Trainings, Wine Tasting, Visitors, oh MY!

Sunset over Table Mountain

It has been a busy few weeks!  The first weekend in September there was a festival called Franschhoek Uncorked in the winelands (Franschhoek is the name of one of the wine routes near Cape Town).  Marina, a previous South to South epidemiologist who now works for a PEPFAR funded project in Pretoria, invited me to join her and two of her friends for the festival.  We hired a driver (so no one had to drive home after a whole day of wine tasting) and toured 5 different wine estates.  Each estate had a different theme for the weekend, with music, food, and of course wine tasting.  We had a lot of fun.

Here we are with the Champagne (well they can't actually call it that, since it's not made in France) that Obama had at his inauguration!

With the "mariachi band" at one of the wineries which was having a Spanish themed day. (Of course none of these men were actually latin and my rusty Spanish was better than theirs but it they sang and played well.....) 

The first week in September I helped conduct two trainings.  The first part of the week I was at a training at Tygerberg Hospital.  South to South conducts these trainings once a month.  Doctors (and a few nurses) come from all over South Africa to spend 5 days learning about pediatric HIV.  They purposely keep the training groups small (no more than 12) to encourage participation from all group members.  Many of the trainings are taught by South to South staff and then other specialists are brought in from Tygerberg Hospital to contribute as well.  In addition, the participants get to shadow in the children's HIV clinic at Tygerberg and spend time on the pediatric ward at Brooklyn Chest Hospital (where children with complicated tuberculosis infections are admitted).  Since it was my first training, I spent a lot of the time observing and taught one lecture on the HIV medications. It was nice to have such a participatory group, makes teaching so much more interesting!  On Thursday and Friday, South to South was also conducting another training for one of our collaborating agencies so I went to help with that.  We had 35 doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and pharmacy assistants at the two day basic pediatric HIV training.  We were able to split them in two groups, and I got to work with the nurses.  We had many lively discussions and though it was brief, I think they were able to get comfortable with the basics.

Along Chapman's Peak Drive

Most excitingly my first visitors in my new apartment arrived!  My first visitor in Cape Town was actually my college roommate, Kerry.  She was traveling around South Africa and visited Cape Town shortly after I arrived.  We spent two days talking and catching up, as we had not seen each other in a few years.  Unbelievably, we did not take any pictures together!  Crazy, but I think we were so busy talking that it never occurred to us.  Last week my brother, Aaron, and his girlfriend, Jen, came to visit and Aaron made sure that there was plenty of photo documentation!  He took more than 1,000 pictures in 5 days!!!  It was great to see them and to get to show them Cape Town.  We went to Cape of Good Hope (the most Southwesterly tip of Africa), drove Chapman's Peak (beautiful costal views), took the Cable Car up Table Mountain, and ate lots of good food.  They got to go wine tasting and see Robben Island while I was at work.  We also discovered some new things, most importantly a Saturday market at The Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock (a neighborhood in Cape Town) which sells amazing prepared foods, cheeses, homemade wines, paella, etc, etc.  I even went back this weekend and think I will make it a Saturday morning tradition of sorts ;)

Me and Jen on the beach at Camps Bay for sunset!

Here is a slideshow of some of the best photos taken by Aaron (and a few by me and Jen) - hard to pic out of a 1000, but don't worry there are less than 60....