I can't think of an interesting title, so...

Haven't felt much like blogging lately, mostly because the internet has been absolutely atrocious, and I've been living a bit too much inside my head to formulate coherent, and slightly interesting, sentences.

Things here at the clinic are super duper busy in the mornings, and then I'm often left with little or nothing to do in the afternoons, which has been just fine by me lately. Today was actually the first day of a support group that I helped coordinate, for caregivers of HIV positive children. We had a couple of snafus with the food due to miscommunication which made me irate, such as not having enough food or cups for juice, and the children barely got anything except for plain bread. Stupid as it sounds, one of the reasons the caregivers came to the meeting is for the food, as some of them won't get another meal for several hours or even all day. The support group actually went fairly well regardless- the women shared their struggles with raising children, with financial challenges, and were practically running the group themselves by asking each other questions and sharing their personal experiences. I felt really grateful to be a part of it, and hope to make it go a bit more smoothly next week.

Friday is the beginning of the Healthy Sexuality project that I'll be working on with the clinic's psychologist Shirley, and we'll be working in a junior high school in one of the squatter camps- ideally working with a group of 5th grade girls and a group of 5th grade boys, but we'll figure out the details tomorrow. I'm so excited- we cover a huge range of topics, such as sexuality, abuse and how to recognize it, what a healthy relationship looks like, and possibly safe sex. We'll meet once a week in small group sessions for about 6 weeks. Apparently it ran last year and was really successful! Not sure how they're measuring the success but I'm hopeful that the program helps to reduce dating violence in any sense.

Oh and some good news- our applications to extend our tourist visas were accepted! We had to fight our way to Home Affairs in the CBD (central business district) yesterday afternoon and wait in line for about 3 hours to turn in our paperwork, which luckily contained everything we needed. I made a new best friend in  the line next to me as I was blatantly eavesdropping on her conversation in Spanish. She's from Peru and has been in SA for almost 12 years, and we had a nice chat about the South African economy. I was mostly just so glad to be speaking Spanish again I would have talked about anything. But yay, we can stay longer than 90 days without having to worry!

Its so hot here today I can barely function. Off to find a cooler space!