Ratanakiri or Bust!!

A last minute change in plans, I love those. So apparently this last week the leaders the New Life Cambodia Medical Team have found themselves in quite the predicament. It seems that process to get all the permits to set up clinic in Krava, as per the original plan, was taking much longer than anticipated, hefty bribes were also being demanded. We as a team don't have the money to pay the bribes anyway, so it was off to find another site.
On Sunday we received confirmation from a leader in Ratanakiri that we are able to set up clinic there. Ratanakiri is in the northeast corner of Cambodia on the border of Vietnam and Laos. It is the poorest area of all of Cambodia and inhabited by mostly tribal people. This is great news for us as we will be able to serve in the area with the most need. Unfortunately, this also means that we will need to go through 2 interpreters; one will translate English to Khmer, and one to translate Khmer to the local tribal language.
I am told that Ratanakiri is mountainous jungle, unlike the rest of Cambodia which is mostly flat. Scott, our team leader, describes this trip as an Indiana Jones adventure.

The Talking Head

This summer is my first attempt at teaching a class that involves distance education. In attempt to make the material easily accessible to all the course participants, it was suggested that I make a lecture/demonstration video.
Some good friends of mine run a sort of media ministry out of their home that includes radio broadcasting and filming. Last night I went down to their place to film the first of my 5 lecture series. In spite of how much I hate cameras, things were going well and I was nearly 2/3 of the way finished when suddenly the camera man says "cut."
What was the problem, I was on a roll? As it turns out the one day I actually wore color, it just happened to be a long sleeved green shirt. What's wrong with that, you ask? We were filming in front of a green screen, I would be nothing more than a talking head and pair of hands! While that might actually be funny for the first few minutes, we decided that overall it would be way to distracting.
"Take 2!"

Top Ten

A teacher friend of mine is listing her top 10 ten favorite moments of the school year as she counts down to the last day. I thought that was a pretty neat way to end the year. Unfortunately, my school year has already ended, but here are my top ten anyway. (in no particular order)

1. I was once late to my own class, when I arrived I found the students diligently doing clinical paperwork. I apologized profusely and the first response I got was this "Therefore there is now no condemnation..." Wow!
2. On the very last day of clinicals I let the students off early, we went to lunch at Red Robin and then for a walk in the park.
3. During clinical a student ran out of a room to find me in the hall to tell me patient wouldn't wake up. I walked in the room to find the patient nearly in respiratory arrest as she was "over medicated." It wasn't the students fault as she wasn't the one who gave the 2 mg of dilaudid, but we got give narcan! The students then made up a lovely song about it. "Nar-can, you don't have to put on the code light, Nar-can..." It was quite a learning opportunity.
4. A picnic with cheerios and milk at the Kirkland waterfront in the dark after pinning all because we thought the end of year was "anticlimactic."
5. I had my Mexico City students over for fish tacos once to discuss assignments and expectations for the class. One of the students looked her keys in the car and got stuck at my house until 11pm. We ate cheesecake and had some pretty great "rice krispie treat" exchanges.
6. I was rounding the students at clinical one morning and noticed I didn't find one of them on the floor so I asked another student where she was. "Miss M, you just sent her down to the OR about 10 minutes ago." Apparently I asked again a little later that day. Now every time I forget something they just respond with, "Where's Rachael?"
7. The interesting comments the students made during my lecture entitled, "Shock and Awe: Declaring Rapid Dominance Over States of Hypoperfusion"
8. The Christmas party in the skills lab and our clinical evaluations.
9. Hearing, "Miss M., I got the job!"
10. I had spoken in another professors class about my adventures in Rwanda. Later that week I found a bag of coffee from the Bourbon (an amazing coffee house in Rwanda) with a little note, "Ms. M., Just a little to get you by before you go back!"
What an amazing and blessed school year! I will remember it fondly always.

Oh Kitty Where Art Thou

Thursday evening I had a friend over for dinner. Since it was a really hot day we decided to dine on the back deck. Little Kosha insisted on coming with us. I was a little hesitant at first as heard from her previous owner that she has always been an indoor cat. I finally gave in. Afterall, I would be outside to watch her and I have a six foot fence; during the time it would take her to scale the fence I could run over and grab her.
As we sipped our smoothies and chatted, Kosha sniffed around the yard but finally got so hot that she settled under the porch for shade. As I brought her water dish out only minutes later, NO KITTY! There was a small gap under the gate near the edge of the porch which must have been where she got out.
We looked for her for quite some time and I continued my search the next day, still no kitty! I live next to a large wooded area inhabited to coyotes so I was starting to wonder if she had perhaps become dinner. Afterall, only weeks ago a neighbor's cat had befallen that very fortune.
But alas, very early this morning I heard banging on the back side of the house. I thought it was the wind blowing stuff around on the porch but when I looked out the window there was no wind. As I went downstairs I could see a silhouetted figure hanging from the screen of the sliding glass door, there she was. Too bad she can't talk and tell me all about her grand adventure.