooms per floor (on each floor there are 2 double rooms and 2 single rooms). I have a room to myself on the second floor and it’s incredible!! The room itself is nice and cozy… very simple, which is just what we need… but then I looked out the window!! Oh my goodness, I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Right outside my window is some of the greenest grass and trees I’ve ever seen, oh wait and a WATERFALL!!!! It’s about 20-something feet (I think, I honestly have no idea). And I get to fall asleep to the sound of it every single night! Okay I know you’re all jealous so I’ll stop bragging =)

The rest of Sunday was just filled with orientation and a couple of us explored the grounds, which are absolutely gorgeous! On Monday we started our day off with chapel, which in this small community was amazing. After chapel we had a tea break (yup, this is heaven). We get 2 tea breaks a day. One at 10:30 AM and one at 4:00 PM, it’s a rough life haha. After tea, the 9 nursing majors on campus got to meet our professors and look at our schedules. We get to start in the clinics on Thursday, which I am so stoked about! After our 4 PM tea break all 29 of us got to go to introductory isiZulu, which is an introduction to the language, Zulu, enough for us to have very limited conversations… mostly greetings. Um can I just tell you that Zulu is extremely difficult, and that’s an understatement. That is where the title of this post came from haha. Here’s a little example of a simple greeting formula basically saying hello, how are you, and good.

Sawubona
Yebo, sawubona
Unjani?
Ngisaphila. Wena unjani?
Nami ngiyaphila
Kuhle. Ngiyajabula ukuzwa lokho.

And on top of that there are different clicks for c’s, q’s, and x’s. I can’t even being to try and explain them, but it’s an adventure to say the least! And now today’s Tuesday! We had the introduction to history and culture of South Africa, and a man named, Michael Cassidy, who is the CEO of African Enterprise, told us a summary of South African history. It was really interesting and I can’t wait to learn more in our weekly class. After that we had Community health (nursing) and talked about the history of nursing in South Africa. The differences in the between the scope of practices for U.S. nurses and S.A. nurses is really fascinating. When they complete their 4 years of nursing studies, they graduate with being certified in midwifery, psychiatric nursing, and community nursing. And then we talked about our clinic sites, which we get to visit Thursday!!!!!! I can’t wait to get out into the community and learn more about the health care over here. I’ll probably blog again on Thursday about my experiences!

I am just absolutely loving it here! I was so nervous to leave at first, but I can’t imagine not doing this now. It’s hard being away from all my friends and family and people that I love, but I know that this is where God wants me. I can already tell He’s going to teach all 29 of us amazing things, and I can’t wait to see how we all change over the next couple of months. And a little side note… everyone here this semester is incredible and I can’t wait to get to know them more!

I hope you are all doing well at home!!! I miss you all a lot, so come visit =)

God bless!