Guate y Zacapa

When looking for a Central American country to visit on a budget, may I suggest passing over more popular destinations such as Costa Rica and Panama for the oft overlooked yet visually stunning country of Guatemala. I was there in 2008 for one month, during which I spent a few days at Lake Atitlan, considered by many to be the most beautiful lake in the world. I returned, this time with the wife, for the better part of the past week during her spring break. It was a trip taken to celebrate a successful Match, secure in the knowledge that the next five years will leave us little time for travel.

After spending the night sleeping on the threadbare carpet of Miami International Airport with an annoying voice loudly jumping out of the speakers to proclaim the time every fifteen minutes, we arrived, after two layovers, in Guatemala City. A short taxi ride to the bus terminal and we jumped on a camioneta (aka "chicken bus") for the 4 hour ride up to Panajachel on the Lake. From there, we took a lancha (aka small covered boat powered by an overworked but compliant outboard) across the lake to our hotel. La Casa del Mundo is perched on a cliff overlooking the lake, and is only accesible by boat. From the dock, you need to climb a bunch of cement/rock stairs to get to the hotel. Nice rooms at $35/night and an array of decks and various platforms, complete with woodstove-fired outdoor hot tub completed the basic picture. My friend Oscar, whom I had gotten to know on my last trip there, still works at the hotel. He was our unofficial guide during our time there, taking us to, in order: a local friend with a backyard sauna; a local restaurant that doled out $2 shots of Zacapa (considered by many to be the best rum in the world); and to the summit of a volcano overlooking the lake. The last of these took us the better part of a morning, and was worth hiring an official guide for. The 40-something year old gentleman proceeded to kick our collective butt in volcano climbing, despite our Rocky Mountain pedigrees. Even so, we got up in two and one half hours (the norm is three), so we weren't completely undone about it.

Otherwise, lots of reading time, with us each reading three (non-medical) books, something I haven't done for a long time. Hammocks are my friend. The water in the lake was clear blue providing for an assortment of refreshing daily dips/swims. At night the sauna awaited, under a glorious sparkling night sky complete with the "Southern Cross" constellation of the southern hemisphere hanging over the horizon. We got back to Guatemala City ("Guate" to the locals) by the same means as we came. This time, however, we needed to change buses three times en route - something that went surprisingly smoothly considering the chaotic-looking scenes that are the change-over points. The flight back included another airport sleep over, this time at the Orlando airport, but we made it home safe and sound - very tired and moderately sunburned, but filled with the memories of our latest adventure together.



Camioneta - 4-hour bus rides complete with overcrowding and nice guatemalan radio music blared at damaging decibel levels for $3


Our room


La Casa del Mundo, our spectacular hotel


Inside view of a lancha


Outside view of a lancha


Amy with Volcan San Pedro, the volcano we climbed, in the background


On the way down


At the top with our friend Oscar (L) and our awesome guide (seriously, he was incredible)


Tuk Tuk, three-wheeled transportation extraordinaire


Be nice to spiders


Also to homeless cats who come and sit on your lap without prompting


Oprah has her Favorite Things (or so I hear); I have my Favorite Spot.


View from balcony outside our room


Inside a camioneta (this one is practically empty)


To pay for the trip, I am selling Amy's car (in any case, there is no way we are taking this boat all the way to NC)

Match Day 2011

My friend Kemeni and I directly after opening our envelopes. We both got our first choices.

Here's the official add-on to the wife's initial real-time post below. I can't tell you how relieved I am after spending the last four years in pursuit of a favorable residency match. Just to reiterate - we matched at my #1 general surgery program choice - New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, NC (we could have matched at any one of the twelve programs on my rank list). It's a small program that takes only two categorical surgery residents/yr. Beautiful location right along the NC coast. I loved my interview day there and then Amy and I were able to make a trip back there prior to making our rank list so she could get a better direct impression. It's a big move, but we are excited to start the next phase of our life together and I'm looking forward to starting my training in earnest!

And the winner is...

Wilmington, NC
This was our first choice so we are thrilled. It's all still a bit surreal!

tick, tock, tick, tock...

The waiting is starting to get stressful!

