Boston Weekend

My boss gave me Friday off last weekend (can't argue with that!) so I decided to do a little road trip up to Boston for Memorial Day, to hang out with my best friend from high school and see some long lost cousins at a family Garden Party. I thought, oh, since everything on the east coast is pretty close I should go up to Boston. Right. Ashley, Camille, John... take a lesson from me!

Ten hours later I showed up.

Luckily it turned out to be very much worth the trip. I posted pictures of the city, Harvard campus, the Freedom Trail and my family party. (Yes, they're Italian, and yes we played Bocce ball, but yes, I'm still jealous of Lauren's awesome trip!)

elimorey.blogspot.com

Work is good.

Peace.

Im Alive

Although I have not been the best blog contributor, I have rather enjoyed reading everyone's posts. I just got back from a fabulous trip to Europe (plenty details and pics on our blog- more than you would ever want to see) and am back to the real world. I am just getting around to finally cleaning about 5 months of dust around our place and catching up on all the things I neglected during the whirlwind of last semester. It is SO nice to wake up and not have any papers or stats homework hanging over my head.  Anyway, I won't start my project and fieldwork until the end of June, so until then I'll continue to read about all that you are doing.  Good luck to you all and I look forward to updates.

  Mark and Pete-we were about an hour away from Geneva for a few days in Chamonix (if you get a chance I would highly recommend taking a day trip there)- I thought about trying to catch up but realized it was a stretch. I heard Dr Page was your roomie for a few days- very cool.  We also drove through the Mont Blanc tunnel and I am still made about the 35 Euros we had to fork over... lame

A Romantic Getaway

Well, Mark and I had our first romantic getaway (for everyone who has been wondering about the romantic escapades). We rented a car this past Saturday (and got lucky...it only had 12km on the odometer when we picked it up, and 650km when we returned it). We started at 5am and drove to a little town in northern Italy called Aosta. To get from Switzerland/France to Italy, you drive through the Mont Blanc tunnel, which is a 15km long tunnel through the mountain. It was pretty cool, except for the fact that they nearly rape you to drive through the thing...it was 35 euros just to drive through??? Once we got there, I had some early morning Italian ice cream while we walked around and took pictures. It was a cool town...had a bunch of Roman ruin things that were built a super long time ago. There was a cool arch thing that was built for some Agustus dude over 2000 years ago! 

We left Aosta and were raped again as we paid another 35 euros to drive through another super long tunnel, this time going towards Zermatt (the Matterhorn). After a few hours of driving (through some of the coolest roads I have ever seen), we arrived at Zermatt. Luckily, we got there just in time to get a really cool view of the Matterhorn...I know what your all thinking, how romantic huh? 

For the next many hours, we drove along lake Geneva and stopped in a handful of cool towns along the way.  We finally dropped the car off after a 17 hour day! It was definitely worth it and we were able to see a ton of cool things in a relatively short amount of time. I'll post some pictures with this, but if you really want to see the cool ones, you are going to have to ask Mark. 

This is some crazy chateau thing in Montreaux Switzerland that was probably built a super long time ago too!

The Matterhorn

Some Roman colosseum thing built a super long time ago! 

This was a cool church in Aosta...I am not sure how happy the praying people were that we were taking pictures though???

I had to spend a while in this thing, and the guy told me I had to do like 40 "Hail Mary's"...I still don't know what his deal was???

This is just a classic little street in Aosta...just what you would (at least I did) picture an Italian village to look like. 

Eleven lessons from Ecuador

Well, I am lucky i'm in the nice part of the city so I DON'T have rats (sorry Ashley), and I get to walk to work everyday. Ashley inspired me with her list, so here are some interesting things about Ecuador:

