Weekly Photo Challenge: Sea

I grew up by the ocean. Feeling the sand under my nails and scrabbling as the water tried to swallow my sandcastles was second nature to me. In the late summer months, after-school activities meant going to the beach. I am glad I have never had to live inland, but I am convinced that my

Weekly Photo Challenge: Culture

Two photo posts in a row! This week’s photo challenge with The Daily Post is about culture. YAY! I have seen a LOT of that these past four months. The most beautiful thing about culture and travel is not just learning to celebrate differences… but learning to appreciate what makes us the same. There was

Weekly Photo Challenge: Up

This week’s photo challenge (which expires soon!) with The Daily Post is titled “Up”. [Let the record state that I love that movie.] I have been sailing around the world for 106 days. Today we disembarked the ship. I feel that in these 106 days, I have looked to the sky more often than not.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Surprise!

It was Christmas! I love this holiday. And now Christmas is technically over, but it’s still in the air and our tree is still shining, and I’m still on a Christmassy high. Here are some pictures of the surprises of Christmas Eve (which is when we open our gifts), as prompted by The Daily Post.

Defining Moments of 2012: Med IV

Consider this a wrap-up post of sorts, in collaboration with The Daily Post’s Weekly Writing Challenge. It has been a big year for me, but also an incredibly tough and exhausting year. It’s nice to look back at what has taken place. I hope I have grown in some way, and I do hope that

Thankful, Semester at Sea and the Weekly Photo Challenge

I’m linking this up with The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge. The theme this week is is Thankful. As I mentioned before, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in South Africa. Nevertheless, I’ve attended a couple of Thanksgiving dinners before and I love the idea of some good gratefulness. I am inclined to become a little whiny.

Green Landscapes

Linking up with The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge for today’s post. My favourite colour is green. I have never had a picture or a notebook or a set of revision notes without the colour. It breathes life for me, and I am fortunate to live in a country that has it abundantly.

Weekly Photo Challenge : A Foreigner in China

This week’s theme for The Daily Post’s Photo Challenge is “Foreign”. I’ve had two opportunities to travel beyond the borders of South Africa – once to Canada and Connecticut/NYC, and the other to China. For Canada I was in Montreal, and the French certainly made me feel relatively non-local. But China? In China I was

See Time Fly

I went back to my very first post on this blog today. It was on 14 October 2010 – more than two years ago. Things were so different then. I was on the verge of completing probably the most difficult year of my medical school career – for various academic and personal reasons. I was

Mind the Gap: Protest State of Mind

17 September was the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street – the beginning of a movement. I find celebrating the anniversary of a protest weird. I live in South Africa. We have protests practically every day. In the Struggle against Apartheid, opposition movements encouraged citizens to “make this country ungovernable”. And though Apartheid fell, the