friends and family

to take a break from writing about work life, i'm recounting some moments where i've felt like a normal person over the past few months, which generally involves connecting with friends and family on my precious days off. although im on vacation now with chris in bangkok (yay!), i normally get one day off every 7-8 days while im on the wards or in the icu. im often tempted to sleep the whole day, but then would waste an entire day off and miss spending time with chris, so lately i've been more proactive about seeing people and doing things. this has been helped by the fact that a lot of friends and family have visited over the past few months, including:

rollie and meena from michigan! our first real houseguests, they cooked us amazing vegetarian meals like dutch babies (pancakes, not people) and enchiladas. in turn, we took them to the inner harbor where both me and meena got food poisoning from phillip's seafood. crab mac and cheese sounded like a great idea to begin with, but didn't turn out so well in the end...

meeting up with judy, a fellow swattie classmate in dc, who invited us to a "crafty bastards", a local diy craft fair which also showcased a breakdancing competition. one of our fave booths at this fair was mean cards ,a collection of hilarious cards for all different occasions. judy regaled us with stories from her days of intensive russian language learning at USAID, while i ate ice cream and drank coffee and whined about intern life.

sleepover with sae-rom, a fellow AMSA GHAC'er who's spending a year at Hopkins School of Public Health and is never in town, ever.

catching up with liz and andrea in dc, who came out for the annual GLMA conference. we mostly just hung out in dupont circle near the fountain, but it was great to catch up with some michigan peeps. i've also run into former classmates at bayview, including having a late night coffee with carl miller while he was on nights in the radiology reading room, and catching a short conversation with christina weng, who kindly came to do an ophthamology consult while i was in the CCU.

going to the sauna in columbia as rachel, a co-intern's guest. chatting and drinking ice cold water out of bell jars that rachel provided.

eating a post-call early dinner with mary (friend from high school) and her boyfriend tom, before they ran off to virginia for a peace corps friend wedding.

hanging out with matt alemu, a ford school classmate, who kindly drove out to visit us to play wii with chris :) .

having my family over and taking them out to eat chinese food, thai food, italian food...yoda remembering them and being super excited! (they came to pick him up to dogsit him while chris and i are on vacation in bangkok).