First night with my new family

Hi all! So things are great here. Yesterday I met the other 8 people in my program who have already arrived (there are 10 more coming in the next few days!!) and also our program director and medical director. We got to see where Ghandi lived and walked all around the city of Durban. Our medical director is a very nice man who is a half private pay half insurance general practitioner. We had an extensive meeting with him about HIV/AIDS and what we should expect over the next few weeks. My first rotation is at St.Mary's (yep, just like San Francisco!) and there we will be assigned different rotations in different specialties and need to follow two patients to investigate the social and economic problems facing AIDS treatment in Durban. Our medical director told us that one of the main reasons why the disease is spreading here is because there are so many social stigmas with being seen at a hospital or taking ARVs (anti-retro viral therapy) and perhaps that is why there are so many people afflicted with this disease.

My next rotation will be at King Edward's Hospital and then for one week we will be going to a rural site where there is no running water, etc. I am very excited for this because one of the premiere research centers in the world is located in this area.

After our day of touring the city, Regina and I got to meet our host family. They are located about a 15 minute walk from the mall (where I can go on the Internet) in a province called "Woodlands". There is a mom, a sister who is 16, a brother in University who is 20 and two cousins, aged 14 and 16. They are all very nice. There is no father as is the case in many of our homestay families so the brother takes on the role of caretaker and is very nice and loves to hear about America. Ten minutes after we arrived he insisted on driving us around to meet some of his friends who wanted to meet Americans. They couldn't believe how many places Regina and I had seen in our lives. Many of them have never left South Africa.

Regina and I share a small room with two beds and there is a bath tub and sink that everyone uses. Having a shower here is a luxury. But they are very nice people who want to do all they can to make us feel welcome.

Last night I got a bit homesick but I think that is normal. We went out with the rest of the group to Florida Road which is a very white area and went to a wonderful Italian place. The bill was $80 for 11 of us to have dinner and drinks. Amazing. Then we went to a club. It gets dark here around 6:00 and you are not allowed to go outside after that unless there is a taxi picking you up so we were home from "clubbing" (more like sitting in a bar place talking) at 10:00pm. Everyone on the program is very nice. There is one group of five students who are first year medical students from University of Louisville and then a few other students some pre-med, some still in undergraduate.

This morning I went on a run in my neighborhood and got to meet many of my neighbors including the neighborhood dog who luckily is not rabid and very friendly. I think they all thought I was crazy for running.

Then we had breakfast: ground up fish with gravy and eggs with bread and butter. I kept telling myself it was oatmeal.

We are off to the beach in town. Write comments if you can!! I miss you all. Sending my love, Alexis.