Shawnda: Final thoughts

So…by the end of this trip I expected to be certain of which career path I was choosing and to be a different person.  I’m not sure if either worked out according to plan.

I think if anything, I have been assured that I am equally, and increasingly, passionate about medicine and public health.  I can see myself playing critical roles in both disciplines.  So, in the last month I have left of summer, I need to decide which death test I am going further in to debt for. 

I think I have yet to change many of my beautiful qualities:

• I still manage to crave and drink massive amounts of coffee
• I still have a ridiculous amount of dirty laundry; this time I’m still wearing it
• I still hate spiders and feet
• I am still obsessed with searching iTunes, and will go to drastic measures to do it
• I’m still pale.

What has changed?

• I like baths; preferably with 2 inches of hot water
• I can fall asleep before 1 am

Some of the luxuries I missed from home:

• Non-bran cereal
• Not-rooibos tea
• Pilot G-2 pens
• A ridiculously large selection of notebooks
• Blending in
• Not being proposed to or told if my skin were darker, I would look like a Motswana with a “nice African figure”

What will I miss?

• Street food
• The exchange rate
• Cheap groceries
• Combis
• Safaris
• Being greeted by everyone
• Speaking Setswana
• Walking everywhere
• Fatcakes, samp, pap, man sized lunch bars, and Toppers
• Bull & Bush nights
• Monkeys eating our food