Long Live The Sar

Wow, what a busy 4 days! Sorry for the delayed update but we were traveling for two days and then two packed days in Tokyo. Tuesday -   We took the bullet train north towards the areas hit hardest by the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in March 11, 2011. Our first stop was the Tokai Shinpo newspaper. In 1953, the town was hit by a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in Chile, which destroyed the paper’s offices at the time; the current building is built on a hillside above the town with backup generators for the printing machines. The paper was able to publish an edition on   3/12 thanks to this contingency planning even though nearly every person on the staff had lost their homes and loved ones. Over the next few weeks, the paper took the lead helping survivors find family members and focused on writing the paper with a theme of “children smiling.” Not having lived this disaster, I can’t criticize the decision but it makes me wonder when peopl...

Sunday – Our last morning in Kyoto commenced with a trip to the Fushimi Inari shrine. On the outskirts of Kyoto, a wooded hillside hosts 4km of trails that are covered by traditional torii gates (exquisitely painted in Princeton orange and black). The trails are dotted with small cemeteries and shrines and I wish we had a few hours to get lost among the trails, but alas, we had to catch our train to Tokyo. One bullet train later, we arrived in Tokyo and met up with the group in time for our welcome dinner. My words could not do justice to the 8 course feast we enjoyed, suffice it to say that it included lots of fish, pickled veggies, a plethora of alcohol, and many mystery foods. And we were on the 42 nd story of the building, enjoying the Tokyo skyline. Too tired to go out, we tucked in to rest up for Monday’s full day. Monday – I apologize for the journal nature of this article but there is simply too much that happened for me to fully unpack it right now....

Good morning Japan! I have been in the country for ~48hrs and can confidently say that it is unlike anywhere else I've been. This post is a journal of the first 36 hrs but if you just want general initial impressions, skip to the very bottom. The trip started with a healthy dose of excitement when I caught the last train from the airport -> Tokyo -> Kyoto with 2 minutes to spare. Close but I won in the end. I arrived in Kyoto around 11pm and managed to get to the Airbnb I'm sharing with Simon, a trekmate who's an MPA at the Kennedy School. We ambled down the street in search of food and drinks at midnight and happened upon a great local spot. To Simon's chagrin, they had no ramen but we settled on two soups - one spicy with tofu and one mild broth with peanuts and veggies. Both were super yummy.[DISCLAIMER: I may talk a lot about food during this trip. The only piece of advice I received before coming was 'eat everything,' so I feel justified]. I then s...

I'm tinkering with the idea of making this blog a more regular thing next semester. I am fortunate to be exposed to so many wonderful ideas and great thinkers that it would be selfish of me not to share it (at least with a Google internet server somewhere in eastern NC).  This article wasn't assigned for class but since it prevented me from studying for finals for a solid 2 hours on this blustery December day, I thought it was worth sharing. The NYTimes portrait of one struggling family in the NYC homeless shelter system is an amazing read. It is the most interesting thing I've read in weeks and the best reporting I've read all year (even if a bit biased and heavy handed at times). Lots of interesting stories and points worth discussing. The story hits particularly close to home since one of the patients I worked with closely last year was in a similar tangled web of homeless services, never-ending inspections, bureaucracy incompatible with regular life, and the ...

Here are few pics from the past week. This cave church in Lalibela predates the rock-hewn churches by nearly 100 years - Yemrehanna Kristos (The skeletons are off the R side of the picture) The entrance to one of the churches in Lalibela One of the largest churches in Lalibela - Bet Medhane Alem (I think) Bet Giyorgis - Lalibela's pride and joy. The picture is a bit misleading b/c it's actually 30m tall The Debre Damo monastery resides on this mountaintop. (Possibly) the oldest church in all of Africa, dating to ~6th century. The view from on top of the mountain. The landscape was very similar to the canyon lands of the American southwest, just with more green. Just climb to the doorway above the kid in yellow. (This picture cuts off the last few feet at the bottom) I'm sure the "safety" rope on the L was up to industry standards. The leather didn't look too worn or twisted... Victorious, post-descent smile.

It has been a few days since I last wrote because it has been an action packed six days. I'm now sitting in an internet cafe 125 km from Eritrea, along the palm tree lined streets of Axum. Rather than give a day-by-day accounting of my past week, I'll focus on the three highlights listed in the title of this post. Pediatric Rounds at Black Lion Last Thursday I spent the morning at Black Lion shadowing the pediatric residents and interns as they did rounds. When trying to set up a study on pediatric Hodgkin's Lymphoma, I emailed with a pediatrician at Black Lion, Dr. Haileyesus Adam. I met him during my previous visit to Black Lion and I was able to finally get him on the phone and finagled an invite to shadow. We started the day with coffee in the hospital's shai bet (which is really just a few tables in the main lobby with waitresses shuttling trays of macchiatos and juice). Dr. Haileyesus explained that there are no "specialists" among the pediatricia...

I haven't yet posted an update on my daily life this summer, so here's a brief summary of the past few days. Monday - I woke up Monday and had to move out of the JDC house where I've been staying into a hotel because the house was being fumigated for suspected bedbugs. I don't think we had any, but I wasn't the one getting bit so I can't say for sure. After breakfast, I went to the " Red Terror " Martyr Museum near Meskel Square. This new museum commemorates the 2 million people killed during the regime of the communist Derg (1974-1991) and the 500,000 killed between 1977-1978. The museum has many photos and some interesting points, but is unfortunately a little light on details and doesn't give enough background information. However, it's still relatively new (1 year), so I'll give it a break. My pseudo-tour guide was a nice middle-aged man who had actually been imprisoned for 8 years by the Derg, and he had shared a cell with one ...