World Cup Soccer

I can't tell you how exciting it was and how much fun we had at the FIFA World Cup Soccer Game at the Moses Mobhida Stadium in Durban on Saturday. Truly, a once in a lifetime experience. I'm not sure who Moses Mobhida was, but he must have quite a guy to have a soccer stadium named afer him. Soccer is a very big sport here and all throughout the world.

I thought it might be nice to see the local shopping mall. This is a picture of the Newcastle Victoria Mall. It has about 15 stores (all of which close at 5:00 PM and at 2:00 PM on Saturday). Interestingly enough, when the mall is open, there are no lights on so it's difficult to tell if anyone is working. It's been an adjustment to say the least. Most of you know that I'm not a big "mall shopper" anyway, but this one is a real beauty.

We are doing well here in South Africa. We have been busy and are enjoying our work. It's getting cold here with nights around 35 degrees. They tell us the winters get very cold with lots of wind. Winter is the dry season so they say there's lots of blowing dust, dirt and sand.

We visited a family a few days ago that just had a baby. The mom went to the [provintial] hospital about midnight, the baby was born about 3:30 AM and they sent them home at about 8:30 AM. The provintial hospital is the public hospital specifically for Zulu's. The cost is about 20 Rand (US$3.00) to see a Dr. and can take as long as 8 hours to be seen. That's government run health care for you. Is that what we'll have in the US?

In as much as blogging is new to me, I hope I can attach a few pictures of the baby. If I can, look in the background. You'll see that the living room, dining room, kitchen is all in the same area. The entire room is about 10' square. Look to the back left to see the kitchen. How much do we take for granted.