the start of something

I know I haven’t been blogging a lot, but have I ever been reading. I’ve read more books here in the past 4 months than I can remember reading in the last 3 years of medical school, save when I first got my Kindle – it feels that dramatic. While I love reading, I sink a little too deep into the book. I just can’t, or don’t want, to do anything but read the book. When I have to stop and go to work/socialize/be a normal person, I feel foggy and like I’m in the wrong world. I think that’s pretty much why I had to tone down the reading a ton in medical school – there’s no way you can walk into a patient’s room with a book and read in between all the boring parts of their story. Haha. But when I’m deep into something, that’s what I want to do – I want the book to fill in every single extra minute of my time. It makes me a spacey and less productive human being,  I think. Though maybe a more interesting one in the long term? Hard to tell.

It’s a Friday night here and I’m sitting at my desk drinking white wine and eating Toblerone. This is not significantly different from what I would do anywhere else on a Friday evening, so that’s nice. And we're going to Beth's to eat pizza and watch our "home video" of the"Safari Blue" trip from Zanzibar, in which video we are filmed as we discover that we are not actually on Safari Blue. Also, Italians like flags.

Picture from our Safari Blue day. We were trying to re-create all of the super wonderful photos we lost from our first snorkeling trip.

Christmas away from home was haaaard. It was so hard. I think it’s worse because we got robbed in Zanzibar, and getting robbed always feels like such a personal violation (and this time, even more so). And I just wanted to be HOME and have the people I love most around me. But you can’t always get what you want! And actually I had three awesome friends with me and we made the most of the trip anyway.

Zanzibar was beautiful – imagine the warmth of the Gulf of Mexico and the clearest water you’ve ever seen. The night sky also had the brightest stars I’ve seen in a very long time – even Tororo apparently generates much more light than Zanzibar. The starwatching was phenomenal. However, it was so hot and humid that you would literally wake up in the night covered in sweat, choking on the air. The only place I’ve been that’s comparable is Thailand. And the roads were terrible, and of course we got robbed. But I’m still glad we went. Plus, it was so good to see Sarah and Emily and get to know Beth better. We made a pretty awesome traveling group for 4 girls who hadn’t all met each other and who had to share 1 bathroom all trip. Haha.

Some beachy beach/Christmas pictures:

Christmas eve presents from Beth! Weird faces abound.

And Christmas morning! I barely recognize myself without glasses anymore.

About to have an amazing seafood lunch (2 lobsters!! all for me!!) on the Safari Blue trip.

Once we started getting our hair braided by Beth, we couldn't stop.

Beautiful sunset! Picture made more beautiful by Beth - she was able to photoshop out our wet-swimsuit markings. Haha.

Emily, celebrating in the ocean.

So. pretty.

 Then after we got back from Zanzibar I headed to the Hairy Lemon for New Year’s Eve. It was fun – it always is – but it was also sad because Hollie is leaving, and she’s part of what makes the Lemon so amazing! So we split a bottle of champagne and rang in 2012 in a happy/sad fashion.

Here we are watching "Dinner for One," a bizarre German NYE tradition, apparently. It has nothing to do with NYE, but it's pretty lolz.

Panda masks!! The theme of the party was "PANDAMONIUM." Somehow every party I have been to in Uganda has involved pandas; I'm choosing not to think too hard about that.

Hankar and Stas. Hankar has been at the Lemon every time I've been there, and will be there until April - as long as I'll be here! What a life. Stas is Russian, and hilarious. I have no words to describe how funny (much like Hankar, who rarely speaks.)

My project at work is totally doing a 180. Not that I’m too sad about it – it would have been great if the cultured Elispots worked, but they didn’t. So now I’ll be focusing on flow cytometry. I think that’s super cool anyway, as far as the science goes, and it’s a technique that would be good to know if I decide to continue to do immunology research in the future. So hooray! It’ll take a while to get the assay up and running, but it will be fun to pick and choose which kids I think will have interesting findings. Hopefully I’ll also have the opportunity to do a little secondary data analysis as well. I’m just not very good with Stata on my own, so I’m looking forward to having Grant here (Sunday!) and Pras (23^rd!) so they can lend me some much-needed help.

Also – another reason to look forward to the rest of January – the whole month is going to be like Christmas. Katie’s bringing back all sorts of things from the US for me from family, Tami and Kamna sent me packages, and I just got my first mail to Tororo – ever – from the Davis family and Lauren.  The goodness will only continue!

Let’s see what 2012 has got in store. 2011 was strange! I keep trying to think of the one most important thing that happened, or the one defining moment…but it all was just so different from Balto to SF to Uganda. But I have to admit, on review of my fb album from this summer, the summer in SF was SUPER fun. I’d definitely do that over again. And I’d choose this same Doris Duke program too, so! Victory!