1- There are thorny trees here. Be careful, or you'll be impaled. (I tried to upload a picture of them, but blogger wouldn't recognize it...maybe later)
2- There are always people of lower SES, shall we call them, trying to sell anything and everything to the drivers at every stoplight. Some have no legs (really, i saw a guy walking on stumps of his thighs this afternoon), some are old crippled women, and some are little kids. While walking home from work the other day i came upon a group huddled around one of those little kids who had apparently been hit by a car...which brings us to...
3- I thought Utah drivers were bad. Sorry, since you're almost all from Utah, but you can feel better about yourselves because Utahans usually stay in the lines painted on the road. It's optional here. Major roads abruptly go from 3 to 1 lane and all three lanes just jam together and honk at each other instead of merging to form one lane. It's no big deal to straddle the line...if someone behind you wants to pass they just honk or flash their headlights at you.
4- You guys remember that Ecuadorian video we watched about the oil drillers with Dr. Cole? Anyone remember the drink they made by having the women chew up yucca and then spit it back out and let it ferment? Yep, I was offered that TWICE this weekend, and don't think I could have stomached it even if I hadn't know it had alcohol...
5- Ecuador has these giant wild boar-like things (I forget all the new names) that roam through the jungle, but they are almost horse-size. They make most of the paths that are later used by the indigenous people.
6- They eat bannanas with everything. Fried, baked, double fried, roasted, made into flour, etc. You find them instead of potato chips. Mostly plantains, but all these options are doubled up because you have both the green (more like potato) variety and the ripe (sweeter) variety. They're actually really good.
7- I can eat a two course meal including desert and a freshly blended glass of juice from anywhere from $1.5o to $3.50. I tend to go the cheap route... Last week I was given some unidentifiable portion of meat, however. I chose to just eat it as quickly as possible and then to enjoy the rest of the meal. It looked suspiciously like pigs ears curled in on themselves... I am also worried about the water they add to the juice...
8- NO ONE is EVER on time here. I work from 8 to 5 and most people straggle in anywhere between 8:20 and 9 am. I went to a meeting at the Ministry of Health for all the regional directors of the health departments last week- we started about an hour late, and the coffee break that was scheduled as 15 min lasted about 90 minutes. Interesting.
9- The news is really sensational. Think of the most dramatic voice you can imagine, and then think about listening to that for an hour. I can't take it, so I just don't watch tv! They show the dead bodies and everything...
10- I think about Dr. Cole's class alot- "don't eat the food from street vendors", "wow- did you see the HUGE cloud of smoke coming out of that bus exhaust pipe?", "what process did the city go through to clean this water? is it REALLY clean? can I wash my hands in it? or do i need to use hand sanitizer afterwards?"
and 11- Toilet paper: You can't flush toilet paper here. If you do, it will clog the pipes under the buildings and it has to be dug up and cleaned out. You also are lucky to find toilet paper in public restrooms. If you are so lucky as to find a restroom with toilte paper, it's not in the stall where we would expect it to be, but outside in a dispenser (which you may or may not have to pay to use).

Yay! Now you know a little more about Ecuador...It really is a great place, though, and I'm excited because I get to go to the coast on Friday afternoon for the weekend.

The internship is going pretty well. Dr. Suriel, my mentor, was out of the country for the first two weeks, and the others that were put in charge of me didn't really understand the focus of my project. First they thought it was a qualitative study, then a quantitative evaluation of the IMCI program nationwide (holy HUGE project- don't know how they thought I'd get that done in 3 months!!), and then just told me to add some info to my proposal about the Theory of Planned Behavior (which they are not familiar with) so i can sell it to the medical schools I'll be sampling from for my study... so the rest of the time has been spent fixing my proposal, directing it to medical school directors, adding more historical info about Ecuador and IMCI, and now having it translated. I'm laughing at the crazy translations the PAHO translator programs is turning out, though.

My mentor says we'll get a handle on this project and get it rolling then he'll have me dive into the other work he'll be having me do. That's REALLY comforting to know that he'll make sure this gets done...

Well, good luck to all! I may just copy and paste this to my other blog...Hmm, not a bad idea...

The Southern Part of Heaven

So, this my first time blogging (not surprising), but I figured I had waited long enough to maintain my "laggard" status for adopting new innovations. Jenny even joined Facebook this week (so maybe there is hope for us).

