Caught in Between

Whoa……..is it really August 22nd??? Wasn’t it just May 16th, the start of summer and the end of exams? Sheesh time is just relentless. So much has happened this summer and I feel like I wasn’t awake for half of it…that’s how fast things have happened. I will do my best to spare you a long drawn out overly detailed entry about my summer so here we go!

I wrote about my internship in my last 2 entries, so I won’t go into all those details ( here: Working Day and Night and  We Are the World ).

But I will say that I will be forever grateful that I got to participate in the Summer Enrichment Program at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Not only was everything paid for and a stipend given, I got to meet amazing students passionate about public health, network with prominent health policy individuals, put theory into practice, get w free Princeton Review GRE prep course, see how it felt to be away from home for the first time, learn a lot about myself, and make connections that will hopefully help me in the future.All of the projects I mentioned I was working on got finished (thank God) and I was given a wonderful send off, complete with pizza, Ben n Jerrys, and an opportunity to see half of Harold and Kumar 3 being filmed in downtown Detroit (I’m not a fan of those movies at all buttttt it was cool seeing filming occurring).

"Wall Street" for Harold and Kumar...guess it was supposed to be Christmas time

the lovely ladies with whom I worked this summer

I am still not sure what I want to do careerwise, but I do know that my experiences will serve me well in the coming months and years as I continue my journey to find what I like. =D I know more about giving presentations and the importance of being able to know what you’re talking about and supporting your information, and so much more. Even now, when I hear something about health policy, I pay more attention to it and even try to relate to it because of the internship. Yay!

This internship took up most of the summer but I did get to fit a nice NYC trip in…my fam is originally from Brooklyn, NY and my dad still lives there, so my sis and I went to visit him. I decided to be adventurous and see my first Broadway show…but I wasn’t willing to pay full price. I did some research (ie Google and talking to Bway veteran atendees) and ended up getting killer Orchestra seats for 40 bucks to “In the Heights.”

Ok..so maybe I wanted to see the show because my going on 6 years celeb crush, Corbin Bleu, was starring in it…fine. BUT in my defense it was an amazing show with an amazing score and he wasn’t even my fav character. I would definitely see it again because it was so modern…a story about Dominicans living in Washington Heights, trying to find a place for their culture while still trying to find themselves, a coming of age type thing I suppose. Predictable but hilarious (plus it won 4 Tonys).

set of "In the Heights" at the Rodgers

The best part is that I actually got to meet him! We chatted for a minute or 2 and then I asked for another pic…call me weird but hey imagine meeting your fav celeb…yea don’t judge me. =P I have pics and a signed PlayBill with his signature along with everyone else’s…so I can say my first NYC Broadway adventure was a total success. =D

signed PlayBill and yea...he signed my phone too LOL

We look good together!

Plus I got to see an old friend whom I haven’t seen in 7 months, and we romped around the city together too and caught up on things. PLUSPLUS I learned a lot about my family…I am half  Grenadian (island in the Caribbean) and I don’t know that side of my family too well. I got to see more culture and learn more about my dad’s side of the family…albeit I didn’t WANT to learn some things but it was a sign that I am growing up and with growing up comes knowing your family on a less superficial level.

So as of now, I have to do many things before school starts…order books (OOPS), prepare for leadership with my Christian fellowship, get my mindset right for school, get a commuting schedule  in place as it looks like I will be driving back and forth each day ( =(  ),  and job searching. So I will be busy until school starts, it seems. Can you feel it? school is in the air!

Until next time!

-Dominique

I’m supposed to be writing a blog entry that is a look back at my fabulous summer.

That fabulous summer where I interned at the Global Business Coalition (on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria). An internship that I just finished yesterday.

And it was great. I got to listen in on calls with my supervisors to Stop TB, Millennium Villages Project, International Labor Organization, Partners in Health, and lots of other key players in public health. I got to e-mail back and forth with the South Africa office while assisting on the planning for an October conference in South Africa on TB. I learned acronyms that I never knew before that now seem like everyday terms: CSR, PPP, ICT, ROI, PS, PDP, COB, etc.*. And, of course, my favorite: JK (that would be the office acronym for me). I kept myself busy and met some fabulous undergraduate and graduate interns from all different schools: Georgetown, Columbia, Nortre Dame, and Tufts. And I got a new appreciation for New York City. Seeing the WTC (I think I’m getting addicted to acronyms) being rebuilt is one of the most inspiring sites. I’m so glad I got to see it every work day. I can’t believe the summer is over.

I’m also supposed to be writing about what I’m looking forward to in the coming academic year…as a senior!