Step One Down...

...one big step to go.

We matched!

Yay for not having to scramble!

The Die is Cast ...

Rank list submission deadline was last night. Now begin the longest three weeks of my life.

Residency Update

Julian's done with all his interviews! Yay!

We are going to visit a few of the programs so that I can see the towns and to show those programs that we are very interested in going there. So, that will be this weekend and next.

Here's what happens next (the way I understand it):

In February, we make our rank list, a list of the programs that we liked starting with our number 1. (By the way, I shouldn't have made that comment about Wisconsin. Turns out that the program looks amazing and they seem to have a great community there.) The residency programs also turn in their list with the residents they would like to have.

So all these lists, from all the med. students in the country trying to get into residency and all the residency programs, are fed into a computer somewhere and an algorithm matches students to the programs.

On Monday, March 14th, we find out if we matched, or in other words, if Jules was hired somewhere. But we won't know where. Some people don't match for whatever reason, so they go into something called the scramble. Basically, you call up residency programs that have holes they need to fill and beg for a job. You work there for a year and then start your residency. It could be anywhere and from what I gather probably not somewhere you want to be. So that Monday will be stressful!

Then Thursday, March 17 at 11:00 am at Invesco Field with Julian's entire class we find out where we will be spending the next 5 years of our lives, assuming we matched. Since it just so happens to be St. Patrick's Day, I'm sure we'll be grabbing a few beers with friends after we open envelopes.

Cold Day!

I'm living it up at home today.  School was canceled because of our frigid -2 degree high in Denver today.  It wouldn't be safe for the kiddos that have to walk or wait for school buses.

So... I get to be a bum.  It's fantastic!  After a little house work, I think I'm going to build a fire, knit and listen to a book on tape.  Life is good.

I'm so thankful I have a warm place to be and enjoy this day off.  I know not everyone is so lucky.

knitting night

Last night, Kim, Amanda and Libby came over to learn how to knit. We enjoyed wine, pizza and chocolate cake as everyone worked on scarves. The girls were great, but there was a fair amount of profanity as stitches dropped and needles decided to not cooperate.

I love getting to work with these ladies everyday.

On the Road Again

Julian is off on another interview trip. I think he's in Virginia tonight and travelling around in Virginia and North Carolina this time. He just got back from a trip with three interviews in Michigan, and before that Kansas. Last time he was home for more than a night was November 15th.

So here's the interview list as it stands in no particular order. We could end up at any one of them:

North Carolina (2)

South Carolina

Virginia

Kansas

Michigan (3)

Wisconsin (2) I don't know why Wisconsin either

Illinois

Connecticut which I just used spell check to spell correctly

Kentucky

Denver

I think the top of the list includes N. and S. Carolina, Connecticut, and Denver and oddly Kansas.

Oh dear...

Journey Towards Residency

The first step has been taken.

A couple weeks ago, Jules applied to 50 residencies around the country. We're applying mostly to community based programs (as apposed to university programs which are more academic, competitive and cut-throat). Most of the programs are on the east coast, ranging from South Carolina and Kentucky all the way up to Maine. We also have random programs in places like Seattle, Pheonix, Salt Lake City and Dallas.

Now we just wait as programs invite Jules to interview. We've heard from about 10 programs so far, but none of our top picks yet. The best programs can afford to wait a bit before offering interviews because they know people will bake room for them.

Interviews will be in November and December.

Lots of waiting in this process!

The Reason I Haven't Blogged

In a word... school.

School has started and everything else has been moved to the back burner. "What am I busy doing at school all day?" you ask.

I had a very serious heart to heart today with the class. We had to discuss that it is not OK to pick our nose and then eat what comes out. It had been an epidemic! I don't remember ever having had this talk before. Our class is special!

Fishing and Franti

We had a fantastic last weekend together before Julian starts a sub-i at St. Joe's. He took the second part of the boards (the hard part I might add) on Wednesday. I can't imagine taking a nine hour test, but some how he does it. We won't hear back on how he did for a couple months.

