Hello hello! And welcome to my first attempt at a travel blog.
Hopefully if you are reading this, you know I am going to Capetown, South Africa, for 4 weeks starting July 11. I've started this blog as a way to keep track of my experiences and a way to keep in touch with all of you. Feel free to leave comments in the comments section and I will do my best to respond!

While you may know that I'm going on this little trip, many of you may not really know what I'm doing. Technically, I am volunteering with an HIV study that is looking at why babies who are born to mothers infected with HIV but don't have HIV themselves are more at risk for being sick in their first year of life. What exactly I will be doing from day-to-day will change and the one thing I'm sure of is that I will be very busy! My first day of work is the first day of study recruitment and I've been told I could be going out to the recruitment clinic in the Kraafonteine suburb.
I plan on filling up my evenings with sightseeing and soaking up the culture and my weekends with day trips to the surrounding areas (wine country anybody?!).

Follow along as I experience my first stay in Africa and my first international travels alone!

This is Tygerberg Hospital, where most of my time will be spent. If you notice, the building is completely symmetrical, with each side being a mirror image of the other. The hospital was built during Apartheid, with one side for whites and another for coloured people. Today, no such division exists in the hospital, but I'm told that it's very confusing because the sides are nearly identical, but only certain units are in use on each side. I'm sure I will be getting very lost in there.

And just for fun, here's your typical picture of Cape Town waterfront.

Neither of these pictures were taken by me, but I'm using them as a test to see how the picture function works.

Wish me luck as I pack my suitcase(s). If you don't already know, this is roughly how I pack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3qiXZRFmRY  so I need all the good vibes I can get to make everything fit into 1 suitcase + a carry on.