Preparing for Gondar

Wow. It's been a solid three years since I last wrote here. In that wildly full interim I've fallen in love with the man I'll marry this August, almost finished my residency in family medicine, made a wonderful home in Seattle, and managed not to leave North America... at all...

I started this blog in my last year of medical school when I spent a long month in a small hospital in Lesotho. I remember that experience as the first time I felt like a doctor (read: medically useful and marginally independent) and as a period of time that reinvigorated me personally and academically. I'm curious and hopeful about the ways international medicine will feel different in a new country, in a new period of my life, and with new training under my belt. Am I ready to work without attendings over my shoulder? Is medicine as big and wonderful as I hoped it would be when I started this training project a decade ago? Will international travel be a part of our lives in the future? Will I get sick of eating injera? Will we elope into Ethiopia's Simien mountains and abandon wedding planning? Only time will tell...

Elliott and I are heading out on March 27th from Seattle bound for Gondar, Ethiopia with brief stop-overs in Rome, Cairo, and Addis Ababa. I'll be working in a hospital for four weeks and Elliott will be exploring "The Camelot of Ethiopia" for both of us. We'll be staying in a guest house with our dear friend Sonal Patel, a resident colleague of mine. After our time is up Elliott and I will meet my mom in Rome and its environs for a week-long vacation full of wine and square pizza, beautiful hill-top towns, and sun-kissed adventuring.

Stay tuned for stories, pictures, and pithy revelations over the next couple months. We're anticipating infectious diseases (not in us; we got vaccinated for everything), monkeys, mountains, monks, mothers, and meatless merriment (Sonal's vegetarian and we all want to learn how to cook Ethiopian food).

xoxo, Liz