North Carolina is great! I have been here for two weeks now. It is definitely way greener over here, as Eli said, than the brown of Utah (which I miss). I make it a point to ask everyone I meet here how they like it in the "Southern Part of Heaven", as Dr. Cole called it in a recent email. Everyone says they love it here (even if they are not from here) and then start listing off the reasons I should move here. I think some of the people I ask that question could go on for hours about it (I think one lady at Church would've if my ride wasn't leaving). The only two people I met who didn't absolutely love it here, but just liked it, were the missionaries (both from Utah). I feel kind of bad for them, though, because they told me they just sweat through their shirts and ties all over the place during the summer when they are out in the hot, North Carolina sun and humidity. One Elder even told me that last summer he and his companion would come home for lunch, take their white shirts off, put them in the dryer, and then put them back on again when they left for the afternoon. Sweating through your clothes like that just sounds awful (which makes it understandable that the missionaries just like it here instead of loving it).

My committee had a really interesting requirement for me to complete before I left Utah...I had to become a licensed pesticide applicator. Weird, huh? They wanted me to become licensed so that I would have some perspective on what is and is not required to be a licensed pesticide applicator, the people in my data set, and to maybe understand more about different pesticides and application methods. Anyway, they told me this at my proposal defense on May 1st (a Friday), I got the materials (a book and some packets) on May 4th (a Monday), scheduled an appointment May 5th to take the two exams on May 6th, took them on May 6th, and left for North Carolina on May 9th. It was a bit of a whirlwind, but since I was only licensing to be a private pesticide applicator (so I can spray pesticides on my own farm, if I ever have one, but not someone else's), the exams were open book. The exams took me four hours, but I passed both and am sure it was nothing like the MCAT was for Brad (or the GRE, for that matter). I thought it was really funny that I had to become licensed, so I told my mentor, Dr. Kamel, when I got here. She was actually really impressed that my committee (Merrill, Cole, Lindsay) was so practical and even brought it up a few days later.

My mentor is great, she seems pretty understanding of how it is to work with an intern. She is probably in here early 60s and is quite short (way shorter than I imagined from her picture on the NIEHS website). My data set is huge! They gave me 1,658 variables for 89,658 people. It took SAS about 18 minutes to even read in the data! My first week was spent getting familiar with the data set, going through the code books and searching for variables that might be relevant to our analysis, and printing frequencies for them (thank goodness for proc freq). I use SAS every day and for the majority of my time (which I am loving...I know, I know...the word you're all thinking applies to me right now is "sadistic"). My second week was spent using logistic regression (which is my new favorite statistical method) to produce odds ratios for various demographic variables. Interesting find so far: the pesticide applicators that were most likely to commit suicide drank alcohol every day and, here's the really interesting part, they only drank 1-2 drinks each time they drank. In other words, the applicators that committed suicide weren't binge drinkers (Yes, it is weird, and even disturbing sometimes, doing an analysis of suicide, but maybe something good will come from this and other related research so that mortality due to suicide will be reduced among pesticide applicators). Anyway, I won't bore you all anymore with that.

I have probably written too much already, but I think I should mention just one more thing. I attend "Repro Lunch" every Wednesday (at least until I have to start attending weekly seminars for summer students at the same time in a couple of weeks). Repro Lunch is a group of epidemiologists and biostatisticians here that get together and discuss reproductive epidemiology papers/research over lunch (stop laughing, Ashley). The first one was about the effect of grandmother's smoking on the birth weight of their grandchildren. There was no association between the two, but it was really interesting hearing the epidemiologists discuss why the paper was garbage and shouldn't have even been published (much like Dr. Cole did in Environmental Health Sciences to the metal in fish in South Africa paper). The second one dealt with particular genes that affect alcohol metabolism in the mother and the baby in utero (I hope I used "in utero" correctly--it just means in the uterus, right?). It was way above my head epidemiologically, statistically, and especially genetically/biologically.

Well, I'll write again soon. I was extremely glad to hear Liz found a fieldwork. Good job! Later.

Proposals...stink.

