Kayla is eager to experience all Cape Town has to offer

Kayla & Terri at Boulder Beach

Now that it is our third week of our trip, our internships have officially started. My internship is at Beautiful Gate which is an orphanage for children under the age of 14. About 3/4ths of this children have HIV. At Beautiful Gate, I work with the head nurse and spend a lot of time preparing medicines such as ARVs for the children that do have HIV. We prepare all of the meds for morning and night which takes a lot of time because we need to fill up syringes for the children too young to swallow pills. I work there with Meaghan and Kate which is really helpful because I was a lot less nervous going into it than if I was alone. Also at Beautiful gate, the youngest baby is 4 months old. Today when I was holding him, he fell asleep in my arms! I wish I could take him home and never put him down... but unfortunately I had to leave him and go home.  I really love working there and look forward to going back.

Getting settled in here in Cape Town has gotten much easier. I do not feel as worried and concerned when walking around and doing the things I need to do in town. It is nice to finally know the area and feel confident that I will not get lost and know exactly how to get where I need to be. I think all of the security briefings we got had really scared me but after being around the people these past few weeks, I do not feel as scared all the time.

Sunday during the day, we went to a concert at Kirstenbosch Gardens. It was absolutely beautiful! It was right on the bottom of Table Mountain and was one of the most gorgeous places I have ever been. The concert we saw was a singer who is really popular in South Africa and I really loved her music. I can definitely say that I will be back there again sometime soon.

Last week, our classes started at UCT as well as Marita’s class that we hold at our house on Loch Road. UCT’s campus is amazing! It is the most beautiful campus I have ever been at and I do not mind taking classes there because I LOVE to be there. All the classes have gone really well and I really like Vincent’s class because it ties together a lot of the history of SA that I already knew. It really has helped me to understand a lot of what has happened and how that affects where SA is today. It is amazing how much I learned after just one class!

So I would say that so far, South Africa just keeps getting better and better. I really look forward to spending the next three months here and experiencing all that Cape Town has to offer as well as learning as much as possible along the way!