I’m looking forward to TONS. But I really can’t think about all of that yet until I get through the next week: I drive down by myself on Tuesday, stay at a friend’s apartment that night, move-in on Wednesday to an unfurnished studio apartment – which I’ve never seen before (I’m surprised I haven’t had nightmares of carrying a mattress down N. Charles), and that exact same day I have an orientation at JHSPH, and, well, the very next day I’ll be taking classes at JHSPH (as a senior public health major, it is a requirement to take classes at the graduate school). Throw in a few meetings to get through junior clearance, declare my minor, get my study abroad credits transferred and I think I’ll be keeping myself busy.

Stressed? A little. Yes, I’ll be running around like a madman (madwoman?) next week. But I’m taking advice from the most important people in my life: my family. My dad’s advice? “It’s OK to flirt a little with boys if it helps you set-up your apartment…just not too much that you lose your virtues.” My grandma’s advice: “Remember to sleep. Remember that the next stressful week (or two) will end.”

My advice to the class of 2014: Don’t pack too many t-shirts. You’ll be getting 983483 more (that’s no exaggeration).

Am I ready? More ready than ever before. Well, except for one thing:

I need to get this current pile:

Into a pile that looks more like the meticulously built and planned pile that I had three years ago as an incoming freshman:

Notice how the current one doesn’t have any clothes in it. Yeah, that’s a problem. I think I’ve finally convinced myself that it won’t come magically. I should probably get on that…

- Jessica

* In case you’re interested: Corporate Social Responsibility, Public-Private Partnerships, Information Communication Technologies, Return on Investment, Private Sector, Product Development Partnerships, Close of Business.

In the spirit of everyone in the States going back to school these next few weeks, I thought maybe I could finally get around to talking about my classes at the University of Cape Town.

It’s strange enough to be a month into school in the middle of August, but everything from the classrooms to the professors have been totally different here. I’m taking four courses–Medicine in the Making of Modern South Africa, Third World Politics, History of Southern Africa in the 20th Century, and a really interesting Sociology course called Race, Class & Gender.

my lovely new school!

Third World Politics talks about the idea of the Third World, how it developed over the last 100 years, resistance to being labeled “third world” and then looks at case studies of Brazil & South Africa.

Medicine in the Making of Modern South Africa is really interesting. I have a great old professor who manages to make even the more boring topics entertaining just by the way he speaks–he’s so excited about Public Health, it makes it a very interesting class to attend. We’ve talked about the development of biomedicine and traditional healing, medical history in the Cape Colony, and public health approaches to the AIDS epidemic, amongst other things. This is definitely one of my favorite classes at UCT.

History of Southern Africa is admittedly not my favorite–between being at 10 am and having a professor who relies a little heavily on the slide projector, it’s not the best. It’s interesting to learn about South Africa beyond and before apartheid, though.

Race, Class & Gender is my first sociology class, and it’s amazing! We talk about the social construction of the idea of race, the history of prejudice and racism in South Africa, and I’ve gotten a way better understanding of the extraordinarily complex racial hierarchy here.

Today in my Race, Class & Gender “tutorial” (UCT-speak for section) we were discussing the idea of “everyday racism.” The tutor stood up and asked if the Americans in the class would mind answering a few questions about racism in the US. We agreed, not sure what to expect, and spent the next five minutes explaining to a boy from Jo’Burg precisely what a redneck was. After using the phrases “farmer’s tan” and “y’all” in the space of 30 seconds, we realized we had totally lost him, and the class dissolved into laughter. I got asked if there was “anything rural” in America, what the public schools were like, and what the Midwest was. We didn’t ever really get to the point of actually discussing racism in the US, but it was a better learning experience for both groups than any class could have given us. It was funny to realize their only conception of the US came from shows like The Wire, rappers, and American magazines–no wonder we aren’t so popular internationally.

I can’t say I have experiences like that every day in class here, but it is incredibly different. It’s so interesting to be able to study American events from a non-Western perspective, to be a minority in a class, hear four or five languages of chatter before people settle down. It’s overwhelming to realize I don’t understand any of the cultural references, and probably won’t unless I move here. It’s an odd experience in a country with no language barrier to hear something and immediately have to turn to the student next to me, asking what they meant.

I didn’t realize how much background knowledge every class assumes you have. Not academically, necessarily, but culturally. No teacher is going to stop a class to explain the difference between coloured and mixed race, or that “Zim” is short for Zimbabwe and no one really calls it Zimbabwe anyway, or where exactly Pretoria is, or what a certain type of food is. Often someone will tell a story and I’ll have no idea whether this event occurred at a bar, a gas station, a restaurant, or in their neighborhood at home. Imagine not knowing what McDonalds, Starbucks, Oklahoma, Chicago and NBC are, not knowing who the president, Britney Spears, the Kennedys and Donald Duck are, and not knowing what it means to be “a New Yorker” or “Southern,” transfer that to South African culture, and you’ll have an idea of how confusing it can be.

