Bringing Home Tux!

So we brought our new dog, Tux home yesterday! He's been a handful but lots of fun. He does a lot of eating, sleeping, pooping, and peeing. Imagine that! He's starting to figure out the whole house training thing, but it'll probably take a little longer before we can put the stain remover away. There's also some pictures from our trip to the pumpkin patch and of the Jack-o-lanterns that we carved on the slide show.

Baker Update

Sorry everyone! I guess it's been over a month since we've posted anything. We have been busy getting settled into Rochester. As you have seen, we have had a chance to go on one vacation which was awesome. Out big news of the month is that we are getting a new addition to our family!!!!!!!!! No we are not pregnant. But we are getting a puppy!!!! We are naming him Tux since he is black with a white neck and chest. He is a lab mix and was left abandoned in a farmer's field on Halloween. We won't pick him up for another 10 days, but we are both very excited. We are now busy cleaning and puppy proofing the house. I am a little nervous never having had a dog, but I figure a puppy will be good practice for when we have a baby!!! I will be sure to post a picture when we bring him home. Maybe having him will make us blog more often since I'm sure we will have some stories to tell living with a 3 month old puppy. Wish us luck!

What we've been up to

Well, as you can probably guess from our pictures, we were on vacation last week. I had 2 weeks of ER at the beginning of the month then we had vacation. We decided to drive out west. First we spent a couple days at Jason's (Mike's cousin) house and visited with Mike's Aunt and Grandparents. It was the first time that Cori actually met them because they don't travel anymore. We had a very nice time. We then went to the black hills and spent the rest of the week camping, hiking, and sightseeing in Southwest South Dakota. It may not sound like the most spectacular vacation spot, but if you've never been, it's a truly beautiful part of our country. It is amazing to think of the diversity of God's creation after visiting the Masai Mara in Africa this spring and contrast it with the rolling Black Hills.

We spent 4 nights camping in a tent and only got rained on the last night! Otherwise we had absolutely perfect camping weather, cool nights, and warm days. It was interesting because both of us had been to the Black Hills as kids with our families. We went back and saw Mt. Rushmore, the Crazy Horse carving, Devil's Tower, and the Badlands together. We put over 2000 miles on our rental car!

We got back home and Mike has had another week off since he hasn't been called in to work this week! It's been very nice getting to spend more time at home together and get some things marked off the to-do list! We are really enjoying Rochester and if anyone feels up to traveling to Minnesota we would love to see you.

Pictures from our vaction!

Back to Blogin'

So obviously it's been a while since we've updated our blog. Apologies all around. Lots has happened since our last update. First, we are all moved in and settled in our new house here in Minnesota. It's been great and the best part is, my drive to work is less than 3 miles! A huge improvement to the 30 miles I was driving in Atlanta. I also started working at the hospital. July was spent on the general medicine service. This month I have been working in the ICU, which as you can imagine has been busy. I really enjoy the ICU though, much better than general medicine. It has been challenging though, because people do tend to die in the ICU which I have experienced first hand already this month. Cori was searching for a job last month and actually ended up with 2 jobs! She is working at the Rochester Athletic Club on their fitness floor, and also at Ann Taylor Loft in the mall. It's been good so far because they're both flexible part-time jobs. And of course, Cori loves the discount at Ann Taylor Loft! We have really enjoyed Rochester so far, and the weather has been tremendous (we'll see if we're still saying that in February!) We'll try to do better at keeping this updated.

We're Yankees Again!

Sorry we haven't written anything for awhile. Since we got back from Africa we have been a little busy. Mike graduated from medical school and is now a doctor! Then we packed up and moved back up north to Rochester Minnesota. And yes, it is cold up here. I miss the warmth of the South already. Can't wait until winter. Mike and I drove up to MN, unpacked the moving truck, put our stuff in storage, and then went searching for a house. Our realtor Esther was great and showed us 17 houses in one day. We found a house we both liked and put in and offer which was accepted the same day. We are closing on June 9th which worked out really well because Mike has to take a class on the 10th and 11th. It is funny how things work out sometimes. Everything just fell into place with the move, the house, our closing date, etc. You can really see God taking care of our every need. We are both excited to move into our new home. And, it looks like we have renters for our townhouse! Thank you Lord! Thanks to everyone else who was praying for us during our move and in this transition time. They have really been answered.