It's Thursday night at 10:45 pm and I am working on my fieldwork proposal. I don't know how all of you wrote these proposals, but I am struggling with it. I think I am officially the last one to be doing my proposal and I'm cutting it pretty close, as Rosemary so kindly reminded me in an email saying that I needed to submit my proposal at least one week before I defend it. That means I have to turn it in tomorrow and get the defense scheduled. I finally bought plane tickets and am officially headed to Barbados. I'll be leaving June 2 and returning August 4. My landlady ok'd having visitors stay...so any takers? Weekend in Barbados? Sounds good to me!

Wish me luck on the proposal and defense....just like biostats, I'm just hoping to pass!

Rats

There are rats in the subway here, really that is all I have to say- not nice little mice but rats- rats the size of cats- why hasnt someone killed them all. On an unrelated note we went to see our next apartment- it is one room and the shower (it's a shower stall) is right next to the bed like where a window would be, so instead of a window it's a shower... hm... I am having flashbacks from a friends episode not sure how this is going to turn out, as soon as we move in I will take pictures so you can see... 

Pete’s Quote Board

So, Pete's been spouting some gems... I thought I'd share:

“They’re obviously not a butter people” – speaking of the Swiss when, at a restaurant our bread was brought out to us with no butter.

“What the heck, they’re like grooming each other!” – commenting on a couple of ants on our dining room wall. Let’s just say, Pete is not a fan of ants.

“Wow! Rice multiplies like crazy!” – while checking on our rice cooking on the stove.

More to come...

Fells Point, Baltimore

Ok I finally got out and took a couple of pictures. Two to be exact:

Fells Point: my part-time office place. It's the cream colored one behind the tree near the right hand side of the photo. You can see the Hopkins Hospital/Med School/SPH about a mile up the road in the distance (cranes for the new purple children's hospital). There is also a pirate ship that docks right here and takes little kids on excursions. From inside we can hear the kids' "Args" and "Ye mateys!" (after they put bandanas on them, they teach them how to speak). It is very cute. Nice contrast with the usual foghorn.


I walk down this alleyway to get to my car after work. Is anyone else amazed at how green it is over here?? Man, its good to get out of the desert!

Other interesting things: TONS of jaywalkers (Judy... um yeah no comment. Just make sure you stay in Denver), poison ivy everywhere, and you Priesthood holders might appreciate this: on Sunday we used up an entire 8 trays of water. Thankfully we had a ninth on hand. But that means if you add in children, we have about 400 people at sacrament meeting every week! It's quite the difference coming from Payson, where we're lucky to have 80. Woohoo go church.

Oh, and thanks for all the descriptions of yummy food. I get depressed every night when I look at what I have on my plate... I hope my wife gets here soon!

Miss you all! Keep the updates coming!

Ode to SAS and Public Transporation

Hey all! Its so fun to hear about everyone's adventures, although I do miss everyone! Life here in Maryland and at the NCI is great. I finally feel like I'm accomplishing something which is a good feeling. I've finished my preliminary exploratory analysis of my first data project using SAS...oh how I love SAS! Its probably not very exciting to anyone else but I analyzed several soil types against cases and controls in a Kaposi sarcoma study. I found a couple of interesting results that I'll probably look in to a little bit further. Right now I'm working on learning GIS so that I can map out the soil types to use in the report. My mentor likes pictures! And its actually pretty cool.

I'm also learning a lot about the public transportation options here in Maryland and the greater DC and Baltimore metro areas. I know all the buses that can get me from College Park to Rockville (and there's more combinations than you might expect)! Getting from Rockville to Baltimore is a bit trickier...not that I'd want to get there very often :) It is more of a combination of bus, metro and commuter trainn and takes a lot of time too, so Aaron usually just drives down and meets me at my house in College Park. I've also been blessed to make friends with one of the researchers in the Hormonal and Reproductive Epi Branch who happens to live no more than 8 blocks from where I do, so when she's in town she gives me a ride home! She's awesome and her 10-month-old daughter is adorable!

For those of you who are curious, everything with Aaron is going great. We're going down to Duck Beach, North Carolina for Memorial Day with about a million other singles from the East Coast! I'm excited for the beach. I just hope it gets a little bit warmer!