Despite being slightly confused a lot of the time, I’m really enjoying going to school somewhere else. It’s totally different from Hopkins. There are over 20,000 students, I take a bus to campus, the exams count for almost all of your grade, and a 75 is considered “top marks.” I miss Hopkins a little sometimes (particularly if I can’t find the building my class is supposed to be in, or don’t know where to get coffee) and it does feel a lot like being a freshman again, but I love it here.

If you’re about to head off to Hopkins, I’m so jealous! I hope you love it! You will. For everyone else, have a wonderful start to the school year!

Lauren

This past weekend my friends and I rented a car, filled it to the brim with stuff, and went on an adventure across the Southern coast of Africa, otherwise known as the Garden Route. It was an amazing road trip and we got the chance to stop by a number of really cool cities along the way, but it was definitely a “journey is the destination” kind of trip, involving lots of driving, and a few harrowing moments on the highway.

This is all one lane on SA’s N2 highway. Bold move.

It turns out that it’s common practice in South Africa to use the lane of oncoming traffic to pass people when they’re not going as fast as you’d like them to–which, in our ancient rented Kia, happened to be us a lot of the time. We managed to nail the etiquette of this process though, and by the end of this trip we were passing cars like a pro. We figured out that flashing your brights at someone makes them move over into the shoulder, and once you pass you should always put your hazard lights on for a few seconds to thank them. It sped up the journey, but made it feel a bit like a video game at times.

We stopped by Mossel Bay, Wilderness, Knysna, Jeffrey’s Bay and Plettenberg Bay along the way. We were lucky enough to have a three day weekend at UCT (thank you, national women’s day) so we headed out on Friday morning with barely any plans, except the vague idea of maybe making it all the way to Port Elizabeth. We hadn’t booked a single hostel, and our research consisted of a quippy “Coast to Coast” and a few other guide books

I took the first shift of driving, my friend Stewart narrated our journey from the passenger seat, and my fellow Hopkins pal Pearl was our official photographer in the backseat. Five hours later we were in Mossel Bay, searching for the hostel we had booked just minutes before. We stumbled out of our car at the beach, headed to dinner at a Cuban restaurant, and spent the night at a crazy old train-turned hostel. The next morning we headed off to Knysna, by way of Wilderness, a stop at the beach, and a detour through a coffee shop.

The amazing cheese shop. “Lekker” is Afrikaans for “nice.”

Sunday was rainy, and we took the long drive out to Jeffrey’s Bay, the beach known for the ubiquitous dorm room poster, “In Search of the Perfect Wave.” Along the way we stopped at another highlight of the trip, a cheese farm on the side of the road where we were served possibly the best lunch ever by a friendly woman who obliged our requests to take pictures and answered our many questions about the cheeses. We briefly considered bungee jumping–the world’s highest bungee is on the way to J’Bay–but decided to save it for a less rainy day. Jeffrey’s Bay was beautiful but insanely windy, and deserted.

Jeffrey’s Bay!

On the way home we stopped by Plettenberg Bay to break up the journey and get out of what had turned into a very nasty storm. Plettenberg Bay was one of the first places the Portuguese stopped at in South Africa, naming it “Baia Formosa.” It certainly lived up to it’s name, and it was a relaxing and lucky stop on the way home. After driving circles around Plett trying to find our hostel in the rainy night, we pulled a U-turn in the driveway of what turned out to be a cozy B&B we had picked up the brochure for earlier in the day, half-joking (we’d been staying in hostels for about $10 a night, certainly not real hotels). We ran inside, drenched, and begged for a room. A lovely woman led us to a room with heat, a hot shower, and comfy beds, where we proceeded to pass out for the next ten hours in preparation for the long drive back.

Pearl making a mad dash for the Indian Ocean.

As we finally got back to the city on Monday night I realized I’d been looking forward to getting “home” to Cape Town. We’ve all been here a month now, and this place really is starting to feel like home to me. Not that I don’t get the odd pangs of homesickness for my family, little NJ quirks, or things like American coffee, but I really do love South Africa. I’ve gotten to do so many amazing and strange things since I’ve been here, and this weekend just added to the list–driving on the “wrong” side of the road, stepping into the Indian Ocean, taking a real road trip, seeing ostriches. I’ll be heading up to Stellenbosch wine country this weekend, and we’ve all decided to take a trip to Botswana and Zambia for Spring Break in September! There’ll be more updates to come soon, hope everyone’s having a great end of summer!

-Lauren

Hope everyone’s having a great last month of summer!