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Sunday, June 8, 2008, 10:22 PM
I just realized I haven’t written one of these things in a while, so I figured I should catch you all up. The end of my first week at work went well. I managed to get some of my research work together, and I observed my first surgery on Friday morning! It was called a “laparoscopic assisted pull-through,” which dealt with a certain developmental complication in the large intestine of infants. The baby was only two weeks old, and so tiny in comparison to the operating table, lights, machines, doctors, etc, etc. Bill (a co-op student from Northeastern) and I were able to see the operation from start to (almost) finish…the whole surgery I think lasted about four hours. But that was definitely a great way to finish up the week.
In terms of weather, we’ve been getting our fair share of testy SA winter, although Thursday was BEAUTIFUL—75 degrees and perfectly sunny for the entire day. I was able to get outside during lunch to take some pictures from the apartment building’s roof. But, sadly, it didn’t last…Friday arrived with Table Mountain completely invisible (not a good sign at 7:30 in the
morning) and the wind howling. The night before we deparated for our Wacky Wine Weekend, a group of the girl interns and I took taxis down to the waterfront for dinner and the Sex and the City movie. Which was semi-disasterous…it started pouring during our outside, waterfront-view meal, Sex and the City was sold out an hour before showtime (and did you know that in South Africa, you buy assigned seats in the movie theater?!), and it then took us half an hour to get a call through to the Excite taxi company so we could get home. All the while suffering through the constant complaints from a couple “girly” girls. I qualified it as an “adventure.”
Keeping with the trend, the Wacky Wine Weekend (for which we left at 8 AM Saturday morning) turned out to be pretty wet as well. If it wasn’t for the quality SA wine, cheese and olive tasting, experiencing THREE wine estates, outside heaters, fires, warm tents (although they were sitting in the middle of a rain soaked, muddy field) with nice plushy mattresses, it might well have been disastrous, too. A few of the trip highlights:
-Blake and Vatz thought it would be a good idea to sleep next to the fire. A little while later, security guards had to stamp out the flames on their sleeping bags when their impaired judgment landed them a little too close to the pit.
-Everyone joined a very boisterous Melanie (one of the company directors and trip leader) in a rousing rendition of Sweet Caroline on our way back from dinner. The wine may or may not have had anything to do with it…
-Dinner (served under a huge tent seating 300 Wine Weekend attendees) was catered by an overly-ambitious one range kitchen. It therefore turned into a five hour affair, our hunger broken sporadically by fatty lamb, undercooked vegetables, and the jokes of a mediocre South African comedian (I’m sure he was funny to those who actually live here…)
-Waking up to bright sunshine streaming into our tent. Of course it had to be beautiful weather for the bus ride home, haha.
-But don’t get me wrong, we got to meet a lot of the new interns who just recently arrived, talked to some locals, became much more educated in the art of wine tasting, and had a great time ☺.
We got home from the wine weekend today at 1 in the afternoon (not bad for kids who were up until 4 the night before, right?), and Mal (my roommate) and I ate some leftover Diva’s pizza (where we are now officially VIP members because we’ve already made friends with the owner in the one week we’ve been here. With our VIP pass, we’ll now get an additional 15% off…don’t worry though, they do have other food besides pizza, so our three-visits-a-week won’t be too detrimental to our health haha). Speaking of health, we made our first visit to Virgin Active as legitimate members this afternoon. I got in a nice long workout, a wonderful shower (for once), free internet for a while, AND I got to watch the ENTIRE Federer/Nadal match live from Roland Garros. (Quite disappointing, by the way, I was hoping Roger would pull through for us…)
Anyway, hope everything’s going well with all y’all in the states (one of my friends, Charleigh (cool name, right?!), is from Alabama and her accent is starting to rub off on me). I feel like there are many things I’m missing, but if I remember anything earth-shattering, I’ll include it in the next entry. Nighttt.
Random Facts of the (Many) Days: I have now had bulls tung (like a tender beef jerky, but not actually tongue), ostrich, and a decent olive (I know, gasp). I have also seen the Cape Town castle, roadside baboons (bare bums and all), and Green Market Square. I have also noticed that even though Cape Town is environmentally friendly in many different ways, there is no decent recycling system. They should take a lesson from Bucknell’s recycling (nevermind the 500+ take-out containers trashed daily…don’t get me started…).
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Stacey
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i hate olives... :-) i love reading this. i put it as one of my bookmarks so i won't forget to catch up with my rooooooomieee.