Safe in Lesotho and catching up on the blog.

Boy, blogging from Lesotho is gonna be harder than I thought. I'm used to having decent internet everywhere I go, but here it's slow even when I'm at a place that supports wireless connection. Anyhoo, here's a little bit I wrote in London during my Thursday (Match Day) stopover there:

3/19 – MATCH DAY.

I have left the country! After a frantic final day of packing and organizing (tin whistle more practical than saxophone, 1/3 of the medical gear I hoped to take actually fit) and lunching with great med school friends Carlos and Veronica and making last minute purchases (iPod cable replacement, new Maxwell's mini-reference, ever-packable-frisbee), I managed --with the help of my friend Phil and roommate Laurel-- to make it to the airport nearly two hours before my flight.

There were no hassles about the bizarre volume or nature of the medical equipment filling my luggage, and my knitting needles weren't confiscated by security. All was well and I even had time for a last Harpoon IPA at the Logan bar. On the plane I sat next to a nice woman my age who consults for small entrepreneurial companies in developing Latin American countries and then, equally nice: she fell asleep for the entire flight. I watched _Doubt_ and _Wall-E_ and put a good dent in _Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ (thanks, Sarah Brady!).

Now I’ve just settled down at Frank’s Sandwich Bar on Hammersmith Road. My hands are flaky-white with the dry air of the Logan to Heathrow flight but my internal clock seems to be adjusting well to the idea of morning. Frank served up a quick steamed milk coffee and sausage sandwich on a baguette and the mist is burning off London in the 50 degree morning. I have an 11-hour layover here before my 12-hour flight to South Africa so I got a tube pass for the day. First stop was Hammersmith, a straight shot on the Piccadilly line and the closest stop to my school from 9th grade, St. Paul’s Girls’. My shoulders tensed up as I approached on foot, reminding me how uptight I’d become in frightened response to the tension of this “for gifted girls with good manners” kind of place. I made some really wonderful friends that year, played some amazing music, and became southwest London javelin champion, so I’m sure the microscopic handwriting, taught ponytails, and recent nightmare equating it with Mordor are worth it. Honestly, it was a great experience.

So today’s the national residency match, the day I find out where I’ll spend my next 3-4 years doing residency and fellowship, learning to become a happy and competent family physician. I will get an email at 5:00 this evening, an hour before I board my plane for Johannesburg. I hadn’t been feeling nervous but when I learned Monday that I HAD matched to one of the five programs on my list (don't know which) I felt unexpectedly and seriously relieved. I had thought I wouldn't be able to find out my destingation until Jo'burg so now I'm jonesin' to get to 5:00 and, despite loving all five of my choices... I REALLY WANT MY TOP CHOICE. Love is love and can not be denied.

So, I think I'll make my way over to Barnes, my old hometown village (SW13 9QB) and walk around the pond. I'd love a good couch for a read and a nap, but a slow meander with carry-ons will have to do. I'll post as soon as I know the match results.

p.s. Uploading pictures isn't working with this pilfered internet on my street corner. I'll try from heathrow later, since that's free and fast.

Fast-forward a few hours...

I had a really sweet bus ride across the Hammersmith Bridge to Church Street and walked down it past the patisserie where Kerry and I bought a pint of Breyers and, prompted by some Brit, started saying "have you got any Straaaawwwbrees?", past the daffodils surrounding the Pond, past the Barnes Pond itself and the dozens of newly spawned Barnesian toddlers, past the slightly sketchy butcher my father always thought liked me a little too much as a young teenager, to the Bull's Head where we heard great London jazz and I learned to appreciate darts as a sport, past the house we lived in and the house my friend Polly lived in, and finally circled back to the Sun Inn where I am now (12 years) old enough to sit with a pint in the sun while I knit and write in my journal. It was a sweet wander down memory lane, but I was getting increasingly antsy about the match. So I caught a bus, chatted with a lovely 55-year-resident couple of barnes about Obama's health care plans, HIV in Africa, being a judge in England, and what was on at the National Gallery.