HOME!!

We made it!! We got into Atlanta this afternoon and are safely back home in Kennesaw this evening. We are looking forward to a good night sleep in our own bed tonight! Thank you for all the prayers.

We're on our way home!

We are leaving kijabe today. We are both sad to leave but happy to come home. We have met some amazing people here and have made some great friends. We will get home Saturday afternoon and will let you all know when we have made it. Please continue to pray for us for safe travels.

The Battle Against the Bugs!

Happy Monday! Our weekend went well. Friday, as expected, Mike got maybe three hours of sleep. He was at the hospital until about 3 and then went back around 6 I think. I'm not sure. I was sleeping! Saturday we went shopping and went up to RVA to watch the rugby scrimmage. It looks pretty tough! I don't think I want to play. On Sunday, we got to sleep in and go to a later church which was a good things because Mike has not been feeling well. After a good nights sleep and a few naps, he beat his bug and is feeling much better. My bug however, was not so easily defeated. For the past week or two I have been getting these bug bites all over and they really itch! I wake up in the morning and find new ones so we figured they must be coming from our bed. Mike, however, has zero bites. We have changed the sheets and I even started going to bed wearing long pants tucked into socks, and a long sleeved shirt tucked into my pants. I know what you're thinking, I was looking GOOD! Even that didn't work. In fact I think the bugs liked a challenge because I think I got more! I counted my bites and had 38 included the 10 just on my stomach. I had had enough. Yesterday we washed all of the sheets and blankets and mattress pad in hot hot water. Then, Mike took our bug spray with deet in it and sprayed the mattress. Then, our neighbor gave us bug killer spray and we sprayed some of that on the mattress too. Then, I ironed the mattress pad and sheets. ( I am never ironing again!) Then, we had to wait for the mattress to dry before we could go to bed. Mike had soaked it with the spray! We finally got into bed and low and behold, today I woke up, and NO NEW BITES!!!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!!!!!! I am so happy! That doesn't mean the existing ones don't still itch, but no new bites is a very good thing. I hope it lasts. I just thought you would all get a good laugh out of my misery and our bug killing antics. And just so you know, we never actually saw any bugs in our room or bed so whatever bit me is still a mystery. At least for now, we have won the battle against the bugs. Hopefully our victory will last.

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!

It's Friday! Today is Mike's last night of call! He is hoping for a light night, but judging from all of his other calls, he won't get much sleep. This was a pretty busy week. We got back on Monday from our safari and weren't quite ready to get back to work. Mike worked in the ICU again this week and has been enjoying it. I got to go up to RVA (rift valley academy) and work with the athletic trainer there! They are having Rugby tryouts this week and it has been fun to watch. Mike and I are going to a scrimmage tomorrow! Last night we had two Kenyan interns over for dinner. We had fajitas! They had never heard of them before! It was a lot of fun except we had some uninvited guests. In the middle of dinner these huge termites flew in under the kitchen door. They told us it was because it has started raining and they saw the kitchen light on. They picked them up by the wings and put them back outside! It was crazy! I have never seen bugs like that. They were huge and had big wings! Yuck! But besides that, dinner went great! Things are going well here. The patient I have been visiting had surgery today for skin grafting for the ulcers on her legs. She was so excited because this means she may be able to go home in a week! The goals we had come up with was that she walk out by the time we leave and hopefully that will be able to happen! We'll keep praying! I'll have Mike blog more about his night on call and his patients in the ICU when he has time. And, we would like to request more comments from everyone. We miss you and love to hear from you so comment please!!!!!!!!!

Pictures from the Masai Mara

Here are a few of the pictures we took. We will post more soon!

