Hanging out in Seattle (and Victoria)

I spent the week between Christmas and New Year's, staying with Jay and Jennie, being a slug - although a slug having a lot of fun (no salt) - we went to a hockey game, went out for sushi, hung out with Jennie's friends, had Starbucks (and Starbucks, and Starbucks), watched movies, met up with an EIS classmate, took Grandma out for lunch, raided each other's digital music collections....
Here I am in front of the UW library - Jennie works in the U District on the Ave, so I walked around campus with Jay on our way to pick her up from work. (He's an archeology PhD student at UW and does field research in Corsica during the summer - tough gig!)

Out with Jennie's friends from work - definitely a fun bunch!

Coffee with Jennie and Jay! Wouldn't be a trip to Seattle without it!

December 30-31, Jennie and I drove up to Vancouver and took the ferry across to Victoria to see some friends I had met in Costa Rica earlier this year. On my May vacation, I went to a tiny little beach town on the southern Pacific coast (Uvita). The only other people in the hostel when got there were three Canadian college guys. They were going to eat when I got there, and I was hungry, so it was a natural alliance. :) I hung out with them all week and had a blast! They were so good about hanging out with a girl and totally made my vacation - Costa Rica picture after swimming in a waterfall for reference below.....So, I decided to go see them in Canada ... different attire, but just as fun! They put us up, let us meet their families, showed us around Victoria...... fed us, entertained us, took us to a hockey game.... I asked Jennie if all Canadians are this great, or if I had a biased sample - she thinks they're mostly this great. Maybe I should move to Canada, eh? I like the flag. :)

Christmas in Seattle

For Christmas, I flew up to Seattle to spend time with the Thwing family. I'm very close to my cousin Jennie, who is 6 weeks younger than me. Her dad is my dad's older brother, and I have spent Christmas with them almost every year since my parents went back to Cameroon. This is brunch on Christmas morning with Uncle Ted, Jennie, her husband Jay, Aunt Cathy, my cousin (Jennie's brother) Andrew and his wife, Christy. It's always delicious!


Stocking and Christmas present time! I think Jennie and I have a picture of us just like this at age 2, and for a good many of the years in between!

Jay "wearing" the tree skirt - you know, when you're six foot four, no one can make fun of your clothes!

Later in the afternoon, the extended Thwing family comes over for our family Christmas celebration. This is my grandma - it's such a treat to spend time with her!


After a great dinner, we play our own version of a white elephant gift exchange (although the presents are actually nice), which gets very funny and occasionally rowdy! Here are some aunts and uncles enjoying a good laugh.

After presents, we always have Jesus' birthday cake - one candle for every family member and guest - some guests become permanent family members (this year, we had a third Christmas engagement announcement) and some last a year or two, but everyone gets a candle. It takes longer and longer to light! And the youngest - this year Payson - gets to blow them out!

Merry Christmas!

Pre-Christmas

December was unseasonably warm, even for Atlanta - we had multiple 70 degree days - I took myself to the zoo on a particularly gorgeous Saturday afternoon. I love the gorillas!
Sapna and I got a Christmas tree and had the "ashram" over to decorate - this is Vishnu, who came from India this year to marry my friend Nandini, decorating his first Christmas tree!

Class Christmas party - any excuse to wear a little black dress, right?

I actually also got a lot of work done in December - we finally finished the analysis of the Niger data, and I spent a lot of time on the final report, both written and power point, which I had the opportunity to give for some visiting representatives of the Canadian Red Cross, who had funded the bednet distribution. I'm also working on getting a study for the coming year in Kenya off the ground, as well as hounding the states to get their last few reports of malaria in for 2005 so I can start working on the 2005 domestic malaria summary. There's an annual summary of all the cases of malaria treated in the US that the first year EIS officer does - and this year, that's me! I've been telling people I'm giving birth to triplets - trying to juggle all the projects and keep them all going forward.

I flew to Dallas for my former roommate's (Aruna) official engagement ceremony. It's a pretty long ritual, involving the whole family - I think you must feel very engaged after it's all over! This is the whole family gathered around to take part....

And the beautiful couple - those wreaths around their necks weigh a ton!

