Field work, homestay, and game drives

Overall my experience on the African Ecology and Conservation program (AEC) for Spring 2025 has been absolutely amazing. I am so sad that the program ends in a few days. Going into this program, I was looking forward to expanding upon my current field work skills, connecting and forming friendships with others, and obviously seeing the Big 5. Thankfully, I can say that I got all that and more.

There's so much that happens in one OTS semester that it can be hard to unpack all of it and look back on it, especially when writing a review. But the professors and staff here have been so amazing and so supportive and so have my classmates. Field work was so fun but was definitely also challenging (mostly due to the hot weather) and our homestay definitely pushed me way outside of my comfort zone. However, it was so interesting and cool to see how the people in Guyuni village lived life and it was amazing how welcoming they were to us.

When not conducting field work, writing essays, practicing presentations, and more, our group tended to prefer to go on game drives. We would get up at 6am, sometimes earlier, and do our best to spot the animals first. It was always a good time, even on the days where we barely saw anything or when the wind chill in the back of the GDV made it feel way colder than it actually was.

The food was great and the accommodations were nice. Fair warning, there may be some locations where you have to share a room with 5 other people, if not more. Sometimes there would be as little as 2 total sharing a room. It can be challenging for some to navigate having that many roommates, but thankfully that wasn't as much of a problem for us.

Overall, I really do suggest going on this program. The sights, experiences, and the people absolutely make the program and I had fun working on all of our assignments, despite how stressful it could be. Myself and some other students are even planning on staying an extra week to go to Cape Town as our spring break location ended up being in St. Lucia (which was such a cute town).