The Masai Mara

Sorry for the delay in the post, but we weren't able to sign on yesterday when we got back. We went to the Masai Mara over the weekend for a safari! It was wonderful. When I pictured Africa, this was how I had pictured it. It looks just like the movies! I will give a brief summary of our weekend. We got picked up at 7AM on Saturday morning and driven to the airport in Nairobi. We flew on a 13 passenger plane to the Kichwa Tembo air strip which was made of dirt! The flight was about 45 minutes. We were met by drivers and given tea and coffee while we waited for another plane load of people. Then they drove us about 20 minutes to Kichwa Tembo tented camp. On the way we saw a baboon! When we arrived we were shown to our tent which was not like any tent I have ever stayed in. It had actual beds, a full bathroom, very very nice! After lunch we went on an afternoon game drive. Our driver was names Willy and he was an expert on the over 400 bird species on the Masai Mara as well as all of the other animals. We drove around in an open land cruiser that seated 10. There were two other couples in our vehicle who were in Africa to visit a mission hospital in Tanzania. We drove around for about 3-4 hours and it poured rain on us! Luckily Willy had brought us ponchos because we were not prepared! We had dinner and watched and participated in a Masai warrior dance back at the camp. I got chosen first to dance! It was fun! We were woken up at 6AM the next morning by Titus, with coffee and hot chocolate! We left at 6:30 for our morning drive. We stayed out all morning and we stopped along the Mara river for breakfast. We saw lions, hippos, crocodiles, hiennas, elephants, and lots more! We returned for lunch around 1PM and then left again at 3:30 for a trip to the nearby Masai Village. We got to go inside their village and see what the Masai people live like. It was quite an experience! We even got to go inside one of the houses which was made of cow dung and dirt! Mike got to try to start a fire with a stick! Then we got to purchase some homemade Masai art or jewelry. Sunday night after dinner we had a slide show on the great migration which made us both want to come back someday to see for ourselves. Monday morning we were woken up again at 6AM with coffee and hot chocolate and left at 6:30 for another short game drive. We went on a hippo hunt since it was early and they weren't in the river yet. We only found two in the middle of an open field in a water hole! They did not like us being there and one started to charge us. Willy said we should probably leave! We then found two male lions and their sister along the river. We watched them play! Then, it was time to go back for breakfast, pack up and leave! We were very sad to go. This was an awesome weekend and amazing to see God's creation. The entire time I just kept thinking how amazing God is that he created all of these animals and the beautiful Masai Mara! We took over 1,000 pictures so we will try to post some of these if my connection stays working. We will fill in more details later on!

Vocabulary Lesson!

Since we haven't blogged for a few days, I thought I would update everyone and also give you a vocabulary lesson. Since we are learning some new words, why shouldn't you? Now study hard because there will be a quiz when we get back! Some of the words you should recognize from a certain Disney movie! So here goes!
How are you? - Habari yako?
Fine- Nzuri
Problem- matata ( which is also what the main transportation is called!)
Thank you- Asante
Friend- Rafiki
Bye- Kwaheri
Come- Kuja
Sun- Jua
Wind-Upepo
I think that is probably enough for one day, but these are some of the words one the of patients is trying to teach me and I am actually remembering them! I'll be speaking swahili in no time! We are taking a break from Kijabe this weekend and going to Masai Mara for a safari. Please keep us in your prayers as we are being driven to Nairobi to the airport and the roads are not very good right now due to the increase in violence by the Mungiki tribe. But don't worry mom and dad!

