A Day in the Life at AE

In case you were wondering what daily life is like for me here in South Africa, I'll tell you!

We keep a vey busy schedule, and in fact many people are feeling exhausted already after only 3 1/2 weeks. The classes are intense because we finish them in just 6 weeks (because the second half of the semester is focused on community outreach). That means we're already halfway done with the main academic portion of the semester!

Weekdays are full of classes and clinicals, homework, and a little bit of fun.


Weekends are full of field trips and attending a local church, homework, and a little bit more fun.

Meals are always at the same set times. Breakfast at 7:30am, morning tea at 10:30am, lunch at 1:00pm, afternoon tea at 4:00pm, and dinner at 6:00pm.

Classes are different for everyone because there's 3 classes that are required, plus 5 different electives to choose from. For nursing, we have 3 nursing classes plus 2 of the required ones. My schedule goes like this:

Monday: Chapel, History & Culture of SA, Community Health, Ethics. Then a little break. Then Zulu at night.

Tuesday: Clinical from 7:30am to 4:00pm.

Wednesday: Free day! No class!! (But everything is due on Wednesdays for our online Research class)

Thursday: Clinical plus Post Conference.

Friday: Chapel, then Ethics until 4:00pm.

Saturday: As I mentioned, we go on field trips almost every Saturday. We've done a lot of fun ones already, which I'll do separate posts on soon.


Sunday: We can choose between 4 different local churches to attend in the morning. I really like going to them because it gives us a way to connect with the community, as well as a glimpse of South African culture. So far I've been to a predominantly White church and two predominantly Indian churches. All were very welcoming and very glad to have us. They were pretty similar to "typical" American churches, so I felt very comfortable at all of them.

It's a pretty easy routine to get used to, but it's also very demanding. I feel like we're always in class or on the go, but I'm not complaining. Our classes only last for 6 weeks (except for a couple that are 10 weeks), and who else gets to go on such amazing field trips every weekend? I wouldn't trade this experience for anything!

Word of the day: "Angizwa" (on-geeze-wah) means "I don't understand"