Week 2!!

Hello friends!

Meet the new and laid back Emma who is TOTALLY down with African time. I’ve never been this relaxed in my life. It’s awesome.

This week has been kind of interesting because we have hung around the health promotion unit a lot. Tea time will run into lunch time and before you know it we would have had a 2 hour break. We bring a Frisbee for us to play with in downtime. They also have lemon trees and we take walks around the premises often to get lemons for our tea. It’s really beautiful there, I’ve never read so much in my life.

Because things have been rescheduled a lot- we haven’t been to a lot of places. We have a lot of classroom conversations. We have been sitting on the health promotion module classes of a masters level education program. Those conversations have been interesting and eye opening. Visiting places is even more eye opening. We went to the main campus of university of Limpopo and saw there student health clinic. They gave us a little educational talk about HIV/AIDS and other safe behaviors and explained all the materials they used. We went to a private hospital and saw how they run things there. The private hospitals here are state of the art- funded by patients who pay for medical aid- the equivalent of our insurance. The hospital doesn’t employ the doctors- the doctors are paid by the medical aid of the patients who subscribe to their private practice. The doctors simply use the hospital as a place to practice in. Because doctors don’t simply work at a hospital 8 hours a day making rounds, nurses are a very respected profession here and they have more responsibilities than nurses here.

We do the Insanity workout program every day in our little court yard. Yesterday we all did Insanity and then ran and jumped into the pool. The guesthouse management (Mmaphefo, Lebo, Auntie Martha) all thought we were crazy. It was like 70 degrees out and they were all wearing wool coats and long pants and hats. The pool was ice cold and I was just in my sports bra and shorts. So then I ran into their house and hugged all of them after I was soaking wet. They were laughing hysterically and asking me to get off of them. They thought I was nuts. Amma, the little ten year old girl that is the daughter of the manager, follows us every where. Even though she was freezing as soon she saw that we were getting in the pool she ran in the house and put on her bikini. She was the one that led me to Auntie Martha and Mmaphefo when I tried to get them all wet. We have a pretty good relationship. 

This is me and Nala. She is always trying to get into my room. 

This is a picture of the scenery around the Health Promotion Unit where we work (my face is included as scenery):

Amma is wearing my clothes because she put on her bikini and immediately regretted it. She looks adorable. Honorary morale captain! 

This is our little conference room that we hang out in when we do work in the health promotion unit. I think mostly we are just watching funny youtube videos right now... 

Me Amma and Ashley making dinner. Amma likes stealing my camera more than she likes us taking pictures of her. She also filled up Andrew's shoes with sand as a prank. She's sassy and hilarious.