Lake Nakuru

Now that you have all seen our pictures from this weekend, I thought I would write and tell you a little bit about our excursion. We went to Lake Nakuru on Saturday with another doctor who is here for a few weeks. We all got picked up bright and early at 8 AM and were driven to the Lake by our driver Ken. It took about 2 hours to get there but the roads were great! It was like driving in America. NO big bumps or potholes! We got to the park and both Mike and I admit we weren't expecting to see a lot of animals. They advertise Lake Nakuru as a bird watchers paradise as they have a lot of birds on the lake and sometimes if you're luck as many as 2 million flamingoes. Well, I think we saw maybe 50 flamingos, but as you can see, we saw a lot of animals! We saw a lot of different birds, pelicans, secretary birds, and many others you will see when we visit with our pictures. We also saw heinnas, zebras, lots of buffalo, babboons, giraffes, impalas, gazelles, rhinos, waterbacks, warthogs, a rainbow lizard, and a turtle! It was the coolest thing I think I have ever done or seen. All of these animals out in the open and not in cages like at the zoo! There was a large electric fence around the entire park, but we couldn't see it. Our driver said it's to keep the animals in and the people out! There are lions and leopards in the park, but they were hiding from us! We drove around the park for about 4 hours taking tons of pictures. At some points we were feet from the animals. We were about 10-15 feet from a rhinosaurus! It crossed the road right in front of us! We also got to see a lot of baby animals. We saw a baby zebra, rhino, giraffe, warthog, and babboon. They were so cute! The baby babboon was probably only a few days or weeks old. It was so tiny! We had so much fun on our trip and there were very few people there, so it was mostly just us and the animals. We are now really excited about this coming weekend when we are going on safari to Masai Mara. That is supposed to be a real safari with lions and elephants and everything! We will be taking a lot of pictures. Now, don't think that all we are doing is going around and goofing of and seeing animals. Mike is back at the hospital today working hard! We are having a lot of fun though and I think that is making our time here go very quickly. We have less than three weeks left! I hope you are enjoying hearing about our adventures and enjoy the pictures. We will try to keep them coming!

Pictures from our excursion to Lake Nakuru

Mike's life at Kijabe

I figure that it is about time that I update you on what I've been doing for the past 2 weeks, and I actually have a chance to sit down and write tonight, so here it goes. I have been spending a lot of time in the hospital so far. Just some background; Kijabe Hospital is a 250 bed full service hospital with medicine, surgery, orthopedics, pediatrics, ob/gyn services. It is also an academic teaching hospital where 8 Kenyan national interns are trained each year. I have been rotating on one of the internal medicine services for the past two weeks, and will spend one more week there before I spend the final 2 weeks with the anesthetists in the ORs.
My first day at the hospital was last Tuesday. I then took call on Wednesday night, and was also on call all of the past weekend. Today was actually the first day that I was not in the hospital as we drove out to a rural clinic about 2 hours away. It was a great change of scenery. A "typical" day lasts from 7am until 5pm and is spent between morning conference, rounding on patients in the wards, a lunch conference, and taking care of patients in casualty (the British term for the ER). My first night on call last Wednesday was not too bad. As a student I am the first call for anything they need in the wards or that comes into casualty. I was at the hospital until 12am and then was not called back until 630am. The weekend however was very busy. I was able to sleep from about 4am until we got up for church at 730 on Saturday night/Sunday morning, and was in the hospital from 2pm until 2am on Sunday. Fortunately I did get to go to church though!
There is a huge variety in the types of patients and in the problems and disease that we see. From a learning aspect it is phenomenal. From road accidents to poisonings to end-stage AIDS and many many others. The downside to this is that many of these patients are very sick and there is little that we can do for them. I think that I have had at least one patient die who's care I have been directly involved with almost everyday for the past week. That's more than I saw during the rest of medical school. It has certainly taken its emotional and spiritual toll and I was so thankful for the refreshing of God's spirit from the church service on Sunday. I needed it.
From here out my schedule is not as rough as I don't have anymore weekend calls and only have 1 call per week for each of the next 3 weeks. I am quite thankful for that. We covet your prayers and thank you for them, please keep them coming! God bless!

Pictures!!!

I will admit, it was my fault that we haven't been able to post pictures yet, I forgot the right cord to connect the camera to the computer. Luckily, our wonderful neighbors had the right cord and let us borrow it. So here's a few pictures! -Mike

Us!

Kijabe Hospital

The Great Rift Valley

One week down, four to go!

