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Well, it's now pretty much reached the end of my stay here, so I figure I should give a brief resume of the last week.
The weekend was brilliant, on Saturday I went to Durban with Oona, Ruth, Tiara, Willy and Irma to the Victoria Street Market and we all bought some souvenirs. Afterwards, we went to Ushaka which is a local tourist area with an aquarium (which we didn't go in). We did some more shopping there and then Willy and Irma had to get a taxi to the airport since they were going to Cape Town with the other 2. We stayed around in Ushaka and went to an African restaurant called Moya for dinner with a couple of volunteers from Uthombo which is one of the other projects that helps street children. It was a lovely dinner, they had some african dancing and they did some face painting on us, and we all had a great time.

Sorry I haven't been updating much, I tend to be a bit rubbish at that sort of thing. Anyway, I suppose I should mention what's been going on since my last post.
Over the weekend we went to the Drakensbergs, which was incredible. We went up the Sani pass to Lesotho, and we went for a hike in the mountains to see some Bushman paintings and we also went for a horseback ride, which was really fun, despite the fact I've never ridden a horse before in my life!
When we got back on monday, we found out quite a few of the patients had died over the weekend which was a bit tough. The majority of patients' deaths seem to happen on the weekends which is a bit strange.

I actually can't believe I'm pretty much half-way through. I know everyone says that, but it really doesn't feel like it's been that long.
Anyway, it's been a few days since my last post, so I shall try to remember what's happened since then.

Since I have a spare moment this evening, I thought I'd give a quick update on life here at the dream centre. Today was a bit of a strange day. This morning, Ruth and I went to the fourth floor to help the nurses out. We both ended up helping the nurses wash some patients, but we were with different patients. The guy I ended up with was in a bit of a bad way, he was quite confused, he couldn't really do anything at all for himself and he had a huge lump on his arm which looked really raw. We tried to remove the bandages but they were stuck on. Then the nurse went to go and see if the patient bathroom was free, and while he was gone, the man grabbed my hand and held on to it. We then took him to the bathroom, but I had to stand outside, since there wasn't much room. The whole washing process was fairly brutal, they just use a hose on the patients and then use a flannel and soap to clean them and then hose them down again.

Sorry it's taken so long to get round to writing, I've been a bit busy, and since there's 8 of us using the computer it's been a bit difficult. Anyway, I've been here pretty much exactly a week now, so here's a quick recap...
I arrived last Monday and we just spent the day orientating ourselves, finding out where the shops were and all the rest. I went up to see some of the patients with Tiara, a canadian volunteer who was here the previous month aswell, in the evening, and everyone was really friendly. Most of the week was spent in meetings, just discussing what we can do, and what sort of help would be best.
The other volunteers are all lovely, all girls, 4 from holland, 3 of us Brits and Tiara. The Dutch girls are Anne and Femke who are both medical students, Irma, who's a bookkeeper and Willy who works in tax. For the brits there's me, Ruth, who I brought along with me, and Oona, who's from Manchester and just finished a psychology degree up in Scotland.