It has been a whirlwind of a couple weeks since we arrived in Cape Town!

Actually, the whirlwind started slightly before that for me- I stopped by London to see my long lost friend George and his wife Tomoko. Due to some airport issues, I only had an afternoon to spend with them, which we made good use of having coffee and croissants, walking through Green Park, to Buckingham Palace, past Parliament, and having an early dinner of Indian food before a quick stopover at London Bridge and heading back to the airport.

Christina, Ashley, Dr. Richards and I met up without a hitch at the airport in Cape Town the next morning, where our adventures began. For me, that meant overcoming some serious anxiety about driving on the left. As we cruised around mountainous bends, through winelands, and along the sea, things got better. Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities I have seen, complete with all the features listed above. It is lush and beautiful, and it helps always having a view of mountains, ocean, or both. I highly recommend it to one and all. We spent our first day getting acquainted with our own neighborhood, Sea Point. It is a hip, densely populated area squished on the side of Signal hill, leading four blocks down to the sea where there is a promenade with absolutely gorgeous sunsets. We have spent all the chances we have going down there at that time for a run/walk/photo shoot, if we aren’t enjoying it from our balcony. We finished off the day with dinner at the Waterfront, a touristy but quaint center of the city.

After that, we spent our first few days trying to get oriented, running around from the hospital we work at (GF Jooste) to the universities (Stellenbosch and Tygerberg hospital) trying to sort out our clinical and research schedule. We interspersed our meetings with touristy delights, which have been most wonderful. We saw African penguins at Boulder’s beach, where all 3 of us girls took an unreal amount of photos of the cute birds. We wine tasted at Groot Constantia, the oldest vineyard in Cape Town, which was gorgeous with its changing leaves and mountain backdrop. We went to the Old Biscuit Mill, a Saturday morning farmers market and foodie paradise. It was so much fun- there was delicious food of every variety to choose from, delicious sangria, and seriously cute and cheap clothing. After whiling away our morning, we drove down to Cape Point to see the views down to Antarctica (if using imagination), and topped off the evening with a wonderful BBQ with Dr. Richards’ friends. As a sidenote, everyone here has been so nice and wonderful to us. It is amazing! Other than that, we went to Mzoli’s, a Sunday afternoon drinking + BBQ held in Guguletu, one of the townships near Jooste, have gone shopping in many a market, walked through the Company Gardens (where the original fruit trees are for those sailing around the cape hundreds of years ago to prevent scurvy), to Llandudno beach (gorgeous), and finally dinner at Bukara, one of the fanciest and most delicious Indian places in town. Most recently we visited famous Robben Island for a dose of history and amazing views of Cape Town from the sea. It has been just glorious. We really have enjoyed exploring, but we also have loved working, which we have been doing quite a bit of.

Jooste is where we have been doing most of our work in the Emergency department. It is crazy. The patients have totally different diseases and problems than what we see in the US. It is pretty normal for our patients to have late stage cancer, infections associated with advanced AIDS, or be the victim of trauma (lots of stabbings). It seems that most people have TB, and many people have epilepsy as a result of medication withdrawal. We have been doing lots of IV’s, suturing, and drawing bloods. I have been joking that our medical education involves stabbing needles deeper and deeper into people: IVs, arterial blood gases, lumbar punctures, chest tubes. Ashley was bold enough to do the first lumbar puncture in our group (which she did great), so Christina and are up next. The best part of our training has been our teachers here. Everyone has been so generous with their knowledge; we have been learning a ton! It is really a great environment and we are so happy that we chose to spend our summer here. More soon!