Weekendz in Durban

Quite simply...amazing! Had a great time getting to know the other students, who are all here now. We had staggered arrival dates, so it was nice to spend time all together and explore Durban. We went to a rugby game on Saturday, South Africa vs. Argentina. It was my first rugby game, and I never even really watched it on TV either so I had no idea what was going on, but it was fun anyway because the fans were so spirited. We managed to get seats right in the 3rd row, which was pretty amazing! Although South Africa lost we still had a blast, so it was a win for me :)

Afterward we explored the town and grabbed dinner on Florida Rd, which appears to be the lively place to be for Durban nightlife. It is curiously actually Florida themed, with many restaurants named after cities in Florida like Miami, or Cuban culture like La Cubaña. In a weird way it seems South Africa really is the America of Africa, at least there is a clear effort to emulate the US in so many ways.

On Sunday, one of the host families was having a goat sacrifice, so we were all invited to attend. Two goats were being sacrificed to sort of apologize to the family of a girl who got pregnant out of wedlock. In this case, the man's family must go to the girl's family to negotiate what must the price be to apologize to the ancestors for the child being born out of wedlock. In this case, the price was 2 goats. So the goats were brought and tied in the back. For it being a seemingly important tradition, it was very unceremonial. No words were spoken or anything when the goats were killed. I must admit, it was rather difficult to watch...but I tried not to think with a Western mind...cultural differences. From a medical perspective it was actually very interesting to see all of the organs and physiology. In the end, I was surprised by how little actual meat there was, though they use a lot of the organs anyway to eat, so nothing is wasted.

In the evening we decided to go bowling together at The Galleria, which is yet another large mall here. It was a lot of fun! The other group of students who had been in Cape Town doing rotations there for 5 weeks arrived in Durban for the second part of their trip. In total we are now 10, so they came as well. One of the students' host brothers came along too, so we were one big happy bunch :) I didn't bowl all that well, but no matter, it was cool to do it in another country and it was actually very much the same. Fun times!