As far as food goes I don't feel like I have anything to compete with everyone else. I definitely haven't made any multi-colored cakes...and now I don't think I ever can since I could never make one as cool as Liz's! I have found a whole bunch of ethnic restaurants in the most unexpected places (mostly along the bus route in random little cities). There are a few pho Vietnamese noodle places that we're planning to try out. I'll make sure to report!

Good luck to you all! I love reading about everything that's going on and looking at the pictures! Miss you all!

The Big Apple

This is all the great stuff I got from the blood pressure screening I participated in at Target, a waterbottle, a waterbottle holder, a podometer, a cookbook (meatless mondays) a cool button, a fm radio (with headphones and batteries) and more pamphlets than I know what to do with!
Times Square
Pete this picture is for you, this is was Brian's dinner, granted he paid more than $10 for it ($11) but still better than your soup and salad. 
My dinner (less than $10)

This is where I will be doing my internship- you have to buzz to get in so not sure where exactly yet
Waiting for the subway
Our apartment
The street we live on (for the next two weeks)

We made it to NY.  First off I just have to say NY is a little different than Provo, people are a bit less understanding here, things are much dirtier, and everything is twice as expensive. With that being said I am interested to see how this trip turns out. We made it to our first apartment, which is much different from our provo apartment, took down all the pornography (I love that you think I am kidding) and settled in for the night. The guy that came to collect our rent turns out to love mormons, he played Brigham Young in several new movies produced by the church, after telling us how great mormons and provo were he recommended a great place to get a drink or a cup of coffee... hm... 

What else can I say about NY, last night on the plane we met someone that needed a tranquilizer dart, he yelled at everyone and then he yelled at the taxi dispatcher-sometimes you just shouldnt yell- the dispatcher wouldnt let the driver taken him anywhere. 

Today we headed out to buy a few things a target and guess what we found, a public health campaign! I wish I had some this is public health stickers to give people but sadly I didnt. We got our blood pressure taken and then were given a bag full of goodies. The program was aimed at reducing blood pressure through reducing sodium intake- pretty snazzy. 

We went into Manhattan tonight, on our way we saw something I thought Pete would enjoy, a rat (a huge rat, basically a small dog) in the station, it was disgusting. The NY subways are nowhere near as nice (or well marked) as the DC subways, and it turns out that on the weekend things are much different than the week days so that was... confusing to say the least. 

Since being in New York I have learned a few things (and I have been here less than 24 hours)

1. I am going to have to get over being fearful of germs- they are everywhere, everything is dirty, this is going to be a long summer if I dont learn that quickly

2. people are mean here, no one cares about rules- emergency exit doesnt actually mean emergency exit

3. eating at mcdonalds is okay, but the time I actually find it and make it home I would have worked off the calories (seriously there is a lot of walking) I consumed. 

4. rats live here, self explanatory, I have seen a few already and there are rat traps in our apartment

5. subway lines change on the weekend without warning

Summer Achievement

So, while you all are saving the world, I am baking cakes. Really. I made a rainbow cake today.
That's what one layer looked like before I frosted it and added some peaches and stuff. Important work to be done here...



But really, I am making some progress. I'm *hopefully* going to be doing my fieldwork updating the Welcome Baby curriculum at the UCHD. I'm halfway through my proposal. How did you guys get the motivation to write this thing. I get bored after every couple sentences. But, it will be done someday!

The True Title of Our Positions at WHO

Geneva is going great so far! If anyone can actually believe it, I am not eating five guys for lunch every day (although, I wish I were). I took this picture one day at lunch to have as proof that I actually do eat healthy sometimes, and unfortunately I do nearly every day here. The salad alone costs me $8-10 every stinking day. WHO may be the world leader on public health issues, but they are by no means the world leader in making soup, that is for sure! All that aside though and we are doing pretty good here...I am now only having medium-major (instead of extreme to catastrophic) withdrawal symptoms from my dear Dr. Pepper. I have only found it once here! 