I thought I would update everyone again! No, we don't have pictures yet. But yes, we will work on that. The week has been really busy for Mike. He is at the hospital every day and he was on call this entire weekend. He did get about three hours of sleep last night though. He also got to go to church and eat lunch. After that, he was off to the hospital again. I have not been that busy this week. I took just about the entire week to start feeling normal. I wasn't sleeping thanks to jet lag and the evil Malaria drug Mefloquine, but since I stopped taking that, and started getting over my cold, I am feeling much better. I am going to go to the hospital and talk to them about starting to work there. Though, not as hard or as long hours as Mike is working! I am also going to a tea tomorrow with some of the missionary wives. I don't think I've ever been to a tea before so it should be fun. The weather here has been great. Not too warm, not too cold. And no rain yet. It gets really windy though. I had the windows open and I thought the curtains would blow away! I have been on the lookout for the monkeys that are said to hang out in the trees by our apartment in the evenings. I saw one, but didn't have the camera, and haven't seen any others. I am determined though. It was a good first week here. A little rough at times getting adjusted to everything, but good. Mike wants to write a post so hopefully he will have a little time tomorrow and he can share what has been going on in the hospital. Please pray for us and for the patients and doctors at the hospital. It seems like this has been a very busy week for the hospital.

Greetings From Kijabe!

Yes, we are both still alive! I know some of you thought we fell off the face, of the earth, but we are in fact still here. The small things that become common place and we take for granted, such as American outlets, internet hook up, constant phone and electric service, are not as common here it seems. It took IT a bit to give us a hook up and password to get into the internet, and spotty phone service made things difficult. Also, I have an extension cord running from the transformer next to the refrigerator (the only thing that runs on 120 volt power) across the living room to the phone line. I hope I don't trip over the cord! Everything over here runs on the European power system. It's the weird looking outlet that looks too big to actually plug anything into. Fortunately, many of the short term housing apartments are equipped with 120 volt outlets since many Americans come to stay. Unfortunately, we are not in one of these apartments! We have one outlet which is next to the refrigerator that we can use and when we used it we have to unplug the fridge. Until our great neighbor came by and lent us a power strip! Now I can use the computer and keep my food cold!
I will give a brief outline of our time in Kijabe so far.
First, we were picked up on Monday afternoon by the Kijabe ambulance driver. In the Kijabe ambulance! He took us to the grocery store in Nairobi and then we made to hour drive to Kijabe. On the way we stopped at the lookout over the Rift Valley. We were at 8,000 feet high. We could see for miles. It was so beautiful! It was like in the Lion King movie when it pans across the valley at the beginning or the end and it seems to go on forever and ever. We took some pictures but I doubt it will do it justice. We got to Kijabe at about 5:30 in the evening and got settled into our apartment. It has a kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom. Everything we need. We were invited to the next door neighbors apartment for dinner. They have been here about two years. On Tuesday, Mike started his rotations at the hospital bright and early at 7 AM. I slept until about 11:00 since I had taken and Ambien the night before. God bless sleeping pills! I had not had a nights sleep since we arrived. Once I got up our hostess, and next door neighbor Carolyn showed me around. She took me to the Duka (the small grocery/convenience store) and we went to see the vegetable ladies. Dinner was an interesting experience. We did not have anyone's house to go to so we cooked. Except I am not the best cook and we don't have a whole lot of options since our shopping was rushed and we didn't really know what to expect when we got here. So, we came up with fried potatoes and onions( really good), and a chicken and rice soup stew thing (not so good, although mike seemed to enjoy it). Oh well, I'll get better! Last night was not so fun when we went to bed, as I did not take and Ambien and did not get to sleep until 5 AM.
Today, I cleaned, walked around the hospital and chatted with our neighbor. Mike worked most of the day and is now on call tonight. We went to dinner at the Byrds tonight. A missionary family from Australia! It was really good. I need to practice my cooking!
I will probably start working at the hospital next week once I have been able to adjust and get some sleep as well as get over my cold/allergies. I would love to be able to breath again! We are getting settled and are hoping to get a safari scheduled for a weekend when Mike is not on call. I will keep you posted. Hopefully I will be able to do this daily now that we have Internet, but no promises. Also, I'll work on being able to post pictures, but it doesn't look good. So, in the mean time, use your imaginations! We love and miss you all. And happy late birthday to miss Laney, and happy late anniversary to Mom and Dad.

