twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?"

Roaming

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The medical conference lasted 5 days. We were recertified as BLS instructors and ACLS. I met a lot of people from various posts that I hadn’t met before. We connected with our friends and wandered around Rome looking at all the sites, wandering with the Sunday hordes down Via del Corso and eating pizza, pasta al pomodoro, grilled eggplant salads. But the real bonus was that MED released our bid list for 2008. Check it out!

accra
addis
asmara
astana
bangkok
beijing
brasilia
bucharest
budapest
chisinau
havana
kiev
kigali
lilongwe
moscow
pretoria
quito
sarajevo
tirana
tokyo
yaounde
yerevan

Tomorrow we fly home to Niamey.

Comments

10 responses to “Roaming”

April 2, 2007

Amy

As 3/5 of our family is sick for the zillionth time and the ‘offical’ advice from our MED unit today was take this and that and you need to leave Beijing – I would not recommend coming here – not if you value your lungs!

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April 2, 2007

Dak

I was actually about to say that Beijing would welcome you with open arms, although I see that Amy, above, disagrees. I’m definitely with you, though — there’s no place on that list that I wouldn’t want to go, and I’d be awfully hard pressed to narrow it down. Best of luck.

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April 2, 2007

Jennifer Margulis

Hooray that you are coming home tomorrow. We miss you in Niamey!

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April 2, 2007

MamaLana

I, too, have heard that one tour in Beijing damages your lungs like 40 years of smoking Camels! Without filters! Havana, Budapest, Quito. Decisions, decisions. [I love that ‘shadow’ photo of you guys. Adorable.]

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April 3, 2007

mc

My vote is Havana (but what do I know). I would be able to visit you there, (dancing with the enemy). Tanya loved it there when she was there for a year.

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April 3, 2007

clay

Of course, you know I put my vote in for Tokyo! But it must be one of the most popular.
So it looks like this list is a reward for . . . .
I’m glad you got to go to Rome. I did enjoy it so much.
But Milan has the best food, outside of Courmeyer’s pizza.
Raining here in Japan.
Entrance ceremony for University today.
Ciao, Clay

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April 3, 2007

Shawn

My wife failed to mention that all the cool kids say ‘Kyiv’ these days. Don’t offend the Ukrainians…they’re sensitive.

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April 3, 2007

kshama

The boys and I are missing you all already. I hope we get a chance to spend time together again soon. Give the kids a hug.

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April 4, 2007

mc

Is there a french connection with any of these cities? With school sure has worked out well with your kids.

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April 4, 2007

Catherine

Oh, good list!
Full disclosure: I love Central and Southern Africa and my dream is to find someone to pay me to live/work there.
I think that if you guys like and can handle Niamey, then Kigali and Yaounde would be a blast (Lilongwe maybe not so much, I hear it can be a bit dangerous, but it is really located in a beautiful part of the world, with lots of great places to visit in the greater Southern African region).
Pretoria, too, would be awesome. Very different from the other African cities. Very European and cosmopolitan. Great climate, and jacaranda trees everywhere! Just a very lovely and live-able city (you could do all the soccer practices, ballet classes, fancy restaurants, theater etc etc and stuff there). Not as dangerous as Johannesburg, but not immune to that stuff either.
Finally, I was in Budapest this past summer and I cannot express how much I loved that city and culture and just about everything Hungarian! I really wished I had more time there and a chance to explore the rest of the country. It’s my favorite city in Europe, hands down. Really a gem of a city. Very, very fin-de-siecle or belle epoque or whatever you want to call it. It’s like art nouveau exploded all over the city.
It’s a funny mix of Western Europe (a lot like Paris and Vienna), Eastern Europe (a bit reminiscent of St. Petersburg) and some Turkish/Ottoman influences. I read that throughout its history has gone back and forth between being considered “The farthest East of the West or the farthest West of the East”. Just very cool. Great food, too. And thermal hot springs! They’re really big into all types of water sports and equestrian activities.
So for me personally, it would be a very, very tough decision between the African cities and Budapest. I suppose it would come down to which place I had the least likely chance of seeing on my list ever again. I have total list-envy right now!

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