Two weeks to go!

In exactly two weeks, we'll be boarding an Africa-bound airplane. Two weeks couldn't be further away - and at the same time, it seems way too soon. So much to do before we get on that plane!

This week we began the lecture portion of N340, Community Health Nursing. While our classmates started their Community Health clinical rotations, the students going to Botswana have Tuesday and Thursday clincal days off for the next few weeks.

We're not worried though - with three clinical days a week (instead of the standard two), we'll more than make up for lost time when we start at our clinical sites in Gabarone.

We also were fortunate to meet our clinical instructor this week - the School of Nursing brought her out from Oregon spefically to meet us and the other course faculty. She's had a lot of expereince working in Botswana, and she seems as excited as we are for the experience. I think she's going to be a great resource for us.

That is vital, considering we're heading to a place where resources of all kinds can be scarce. Case in point: in our meeting, one of the things we discused was the possiblity that some of our clinical sites will probably be low on vital supplies like gloves and bandages. Our instructor suggested that we bring our own gloves and big bottles of hand sanitizer.

We're entertaining the idea of reaching out to friends and family in a sort of mini-fundraiser, in order to purchase extra supplies to take with us and leave at our clinical sites. More on that soon!