We took this rare free time together to go camping. We backpacked into Red Deer Lake which is about an hour NNW of Boulder. Since we left on Friday, we didn't see many people on the trail and we had the lake completely to ourselves. We only saw two people the entire time we were there, and they only came

up to the lake and left right away.

Jules caught 8 fish.

I caught 1. Apparently, I'm not as alluring to the fish.

Saturday, after hurrying out of the wilderness we drove up to Red Rocks for the Michael Franti concert. We had a lot of fun, Franti is a good performer. You can tell that he's having a lot of fun and it's infectious. Jules got some i-phone pics that I'll see if I can get on here.

Urban Assault

Last Saturday the Wife and I rode our bikes approximately 35 miles around downtown Denver, a trip punctuated at various intervals with, in order: a paperboy route, "significant other piggyback polo", "Shipwreck Falls" water ride at Elitch Gardens amusement park, piecing together a puzzle made out of large segments of carpet, "human bowling" via "skateboard sledding", and riding giant rubber duckies across the vast expanse of a swimming pool. This was Denver's version of Urban Assault, a yearly event that occurs in about 10 cities across the country. It's cause celebre is to promote biking in urban areas, but really it's just an excuse to have a lot of fun and drink free beer once you are done riding a route of your choosing that must include eight different checkpoints before heading back to the start for a grand party and a chance at raffle prizes (run-on sentence duly noted, but I'm not going to revise it so deal). Some of us got a nice sunburn (hint - it was not me), but a great time was had by all and we certainly intend to do this again pending our location next year.

Italy...

was fantastic!

We had so much fun hiking around some beautiful mountains and hanging out with Dad and Dan.  We were in the Dolomites, a range that's a part of the Alps but has different geology.  I hope I got that right.  Anyway, it was beautiful.

Getting to Italy was a mess!  If you fly EasyJet in Europe, you might want to get to the airport about 5 hours early.  Better yet, don't fly EasyJet unless you want to be super stressed on your vacation.

When we did get to Milan, we met up with Dad and Dan and jumped on a train (or two?  I should really have blogged while my memory was fresh.)  Then, we caught a bus.  We were supposed to catch a second bus, but haha it was Sunday and we had planned with the only bus schedule on-line which turned out to be the weekday schedule.  We were able to take a taxi for that last leg, so it turned out ok.

The hotel was a traditional style for the area, which is in the north of Italy.  In fact, more people speak German than Italian.  So much for the Italian/English phrase books I checked out from the library!  The food was amazing.  It was a mix of Italian,German, and local food.  There was lots and lots of pork.  Every dinner was 5 courses: salad, appetizer, pasta dish, main course, and dessert. And we aren't talking small portions.  We were very pampered.  Jules was in heaven!

The first full day we took one of the ski lift up and just hiked around a bit.  We had a plan but just ended up wondering around.  There were beautiful wildflowers everywhere.  We hiked back all the way down and that's where we encountered the most beautiful wildflowers.  There were so many different kinds,  completely blanketing the hill sides.

After the first day, we mostly did Via Ferratas, which are trails through the mountains that are hiking with some rock climbing.  The name means Iron Way and it refers to the way you clip into the mountain.  Along the trail, in any even semi-dangerous area there are steel cables, ladders or stemples (think staple) attatched to the mountain so you can clip in.  It was a lot of fun and very challenging, for me at least. Jules had to find ways to make it harder, sometimes making me incredibly nervous to put it mildly.  I think he's part mountain goat.

My sweet husband went first so he wouldn't have to wait for me, the slow poke.  Unfortunately, that means we don't have as many pictures of him.




















Dad got this one of Jules climbing up an old trail that no longer has a cable to clip into and is much more dangerous!  Jules is the crazy guy on the left.

So, that's not us in the picture, but we did climb up that way!
















Overall, it was an amazing trip with way more beautiful pictures than I can post here.  We had so much fun hanging out with Dad and Dan on the trail and at the hotel.  We're so thankful that we were able to go.

England

As summer winds down, I figured I should probably get around to blogging our Europe trip.  Well here it goes...