Working at WHO is cool, but can get boring pretty quickly. I have decided that our true job title is one that is best explained by a friends episode (as are most things in life). If you really would like to know what our job description actually is, it is in the small print of our terms of reference paper. But as I said above, it is also described quite well in season 6 of friends in the episode titled, "The one that could have been." It is where Chandler is going through a rough patch in life as an aspiring writer and ends up working for the successful actor Joey Tribiani (for those of you who may be confused, this episode is them looking back thinking how things could have been if they had all made a few different decisions). There is a point where Monica tells Chandler what his job "actually" is to Joey...well, that is what our job description is here at WHO. 

I really am kidding though to some extent. We have great preceptors and I am sure over the coming of weeks, they will give us more cool things to do as we become more oriented with what goes on around WHO. 

Well, I hope every is having a great time and a fun filled summer. I miss you all. 

Also, I bought my first pair of capri jeans today and a really cool v-neck t-shirt too! I am fitting in nicely around here.

Exciting News . . .

No, I'm not pregnant again, but I hope the title made you all a little nervous.  I am working at the Utah Department of Health for my internship and I overheard someone in the cubicle over say, ". . . then Utah could get its NFP . . ."  I think they are trying allocate funds to get it working!  I was glad to know that it's not off the radar and that something that we worked on is in process.  I really hope it goes well.  I will keep you all posted on what I overhear.  Luckily the people next to me are loud, so I should have regular updates. :)

The summer is going really well so far!  Annie has started smiling quite a bit and I'm certain she laughed today.  I'm surprised by how much I miss her during the day.  We took her into her 2 month appointment (don't worry-we immunized) and we volunteered to be part of a meningal coccal vaccine study.  I felt it my moral duty as a public health professional, but I was thrilled to be randomized to the control group.  

Brad took the MCAT a couple of weeks ago, so we should find out his scores in a few weeks . . . cross your fingers for us.   He's being the stay at home dad right now while I do my internship and working from home. 

That's us in a nutshell for right now.  I really do miss you all and I hope that everyone is doing well!

P.S.  The picture is of Annie and her cousin Grace (Annie's on the right).  We thought it was cute since they were mirror images of each other.  I'll post some smiley pictures soon.

Bathroom Locks

We all know how ghetto the RB is and especially the bathrooms. All year long we settled for a room next to the bathroom to hear the constant flushing and random construction and jack hammers outside our door. After sitting in the Tanner Building and hearing all about the new addition and then walking through the dance department's new addition, Camille, Ashley and I just wondered if the College of Health and Human Performance could scrounge up enough money to fix the locks on the doors in the girls bathroom. I personally didn't think this would ever happen. Locks on bathrooms doors is just too much and not important for department funds. Well, I have good news...and this is especially directed to Ashley--there are BRAND NEW doors in the bathroom next to RB 121. Yes, that's right, they are grey, tall, with fully functioning brand new locks! Miracles do happen!

I wish I had a picture to share with this post, but maybe Liz or MaryAnne could take care of that. So now all the women in the cohort have something to look forward to in the fall. Sorry guys, I didn't get a visual to see if your bathroom has been upgraded.

p.s. I'm actually leaving for Barbados tomorrow morning at 6 AM.

Clinical Trials, Week 2

So I started my job at the Asthma Clinical Research Center at Johns Hopkins. I work in an office in Fells Point, far from the ghetto area of the Hopkins Hospital/SPH/Med School (and yes, they have guards on every corner!). Fells Point is an uberquaint colonial maritime community dating to 1726. The building is right on the boardwalk, literally feet from the Chesapeake Bay!

I'm in the Data Coordination Center which manages the large clinical trials from beginning to end. Right now they have two ongoing trials, but two more are coming down the pipeline. As soon as we get NIH funding, I'll be in on a team rushing to develop materials (Protocols, MOPs, forms, online data entry, etc.) to distribute to the participating clinics. But for now I'm just learning the ropes.

Funny thing: our drug/placebo shipment got stuck this week coming from Japan. Someone labeled the placebo as "food" so it got held up in customs!