I checked back into Heathrow, found adapters for the UK and Lesotho, and Skyped with my mom while obsessively checking facebook for friends' match updates and then, an hour later, for my own results. I found out so close to departure it was ridiculous, cried on the skype-phone with Mommy, and boarded for Johannesburg. On that flight I sat next to a sweet travel-lover of a 25yo Polish urban architect woman who wants nothing more than to see the Big Apple. Then I fell fast asleep and happy for a good 7 hours... ahhhhhh, watched a couple South African flicks, spent an hour in the Jo'burg airport, changed some money, and hopped on the bus that would take me through the downpour and thunderstorm to my 48-person prop plan bound to Maseru, the capital of Lesotho.

I know this is super wordy but never fear: I won't be posting every day.

The flight to Maseru was kind of hilarious. There were 6 black Besotho and 8 Chinese on my little prop plane and nobody was really talking. We were all exchanging funny smirks and gestures, though, as we drove to our little plane from the gate past bursting drainage pipes and bus-shaking lightning. It probably took us 30 minutes to get to the plane and then 45 minutes to start the engines and wait for approval to taxi and take off in our "state of the art aircraft". Due to placement in seat 2B I was assigned the duty of, "in the unlikely case of an emergency landing", looking out the forward port window to assess for smoke or fire and ensurance of the immobility of the propeller before opening the forward exit, pushing out the stairway, and helping passengers down said stairway. Given the weather and expected terrain of the Mountain Kingdom I took this kind of seriously and read my safety card for the first time in a dozen flights. All went smoothly and we had a beautiful ride through cumulus clouds into Maseru's Moshoeshoe Airport, the flat farmland of South Africa giving gradual way to the farmer-made terraced plots and naturally-plateaued dramatic rises of Lesotho. I journalled the whole way, alternating thoughts of my immediate medical awakening with the newly-anticipated medical futures of all my fourth-year friends.

Brilliantly, my bags all arrived hardly worse for the wear (though oddly but thankfully unscentedly wet) and full of their original contents. I was greeted by Mike holding a sign which read, "Bogel, Boston", and we loaded my heavy things into a maroon minivan. Onthe 25K ride to the Bosotn LeBoHA office we reviewed how to greet people of different ages and genders, the quality of local brew and smokeables, the great unlikelihood (a surprising surprise to Mike) that HIV is a maliciously man-made virus, the utility of donkeys, the chance of me seeing a monkey in Lesotho (low, but possible in the mountains -- I'll try, Genie!), and the public opinion of te figurehead King whose caravan we saw (we like him but his god-given power has been taken by man's fickle pen but why should we keep paying for that huge palace if he's impotent?) and the prime minister (he's out of touch with the people but makes some decent decisions). We drove through masses of people, goats, sheep, cows, aforementioned donkeys, grilled corn stands, a rock formation that looked like a sleeping lion, two churches and a mission, a couple schools, tin-shack food stands, and signs encouraging us to know our HIV status, all against the backdrop of a sunny 65-degree day in a stunning mountainous countryside. As soon as we pulled up on the main street we saw my friends Ethel and Kevin walking towards us and stopped for excited hugs. The rest of the afternoon and evening has been a sweet mix of a run on the golf course behind the American Embassy, some souvenir shopping for them, some hanging around the LeBoHA office and catching up on match gossip and Lesotho life, appreciation of the moment "when you see the Southern Cross for the first time", and some lovely dinner out at a pizza place with my old friend Sara Hoffman and her boyfriend Josh featuring sangria, local beer, and a bizarre soundtrack including Justin Timberlake.

Now we're back at the house filled with BU public health interns working on the LeBoHA project and I'm about to fall asleep on my keyboard.

Some final thoughts: I love being clean. I love being places I don't understand. I love outgoing children who pretend to be monster pirates. I love travelling farther than I've ever travelled before and finding people I love there. I wish I knew what kind of fruit a granadilla was. I love the look of the couch over there that I will now sleep on. I wish I could upload pics easily, but it's not going well. xoxo, liz