The plan was to fly into Heathrow then jump on a train south to close to Jess and Gerrard's, but when the airline was looking for someone to bump, we of course volunteered.  Instead of going straight to London from Chicago, we would go to Amsterdam then to London arriving only 40 mins later.  In return, we got to fly FIRST CLASS and got a $400 travel voucher with the airline!  Sweet... until the plane headed for Amsterdam spent an hour and a half on the tarmac.  We of course missed our connection and our train in London.  We've had some interesting luck with air travel lately!

We finally made it onto a train and here's where I admit my nerdiness.  All I could think about was Harry Potter.  Unfortunately the train looked nothing like in the movies, but to my great delight there was a food trolly that passed by.

But enough about the travel.

It was so nice to meet Julian's sister and her family.  They were so very welcoming and warm.  They live in this great cottage called Blue Haze Cottage.  I can't believe we didn't manage any pictures of it, but I did find it on Google Maps.  I don't know if this will work, but here's the link.

We had such a good time exploring the area.  We went down to a World Heritage Site on the coast.  Multiple layers of rock are visible in the cliffs along the English Channel, testament to the relentless progression of time through the millenia.  There were lots of school groups admiring this lovely geology while we were there.

What kind of trip to Europe would it have been without a trip to a castle?

My favorite outing was to the church fete (pronounced 'fate' for all us Americans).  Basically, a fete is a church fair that serves as a fundraiser.  Jess' family helps out each year at the fete coming up with different booths or stations or whatever you want to call them.  Jules and I got to help with this year's activities.  I helped touch up the paint on some plastic fish that were for a little kids' fishing game.  Jules got in on the big project.  In the course of one morning Gerrard, Jules, Nigel and Jeff (the two oldest boys) made this.

It was a huge hit at the fete.

The other huge hit at the fete was a type of raffle.  For a pound, you picked 5 raffle tickets out of a bingo tumbler.  If any of your numbers was a multiple of 5, then you were a winner.  You went over to a table and found the item which had the same number as yours.  Now, the great part of this raffle was that 95% of the prizes were alcohol!  I guess that's not normal, usually you have a variety of things like stuffed animals and other random things you think of as carnival prizes.  I think that the guys got a bit addicted to this game.  We ended up with oh... about... 10 bottles of alcohol ranging from wines to whiskey to cider.  Julian was the big winner of the day.  He won his very own bottle of ironing water!

Picnic on the beach!

 (the water was freaking cold - lucky we had some rubber dinghies along) 

All in all, our time in Shipton Gorge was much too short.  We had a fantastic time and would love to go visit again tomorrow if we could.

Try a Tri

So at some point in the last half year I decided to try doing a sprint distance triathlon. Since I was a kid, I have always watched the Ironman Triathlons that they show on Sunday morning t.v. Now there's no way that's going to happen ever (or at least any time soon), but I was always so impressed with these crazy people.

I did a bit of research and found that sprint, or short distance, triathlons are all over the place. There will be about 10 on the front range this summer. So, why not try a triathlon?

My goal was just to finish! I figured I would be nearly crawling across the finish line.

I'm number 354 in the background.The 1/2 mile swim turned out to be the hardest part. I kinda freaked out at the beginning and forgot that I knew how to swim. About halfway through, I managed to remember and finished strong.

17 mile bike ride

(Thank you Sarah for letting me borrow your bike!)

5k

They give a medal for finishing. The lady who was handing them out was busy chatting with someone when I finished. So even though it's super corny and I have no idea what to do with it, I stubbornly waited for her to pay attention and give me my medal.

I had flashbacks of field day growing up.

5k Pics

 
 
 
 

Sad News

Today I found out that one of my former student's dad passed away this weekend of a massive heart attack. It's hard to be in the position of his former teacher. I still love the kid very much, but I'm not his teacher anymore. His current teachers are the ones that will need to really take up the reigns and help him. So what do I do? Let him know that I'm there for him and let him know that I love him, I guess.

I am starting to feel like the angel of death though. When that group of students was in my class, my grandpa passed away. When they went to second grade, another boy's father passed away. Now this. Unless I'm mistaken, they all passed away of heart problems. Let's hope this isn't a pattern.

5k

Sarah and I ran our first official 5k today.

33 minutes... not bad.


Pics to come.