When I'm not in the office I am either shadowing my boss (I guess I should clarify that he rarely visits our office) or attending lectures at the SPH and medical school. My boss, Dr. Bob Wise, is a Harvard-trained pulmonologist who has been at Hopkins for 37 years. He's a little shorter than me and bald. Think Mr. Magoo with glasses! Anyway, Thursday I suited up and observed my first bronchoscopy. That's where the tube goes down the nose with a scope on the end. They squirted some water down into the lung (I thought he would die the way he was coughing) and sucked it back up to send to the lab. Luckily the guy was in twilight (Fentanyl, Benadryl, Versed) so he won't remember anything about the procedure.

Also, have you guys heard about the new discovery about mosquitos' genes and Dengue? Apparently "a spray containing inhibitory chemicals might be developed that would be used not to kill the mosquitoes but to make them a less-effective carrier of dengue virus." Cool!

Oh and that pano at the top (the only photo I've taken here so far, sorry guys!) is our street in Timonium, MD. Our apartment is the one on the bottom floor of the building on the left. You can see the sliding glass door ajar. This place is soooo green and the trees are tall tall tall!

Viva la France!

Some of you might have already read on my family blog that Pete and I have moved across the border to France. We are in Sergy, a tiny village that takes about ten minutes to walk through. I went for a bike ride around the countryside this afternoon - amazing! Here are some pics:

For a more detailed description of our move, and some more pictures of France and Geneva, you can check out my family blog at http://www.spiresfam.blogspot.com/

The first week...

And week one is down...

The office is smaller than I thought it would be...they have basically one and a half floors of a building here, so everything is a little cramped. I don't really complain, though, since anything is bigger than my little desk space in the MPH office. Speaking of which, anyone who is still there in Provo needs to go lobby Mike to get the 2nd year office fixed up. They only have 7 or 8 desks...

Anyway, the office staff is great. They have another American intern who's been here for about 2 months already, but he doesn't speak extremely well...that means that the secretaries are all my friends now since they have me help them translate things. I've been able to sit in on some really interesting meetings about H1N1 though, since they're gearing up for things down here. I was proud that i really did learn something in epi and even understood most of the spanish for it. My preceptor is out of the country until the 17th of May, so I'm pretty much working on getting my project translated and proposed to them...

That's where the frustration comes in. Don't get me wrong, I speak Spanish pretty fluently after living in Spain for 2 1/2 years...but I didn't learn the technical vocabulary necessary to communicate the details of a research project that involves a health behavior theory that no one in Ecuador has ever heard of! So I get to explain, be misunderstood, prepare again, explain again, be misunderstood in a different way, etc. The cycle continues. Lauren, make a basic vocab sheet before you go...that's my advice anyway!

What else? The pe0ple are very friendly, I'm about a foot taller than everyone, the sun sets at about 6:30 pm since Quito is surrounded by volcanoes, and they have office parties for holidays... Mother's Day is this Sunday, but they don't just do punch and cookies. They pulled out the wine and the nice finger foods for this one, so i got to go hunt down a glass of water really quick so i'd have something to drink during the toast. thus, everyone already knows that I don't drink...that I never have...not even a beer... I kind of think it's funny- the incredulous face people pull when they hear that.

And that's about it! Good luck to all and it's good to hear from you!

Summer!

Hello everyone!

I am a envious of Mark's photos and Eli's cool road trip. Geneva looks beautiful!! I bet there are a lot of romantic spots for you and Pete to visit...

So, these past two weeks are the first weeks since January that I've had unstructured time on my hands. I like it, but at the same time, I've been trying to figure out what to do with myself. I've been hiking twice, rock climbing once, baked three loaves of bread, made pumpkin cookies, learned two new songs on the guitar, and borrowed a few piano pieces to work on.

The only exciting thing that I can think of is a little traffic accident I had yesterday. I am normally a good driver - I have never gotten a ticket or been pulled over. Yesterday, I was trying to turn right on a red light on 3700 N and University Ave. I was looking left to check for traffic, and when I finally thought it was safe to go, I lifted my foot off of the brake pedal and looked right.