We made it!

We got in to Nairobi last night after about a day of flying. The flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi had very few people so we each got our own row to stretch out in which made the 8 hours a bit more tolerable. We are staying in a guesthouse run by AIM which is very nice. We slept most of the morning as neither of us were able to sleep much on the planes. The time here is 7 hours ahead of eastern time and it gets dark at 7 o'clock. We have all weekend to get our sleep and relax before we head out to Kijabe on Monday. So far we are both feeling well and the food is good! Praise the Lord! We will try to update this but with the rainy season apparently the power goes out frequently. Please continue to pray for us.

AND WE'RE OFF!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow is the big day! We are leaving for Africa tomorrow evening! We are almost packed and ready to go. Thanks to everyone who is praying for us. Hopefully we will both stay healthy on the way there. Which would be great since I haven't felt very well for the last few days. We promise we will try our best to at least write a post once in awhile but pictures may be difficult as the internet there may not make that possible. So, hopefully we have remembered everything, (yes the toothbrushes are packed, and the bibles) and the bags will hopefully be under the weight limit. We will try to let you know when we get there!!!!!!!

MATCH DAY!

The verdict is in! We will be spending the next fours years in Rochester, Minnesota! Mike matched at Mayo Clinic for all four years of residency. We are very excited since this was our first choice! We will be moving right after graduation in May so anyone with a strong back is welcome to come down and help!

Match Week!

We found out today that Mike did match somewhere. We just don't know where yet. We are very happy that he does not have to scramble to find a spot! Someone must have liked him enough to want to put up with him for four years! We find out this Thursday where he matched so we are getting anxious to know.
I am now unemployed. I have left my position at work in order to get ready to go to Africa. If we do match at Emory I may have some begging to do! Although I don't have to go to work, I am keeping very busy with getting the house ready to rent. Tomorrow I paint! I am also getting ready for Mom and Dad to fly down in the next few days. They get to try out Easter Soup! (You don't want to know what's in it.)
We will be sure to let everyone know on Thursday when the verdict is in. Keep praying!

Update for Jill.

Since we were informed that we should update our blog by a not so subtle sister, we will comply. Mike turned in his rank list for the Match this week and we will find out where we will be for residency in less than three weeks! We are very excited and maybe a little nervous! We also leave for Africa in less than a month. We will be very busy packing for our trip and also packing up the house for our big move. We received over 9,000 dollars in donations for Africa which is an answer to our prayers. Thanks again to everyone who is supporting us financially and prayerfully. We appreciate this and could not be doing this without you.

Half Time!

We have almost 8 weeks until we leave for Kenya and we have raised half of our funding! Praise the Lord! We want to thank everyone that has agreed to support us both financially and with prayer support. It is so encouraging to know you will all be praying for us.

North Carolina Vacation

This last week, we both had a few days off and decided to go on a trip. We went to N. Carolina and stayed in a cabin in the mountains. It was beautiful. We also got to go skiing which was a little scary since I hadn't been skiing since Freshman year in high school. We both made it through with only minor bruises and a small sprain. Mostly on me. We thought we would share a few pictures with you. Enjoy! -Cori

Introduction

Since Mike and I have many important events coming up in the near future, we though we would join the 21st century and start "blogging" so that everyone can stay up to date on what is going on in our lives. This is our very first post and we are very excited about this milestone in our lives! In the next few months, we will be taking our big trip to Africa, graduating from medical school, and heading off to residency! We will try our best to keep this updated with all of the latest news in our lives. Especially when we find out where we will be moving! We hope you enjoy of our family news and can all stay connected wherever life takes us.