Lisa's Journal

I just ordered $84 worth of 4x6 prints of my pictures from Tanzania. $84 of pictures! I hope that someday years from now I'll look back on these pictures and be happy that I printed them all, but right now it seems a little ridiculous. I'll direct you to my facebook page for a more complete (though still only a small part of the total) collection. But I'll share a few of my favorites from Kilimanjaro here.
It was an amazing experience. The people in Tanzania are incredibly hospitable, generous, and genuine. It did get a little tiring being stared at every time I walked the three minutes from the guesthouse to the hospital. "Mzungu, mzungu!" they would shout and point. (Mzungu means white person). But after they got past their initial surprise they would invite me to their home for tea and call me "rafiki" (friend).
My Swahili certainly improved while I was there, but it was confused by the fact that they tried to teach me Pare (their local mother tongue) at the same time.
I do hope to travel back to the area again to visit our partner church. But I will not be climbing Kilimanjaro again... it was way too hard. The six-hour climb to the summit in the dark (and cold, cold, cold wind) was like this: take a step, stop to catch your breath, take another step, lean on a rock because you can't go any further, get prodded along by your guide, take another step, catch your breath, repeat.

I'm going to Africa on Friday!!!!! Wooo-hooo! Pictures and stories will be posted when I get back in March. :-)

Did I not mention that I'm going to Africa?

On January 15 I am taking Step 2 of my boards. On January 16 I am going to Africa. I'm going to do a 4-week elective rotation in Tanzania. I'll be at Gonja Lutheran Hospital in the Pare mountain area of Tanzania (this is just South of Mount Kilimanjaro, which is near the Kenya-Tanzania border). Basically, it will be like a rotation here, but instead of being at a world-class university hospital with more medical technology and trained specialists than you can imagine, it will be at a very rural hospital where they re-use latex gloves don't use their IV pumps because the electricity is not reliable. At the end of the 4 weeks Steve will be joining me and we are going to do some traveling which will involve visiting some churches in the area, climbing Kilimanjaro, and going on a little safari. So I'll be there about 7 weeks total.

I am extremely excited about this... I've been wanting to do an elective like this since I started medical school. I'm also a little nervous. I'll be the only student there, and probably the only white girl (maybe the only white person). I'm traveling from Cedar Rapids Iowa to the Kilimanjaro airport by myself in a trip that takes 3 days and goes through Detroit, Amsterdam, and Nairobi. I also don't know Swahili, but I'm working on it (or at least I have a phrasebook to study during my 3-day flight). The doctors at the hospital speak English and the medical records are in English, but only well-educated people know English, so most of the patients will not fall into this category.

I'm also super-excited about climbing Kilimanjaro. Anyone watch the Today Show? Ann Curry tried the climb a month or so ago and didn't make it due to altitude sickness. Hopefully I won't have the same problem. I will be taking my acetazolamide prophylactic-ly.

I'm sure I'll have lots of stories (and pictures!) to share when I get back in March. Right now I feel like I have a lot of preparation to do, but somehow I don't think I can truly be prepared for this. So is life, I suppose. :-)

Oh, and I should mention that I only have four more rotations left until I graduate from medical school! The above elective is one, then I do an elective in Wilderness Medicine (I'll have to explain that one in another post), and required courses in radiology and ophthalmology. Then in May I graduate!

Steve and I spent Thanksgiving in Spokane Washington with our beloved former RA, Liv, her husband, Casey, and a few others. We had a lovely time, and I was given instructions from Liv to pass along her greetings to the old 3 East folks.
They seem to be doing well. Casey is teaching English at Whitworth University. Liv is awaiting a call as a pastor and doing some artwork and writing in the meantime. They bought a nice old house and they recently got two very cute kitties.

The tailgate party we had for our church went well and everyone seemed to enjoy it, but we only had about 45 people, and of those, only a few were beer-drinkers. Apparently our brains were in "college-mode" when we went shopping for the party, so we bought 100 beers. Then one family brought beer to share, so we ended up that day with 96 beers. To remedey the situation of excess beer, we decided to have an Election Night party. It should be a good time, but I have a feeling that people may not be too eager to drink a lot of beer on a Tuesday night. Any ideas on how to actually get rid of all this beer?!? By the way, you're all welcome to join us if you're feeling up to a trip to Iowa!!! After all, this is where Obama got his start... why not see it to the finish!?

In honor of the upcoming event, Steve carved this pumpkin:


I carved this one, but don't worry, it was not intended to be related to Steve's pumpkin! :-)


Happy Halloween, and Happy Election Day!

This Saturday Steve and I are hosting a tailgate party/open house during (and before and after) the Iowa vs. Wisconsin football game. Wouldn't seem so crazy, except that we've invited our entire congregation, and I have a feeling they might all come! There are typically 140 or so people at church any given Sunday. I know you all havn't seen where I live, but it's just not that big -- a small townhouse. I just hope they don't all come at the same time. And that it doesn't rain. And that no one get's too drunk (like people seem to do in Iowa City on game days). And that Iowa wins! I'll let you know how it goes.

For the last three weeks I've been on a rotation in clinic in a small town about 1/2 hour from Iowa City. Largely because of the jobs provided by the nearby meat-packing plant and the seed companies, there is a large Spanish-speaking population in this area. It's been a great opportunity to practice my Spanish in a medical setting. The clinic handles a lot of obstetrics and pediatrics. I've now met two different couples (one pregnant and one post-partum) in which one member spoke only Spanish and one member spoke only English. I think that they might have understood more than they let on, but we seriously had to translate for them during their appointments and give them hand-outs to take home in two different languages. It really puzzles me how this happens. Would you have a baby with someone you couldn't even communicate with? I suppose that love is the universal language. And maybe it cuts back on arguments. It's probably easier to raise a bilingual child that way. But, still, I found it amazing!

Steve is on an alumni board at Valpo for some new social ministry group (I really don't know a whole lot about it). Anyway, they are meeting at homecoming this year, so he is definitely going. It's October 10-11, I believe. I might be going, depending on the schedule of my rotation at the time. Anyone else going to Valpo's homecoming????

Hiking in the rainforest (yes, there are rainforests in Alaska!) near Ketchikan.



A Whale Tail



The Front of the Coral Princess in Glacier Bay National Park



A Glacier



I liked the contrast of shirtlessness and icebergs.



The Family at our Dining Table -- the food was AMAZING!



The Family in Denali National Park



The Alaska Pipeline, outside of Valdez.



Brian with glacier.



I got to hold a sled dog puppy! I'm pretty sure she's the next Iditarod champion.



Grizzly Bears -- mom and cub nursing (we weren't as close as it looks, this picture is really zoomed in!)



Polychrome Pass in Denali



Mount McKinley - the tallest peak in North America. We had an incredibly clear day at the park. They told us that only 15% of park visitors even get to see the mountain at all!



Mom and I went rafting on the Copper River.



Steve thinks he's a caribou.



Moose taking a drink.

I'm posting some pictures of the flooding. These are all within walking distace of my place. They aren't allowing people to cross to the other side of the river, so they are all from the West side.

Picnic shelter at city park.


Stop sign.


Walking on water.


Basketball hoop and tennis courts.


Dumpter and debris on (what used to be) the Park street bridge.


Hancher auditorium.