Quieres bailar?

This is our view from where we're working in Cape Town (Sanccob)- Table Mountain. It's amazing on cloudy days because you can't see it at all- the whole mountain is swallowed by the clouds. So far Michaelle and I have been loving it here. Haven't experienced much of Cape Town yet since we've been busy with our penguin work, but it's been so great! After the TEN HOUR bus ride from Humansdorp to Cape Town, we got to the house where we're staying with a bunch of other people from all over the world doing various volunteer work here. Some of them are volunteering at Sanccob, others at this kids' home. It's really cool to have such a mix of young people to hang out with and get to know. Since Monday Michaelle and I have been going in to work from 8-5, helping Nola (the vet) by going through penguin and gannet blood smears, screening for Babesia, Borrelia, etc. On Wednesday we had 66 new gannets come in and that was a lot of fun. We were on poop detail, collecting guano samples for my coccidia portion of the project. It was a pretty entertaining sight... the two of us diving for guano... we got everyone really into it. Fun times. So then we spent the next day looking at those samples. This morning we bled 60 of the gannets- Michaelle, Liz (a Canadian vet student), and myself rocked it out- getting blood for smears and to do pack cell volumes, etc. Then in the afternoon Michaelle and I did two necropsies- a gannet and a penguin. Both of us are really excited about getting to do more vet stuff and even though it's not gonna work out for us to get onto the islands, Nola has been great about rallying all of her contacts to collect ticks for us when they go on the island. So hopefully we'll have a good amount of those samples coming in. Even some from the Eastern Cape islands which is great!!



Above- gannet invasion! Guano success! Long hours staring into the microscope. Liz with one of the gannets. My new friend Rocky :)

This past week Sanccob has been taken over by the French. Liz is from Quebec, so she counts as a Frenchie and then there are 7 other French volunteers that arrived recently. It's great fun to be surrounded by that beautiful language. And the guys are great and trying to work on their English, so it's been fun having conversations with them. We all went out last night to a great cocktail place followed by karaoke. Loads of fun. This one woman, Judy, who lives at our house is from Northern England and she's a freaking hoot! Love her to death, I basically roll on the floor laughing at her all the time.



Above- Judy and I goofing off at the house before going out. Making friends with the Frenchies (left to right- Jildaz, (me), Cyril, Guillame).

Tomorrow we are planning on going to a wine festival an hour or so outside of Cape Town with the friends that we made over in Cape St. Francis and Sunday we're braaing at one of their houses. Also, we're hoping to get into downtown Cape Town to see what this city is about soon. Oh and definitely have to climb Table Mountain. Looks like we're probably gonna stay for another week, so that's great!

Leaving you with some pictures back from Cape St. Francis. Michaelle and I being extra mature, sophisticated vet students.