fall 2009 pics

went to a park in bucharest where they featured model houses and churches from different parts of romania. have already forgotten the name, but here's one of the churches...
went to dinner one night and walked by the oldest church in romania...these are the workshop facilitators i worked with...
the people's palace (or palace of parliament)...built by a crazy communist leader. if you google it, it's got a pretty crazy story...
a few months ago, i went to charleston for a weekend trip with sarah...hit an actual plantation...
that's an alligator on the left, little duckies on the right...don't worry, they escaped into the reeds.
another gator...
charleston is a pretty city...family-friendly, but not so pet-friendly, which was an issue because we took along this little gal...so cute, no? just hard to get into restaurants and other sights in the city because of her. it's all good, though...we got to walk around and people loved her. it was a nice trip.

in my last post i forgot to mention that there have been a few visitors the past month. first, jane and earnie visited for a few days, so we had a proper southern dinner at mary mac's tea room...didn't have my camera, so no pics there. but i'm now working on getting jane to apply for the eis fellowship at the cdc...am plotting ways to improve the volleyball scene in atlanta...hehe.

the next week, hana was in town for a conference, so got to hang out with her a few times, plus flor, who was here for eis interviews. i haven't seen her since my last trip to el salvador, so it was awesome to have her over...i'm hoping she gets into eis so she can move to atlanta! that same week, our team's ex-eis officer, neha, was also in town, so we met up a few times...and then i left for suriname. it was a crazy week, but so nice to see everybody.

hmm, this post is eis-heavy, so i feel like i should explain. eis stands for epidemic intelligence service - a two-year fellowship for health professionals (mostly mds) at the cdc...you're either based in certain positions in atlanta or at a state health department doing applied public health work. it's a very prestigious and rigorous fellowship - much more than mine on both counts, and it's a good way to transition to or progress in a public health career.

okay...now that i've posted twice in one week, i'm done for a while...just kidding! ;P