The People in My Life

Because I love this baby so much, here's another picture of Diana and me at Sally Test.

I'd like to start saying Welcome to My Blog to North Church! I really started this whole thing for Mike and my parents to know that I was still safe and well, etc, but apparently a little birdy revealed its existence to Ms Lela...and well, you know the rest of the story... :)

Since the Thursday night incident at MTRH, things have gotten better. I'm still bummed about it, but I'm trying not to think of it too much, or at least not dwell on it. This has been helped in large part to due to the people in my life, especially the residents here who listened sympathetically to the story, then shared their stories of First Deaths. They didn't tell me to get over it, just listened and said "that really sucks." They also didn't say that it gets any better, because I know that's not true, but apparently it does get easier, which is something to look forward to.

Of course Mike was very supportive as well (he is required to be) and I got the most amazing email from Emily that nearly made me cry. Not from grief, but from appreciation that I have such a wonderful friend who knows exactly what to say to make me feel better.

It had actually been a rather hard week for all of the teams at the hospital, so all of us IU house people went out last night to Places (a local club) with some of our Dutch friends, and we had A LOT of fun. I think we all just needed to blow off some steam, which we did quite heartily. We made a rule not to talk about medicine or the hospital at all, which was great, as I got to know Priti and Natalie better. It's nice to find out you have things in common with people other than just medicine. It was also fun because the 4th and 6th year Kenyan students just finished their end of rotation exams this week, so they were all out celebrating as well. One of the things I really love about Eldoret is the wide variety of friends I've been able to make in the last 6 weeks.

This morning Priti and I went about the serious business of gift shopping with much gusto. I spent a lot of money, bought a lot of stuff, and I'm ALMOST finished with shopping. I even bought my hair -- the hair that Christabel will use tomorrow when she's braiding mine! I'm pretty excited. We're starting at 8:30 and she thinks it will take 12-13 hours. I'm pretty sure that I'll look like a real Kenyan when it's done, and no one will be able to tell otherwise :).

Tonight the plan is to watch movies on Sonak's newly-delivered 46 inch plasma screen HD TV. Clearlythis will be a hardship, but I suspect we'll make it through somehow.

Kwa Herini!