First Day of Classes

Dear Kenya, 

Today was my first day of classes!!!

Woke up this morning at 5:45am to get ready for my meeting with the director of the program about our internships and then my first class of Swahili at 7:30am. My swahili professor, Fred, was a linguistics professor who taught French at USIU. He speaks fluently in 5 different languages! He was born an raised here in Nairobi but studied in Switzerland and Paris. He started the class like any other class at AU would. We went around the room and introduced ourselves and what we were studying. He then gave us a brief overview of topics that we would be covering in class. We learned that Swahili has 15 different dialects and that Swahili has recently become not only the national language but the official language of Kenya, along side English. Also learned that there are many different African languages that are dying. Because some people do not know their ancestor language, many people change their African names to Mary, Bob, Nancy etc (My fun facts of the day). We then learned some basic vocabulary. There are so many ways to say How are you? SO MANY! But I am really looking forward to learning how to speak Swahili. I am dedicating 15 minutes a day to practicing Swahili. By the time I get home I hope to be at least conversational. Lets see if it happens! 

The next class we had was Fundamentals of Epidemiology. The professor was adorable. She was sweet, kinda funny, and trying very hard to try to figure out where we are in our majors so she can alter the course so we can benefit from it. These professors that we have are masters or PhD professors. Therefore, they are attempting to alter whatever they can while staying within the AU requirements. I can tell that Epidemiology is going to be a tough one for me....MATH! Not too concerned though. This class was 3 hours long. Today, because its syllabus week, we got out very early. So the rest of the students and I walked around and had some lunch on the campus. The food was not too bad, but not the greatest we have had. We had an hour between this class and our next class, Community Health. We had met the professor for our Community Health class. He was witty but in a way serious.  He remembered our faces and tried to remember our names. Rather than having a lecture like we did in Epi, in our Community Health class we had a discussion about what we expected from this program, what we think community, family, household, health, and public health is. What we will be doing in this class is very new to me. We will be learning how to assess a study that we will create. In a week in November, the public health students and I will be living in a rural community for a week and conducting a survey on a certain topic (We don't know what that is yet). That is what we are looking forward to the most in this class. Because I have an interest in program planning, this is the class that will help me understand why certain programs are implemented in certain areas and why programs are successful and and unsuccessful. 

My classes so far have been intriguing so far. I am very excited to start and learn new things. For the first time I will be completely focused on my major and truly discovering what I would like to do as a career in this field. Until next time my rafiki! 

Love, 

Angie

P.S Missing you all!