Sawubona!!

Hello all! Sorry it has been so long since I last wrote. We only have internet access at the university so it is hard to keep up with my days on the blog. I'll try to be better. Tomorrow there will hopefully be some pictures.
Anyways, last week wasn't too eventful. Went to the pediatric resuscitation unit in the mornings. We worked with Dr. Ramge there and he is a fantastic teacher when he has a lot of the medical students with him. Not as good when they aren't there. We have only been observing this past week but are hoping to get some hands on experience this week. Other than working, we went to the beach on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was wonderful. The water is pretty clear but there are so many waves that it churns up the sand and makes it look a little dirty. It's fun to watch all the boogie boarders do flips as they hop the waves. Lindsay and I are hoping to try it a few times before we leave.
We met a medical student here through one of the other CFHI students. His name is Shalin. He invited us over to his parents house for a traditional Indian dinner of Biryani on Friday night. South Africa has a huge Indian population, 2nd only to India. I was hoping to have some Indian food here but you can't get better than home made. It was a spicy and delicious. After dinner we went to a bar/restaurant in Suncoast Casino right off the ocean. The casino is not quite Vegas but it was pretty nice. We sat outside all night and just hung out. The guys tried to gamble a little towards the end of the night but after losing R100 ($10) they decided to call it quits and we headed home.
Steven (CFHI student) took us home and before we left he told us that he might get a little lost along the way and that he might run a few red lights for safety purposes (as he was advised to do by our CFHI driver, Roy). So we are driving along and running the occasional red light (mostly because they wouldn’t change to green after sitting there for several minutes) and then he runs one more red light as he turns onto one of the main roads. Before we knew the cops pull up behinds us and start flashing their brights at us. They never used any sirens or cop lights. So Steven pulls over and the cops come up to the window and ask the usual questions. They then make him get out of the car and one cops talks to him while the other leans into the car to talk to me and Lindsay sitting in the back seat. He asks us if we felt safe driving with a guy who was running red lights. Of course we said yes because we didn’t want Steven to get into any more trouble. He leaves the car and both cops are talking to Steven at the rear of the car. We couldn’t really hear what was going on but I heard Steven say “Well, I don’t want to get into any more trouble” as he was fishing through his wallet. Next thing we knew he steps back into the car, shuts his door and lets out a little chuckle as the says to us, “I just paid off the cops!” That’s right! They let us go without a ticket and with R200 ($20) in their pockets. Just a little example of all of the corruption going on in South Africa. We did make it home safely without any more incidents.