Suddenly, there's this biker right in front of my car and she just tipped over on her bike! I think she must have been right in front of my car because I hadn't even pushed the gas pedal, I just lifted my foot off the brake and the car must have tipped her bike over. And of course, there just happens to be a nurse there who calls 911. Shortly after, the firetrucks came with full sirens blazing, and the police cars came with their sirens, and of course everyone is staring at me like I'm a bad person. They were probably thinking, "Dang Asian women drivers! Ship them back to China!"

So, the girl was fine - she literally just was tipped over and had a few scrapes, but she was ok. She was walking around about 3 minutes after it happened. She was crying and I thought her husband was going to kill me, but she was fine. And then the police came and then I thought to myself, "Oh no, this is it. I'm going to jail. Goodbye MPH, goodbye car, goodbye everything. Hello parole officer!"

I didn't get arrested, but I did get my first ticket. Ever. What a way to go down - the first ticket I ever got invovlved a biker, a 911 call, two firetrucks, and two police cars on one of the busiest intersections in Provo. I have never been so embarrassed in my life.

Can anyone figure out a way to reverse Murphy's Law? I could really use a cream or pill or something that would provide a little extra luck. A rabbit's foot, perhaps?

Barbados?

So, I know you are all wondering if I will actually make it to Barbados. I'm actually wondering if I'll ever make it there. However, today we had progress. I talked to a live person in Barbados this morning! I tried asking about specific dates of when I should be there, and like all the emails, the response was simply, "whatever works in your schedule." The lady (my advisor) is super chill and I have a feeling that my internship will be just the same. She sent me an email with all the different projects I can work on and said I could even do other stuff if I wanted to once I get there. I'll keep you posted on the specifics....for now, I'm just working at the MTC, visiting Mike and Rusty in the lab, and enjoying sleeping in almost every day. I hope you're all enjoying your various activities.

MARYLAND!!

Hello from rainy Maryland. I made it here safe & sound late Thursday night and have been loving it. Yes, Aaron has played a role it that. Its been fun to hang out and see the sites in Baltimore and around College Park so far.
I also started at the NCI today. It was a really chill day trying to get everything set up and official. I now have a badge and everything! I think I'm really going to love working with everyone here. They are all really helpful and ready to get working. I just hope that I can do everything that they expect me to. John, I may be requesting your help! But I was following most of what they were talking about so that made me feel good. I'll keep you posted on all that.
I'm glad that everyone flying internationally made it out of the country H1N1 flu free. I'm super jealous that Alisha gets to eat cheap, amazing food. Learn how to make it so you can cook it all for us when you get home!
I hope everyone else is doing well! Ashley -good luck on your proposal meeting! Happy travels to everyone...even MaryAnne be safe travelling through Provo! Miss you all!

Quito

The only interesting thing that happened on my trip down was the ¨Mask-wearer watching¨that I got to do in the airports and on the planes. It was quite humorous to see so many people wearing their masks in such an inefficient way. Aside from the fact that the mask doesn´t really stop much at all, people were wearing them in hundreds of different ways that all managed to NOT block the airflow to the mouth and nose...

A member family picked me up at the airport and has taken me around the city in the last few days. I arrived on Friday and by Saturday at 12:30 they had found me a place to live only a few blocks from the PAHO office. It´s in a good area of town, too (though you wouldn´t know it from the looks of the place- it´s all pretty run down except the main roads), so I can walk to work and have a safe park right there to go running and everything.

The only problem is that it doesn´t have a real kitchen...but an entire meal here costs about 2-3 dollars, so I´m not too stressed about having to eat out. That way I get to try all the traditional foods, too! And the fruit is just what I was waiting for...it´s SOOO good.

I should have access to the internet at my apartment (I move in tomorrow), so I´ll try to get a blog built and get it connected to this one. Chao!

Yay, No Swine Flu!

So Pete and I survived the confined spaces of airports and planes all the way here to Geneva and came out unscathed by the H1N1 virus - Biden’s full of it :) We arrived earlier today and stole a ride on the bus from the airport to our apartment. We are staying in an apartment with this nice guy from the Philippines who works at the UN. He was kind enough to take us on a brief walking tour of the city this afternoon. It’s a beautiful city:






Our apartment is on the third floor of the yellow building:

Let us know how you all are doing.