Being in Dallas all weekend allowed me to hang out with my little sis and catch up with some extended family. My Grandpa Will has had a rough patch lately and is now in a rehab hospital, so I went with my Grandma to visit him. He's looking pretty good for his 90s, eh?

My mom's youngest sister Gayle was in from Arizona, so I got to spend some time with her. In the picture are: my cousin Jodi, my aunt Gayle, my sister Laura, me, my Aunt Jeri, and my Uncle Rick. I hadn't gotten to see them in awhile, so it was a special treat!

Thanksgiving!

Yes, these were my feet at Thanksgiving! I drove down to Florida for Thanksgiving to visit my friend Lee, who lives not too far from Destin, Florida. It was spectacular! One afternoon, I took a walk down the beach several miles to the town of Seaside, where "The Truman Show" was filmed....Bought some fresh seafood and made Lee and Dave my favorite shrimp and my favorite mussels..... Read on the balcony......

Sunrise off the balcony in front of my room - Lee's house is the kind of place that beckons you into conversation with God. Who can wake up to a view like that in the morning and not feel compelled to say hi (and thank you) to God?

At sunset, Lee, her son Dave (who was there from the Navy base in Pensacola), and I would haul wine, cheese, fruit, and crackers up the turret to the top balcony for happy hour and sunset watching. This is Dave and me.

Lee and Dave at happy hour in the evening sun

The last rays of the setting sun...I hope to be back!

More busy weekends!

The weekend of Veteran's Day, my high school friend Clay visited from DC. We hung out with some of his friends in Atlanta, went to the Georgia Aquarium (home to 4 young nurse sharks and 5 beluga whales), and went hiking.

The leaves were in the middle of changing colors - this is at the Centennial Olympic Plaza across the road from the aquarium.
Holding up boulders by the Chatahoochie River

The week of November 13-17 was the EIS fall course. We all had to give a presentation on a research project (I presented my Niger work), which was actually more fun than advertised, and had some instruction on scientific writing and forensic epidemiology. It was so much fun to see classmates again, as everyone was back from all the places they had dispersed to. Once again, there was something social every night.

On Friday, my classmate Jim held a "leather" party, which was much fun! I had a lot of fun breaking out the black leather pants. Here are Jim and I in our leather (yes, further confirmation than I am really short).

This is my friend Meredith- she finished the EIS last year in the immunization branch, and joined the malaria branch when I did. She's like my big sister and her office is one door down from mine. She is absolutely wonderful!!
Shua is one of my EIS classmates (based in DC) - so much fun to see him again!

EIS gals

This is Jamie - he just finished the EIS in the malaria branch (2 years ahead of me) - he's now a malaria liaison in DC. I miss him, so it was nice to have him in town! Yeah, he's really tall!

November 8

After two weekends of traveling, I'm back in Atlanta for a couple weeks. I went to Nashville the last weekend of October and got to catch up with some fun folks, and meet others. One of my favorite Vanderbilt residents just had a son, so I went over to meet him - what a handsome little guy! Driving through the mountains between Nashville and Chattanooga with all the leaves changing was just glorious! No pictures though - a little hard careening around mountain passes with a camera in one hand. :)

When I got back to Atlanta, I had a little pumpkin carving party. The EIS officcer in the parasites branch has two adorable little boys, and one of the pumpkins was almost as big as them!

This past weekend, I was in Kansas City for my roommate from medical school's wedding. Since I got in on Friday, I got to help decorate for the reception. The flowers were beautiful! That's me clowning around with the rose in my teeth. :)

The groom (Shawn) and the groom's cake (with the cake's baker) - no, that's not a cooler full of beer on the table next to the wedding cake - that's a cake! It's all cake, icing, and candy. Even the labels are edible. Amazing what can be done with fondant!!!

Medical school roomies - Hilary Ann, Yen-Lin, and I all lived in a 400 sq foot dorm suite for two years - and we're still friends!! Hilary Ann was absolutely lovely! She is now an emergency room physician, and Yen-Lin is a pediatric radiation oncologist in Boston.The Sunday morning brunch - left to right - me, Yen-Lin, her husband Dai, Shawn, Hilary Ann, and Hilary Ann's mom.

Next up: visiting with a good friend from high school this weekend, the fall EIS course next week, BOTC the weekend after.... oh, and I have to figure out what I'm doing for Thanksgiving!! I'm really looking forward to seeing all the EIS officers who have been dispersed around the country back in town again. There should be more fun party pics. :)

October

Ah - settling back in Atlanta. When I arrived back from Niger, I had two weeks until pediatric boards, so I didn't do a lot of socializing. I did get to connect with Sarah, an awesome woman I met in Niger. We were on the same plane home, and talked for hours over our pain chocolat and cafe au lait. In the words of Anne of Green Gables, she's a kindred spirit! She was in Atlanta for a conference, so we went out for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant.
I spent most evenings at Starbucks with my friend Deidre, as EIS officer a year ahead of me, who was in the pediatrics class I started with at Vanderbilt. She didn't get to take boards last year because she was deployed to Katrina. So nice to have a study buddy!

Peds boards were Oct 23-24. I didn't realize how many former Vandy peds residents would come down from Nashville for boards - here's the crew! It was a fun reunion. There's one notably young resident. Andrew (the one guy in the picture) was a med/peds resident with me, and his wife Deb and son Henry came down with him. (And yes, the relative risk for being blonde if you do a peds residency at Vanderbilt is quite statistically significant!)

The peds boards were 2 days - 4 three hour sections, each with a 150 question book - yes, still on paper, and grueling! I ended up finishing most of the sections with some time to spare, so I would run up stairs and hang out with Deb and Henry.

Me and Henry - the world's most irresistible almost three year old!

Samir and Vidhya put on a post boards dinner that night, invited a great assortment of classmates (many with kids), and then announced that they are expecting, too! So there was much celebrating, and much passing babies around! For those celebrating by imbibing, the rule was "baby before beer". (Although someone pointed out that in the beginning, it's often beer before baby.)

Tommy (the baby in this picture) had just started eating a paper plate. Tommy's dad had just taken Infectious Disease boards. (but that's Samir holding him)


Christine and baby Gia

Kate and Tommy

Disclaimer: None of the said babies belong to those pictured with them. :)

Gosh, you'd think no one ever feeds Tommy!

I had another great treat the next day when my friend Richie, also in my med/peds class at Vanderbilt drove through with his 6 month old son Richie Jr., his beautiful wife Rosmira, and her parents, on their way to visit his parents in Florida. What a gorgeous little boy - so serious! (Actually, he mostly slept.)

Richie, Rosmira, Richie Jr., and Rosmira's parents

What's next? Visiting Nashville this weekend, going to my medical school roommate's wedding the weekend after that, having a highschool friend visit the weekend after that, BOTC the weekend after that... and trying to get Niger data analyzed, the protocol for my next project sent off for IRB approval, several writing projects and presentations done....but at least I no longer have to study 5 hours a night!!!

The End!!!

After our grueling trip back from Timia to Arlit and then Agadez, we had another grueling drive from Agadez back to Niamey. These pictures were taken on a break at a gas station in Tahoua, where I drank two bottles of coke.

Moussa is utterly spent.

All the guys resting on their prayer mats

And the girls look just exhausted!

Back in Niamey, I had a couple days to get my visa extended (which was pretty easy) and to work with Etienne to get all the data downloaded from the PDAs (which was very hard). A dear friend of my family, Rev. Scott Clark, was in Niamey for a conference on using Arabic script to write local languages, so we visited the national museum to see if he could find any examples there. We didn't, but were directed to a research institute dedicated to studying and preserving them, which was fascinating.
The National Museum was fairly impressive. There are both pavilions and artifacts, and a fairly decent little zoo.
Beautiful water birds....
And a hippo waiting for his pool to fill back up

One of the dinosaur fossils - they have some pretty amazing skeletons in their collection!

This poor thing is the remains of the most famous landmark in Niger, the arbre du Tenere, or Tenere tree. At one point it lived in the desert and was the only landmark in the vast Tenere desert between the Air Mountains and the oasis of Fachi on the 600 km long camel caravan route. In 1973, a Libyan truck driver backed into it, and it has lived it the National Museum ever since.