Contact Info for the Future

I leave tomorrow! Wow! Fortunately for my sanity (and phone bill) my phone won't be making the journey with me, so email me if you need to reach me. If for some reason you need to speak to me personally, you should direct your calls to my secretary for the summer, Mom, or my personal representative, Dad. Email me for their home number. Feel free to email me, but I may not be able to get back to everyone and let's face it, this is my last free summer, so I may choose to ignore you. Just kidding Mom.

Email: melanieandrews72@hotmail.com

Just something to think about

A friend gave me this quote before my first ABI Service trip at Loyola. It most definitely applies for this trip too, well any service for that matter.

Everywhere in the world people are in search of love, for everyone is convinced that love alone can save the world, love alone can make life meaningul and worth living. But how very few understand what love really is, and how it arises in the human heart. It is so frequently equated with good feelings toward others, with benevolence or nonviolence or service. But these things in themselves are not love. Love springs from awareness. It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she really is here and now and not as they are in your memory or your desire or in your imagination or projection that you can truly love them, otherwise it is not the person that you love but the idea that you have formed of this person, or this person as the object of your desire not as he or she is in themselves.
Therefore the first act of love is to see this person or this object, this reality as it truly is. And this involves the enormous discipline of dropping your desires, your prejudices, your memories, your projections, your selective way of looking, a discipline so great that most people would rather plunge headlong into good actions and service than submit to the burning fire of this asceticism. When you set out to serve someone whom you have not taken the trouble to see, are you meeting that person's need or your own? So the first ingredient of love is to really see the other...It is in that act of seeing that love is born, or rather more accurately, that act of seeing is Love.
-Anthony De Mello SJ, The Way to Love

In Paul Farmer's book, Pathologies of Power, he writes that one of his goals is to bear witness to the sufferings and needs of those he cares for. This is my goal for the trip, to return and tell people of the things as they truly are in Rwanda. No rosey hue, no sugar coating. I hope that I can approach this trip without preconceived notions, a lofty goal I know, but important for me to attempt. As a second year medical student, I have not begun to care for patients, so listening to their stories and challenging myself to explore outside my comfort zone is crucial if I am to be useful to these people in any way.

Ohio has entirely too many State Troopers

Ahhhh, home again! After the moving day from Hell, my stuff is finally in the new house...Thanks to Brandon and my Dad for a lot of heavy lifting. This was the longest weekend ever, by far the most driving.

Rich inherited all of my food. Now he can have his sisters over for dinner and actually have something to eat and stuff to eat it on. Hahaha

So Friday I went to pick up keys and they weren't there, then Saturday I woke up early and went to get a copy of the keys made and entered the house to find it in complete disarray and covered in dust. Apparently, I'm not the only med student that neglects their cleaning.

After we finally moved out the current tenants' stuff and rearranged furniture that wasn't supposed to be there, it started to rain in the middle of moving....and Hershey Pantry ran out of Chocolate cake w/ PB icing. It was a bad day.

I did get the update on what I'll be doing this summer:
-Research
*Focus groups on ARV and economic impact
*Talking with young kids and teens on if/how/when they decided to disclose their HIV+
serostatus to schoolmates and peers
*Talking with Parents on the barriers to secondary education for their children
-Clinical
*Shadowing/helping at the clinic each morning
*making home visits and house calls with the staff
*helping with the kids/teen support group and counseling sessions
*attending adult support group sessions
-Misc.
*African Children's Day! June 16th(?): it's a country wide carnival to celebrate families,
especially the kids with HIV, so I'll be helping teens run games, face painting, and making
sure everyone gets plenty to eat (don't worry, I won't be cooking)
This summer looks packed! I can't wait to finally get there! Next Friday will be my last day in the States for a while. Then it's back to PA to figure out this apartment mess...

So I added two more books to my list: We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch and Long Walk to Freedom--Nelson Mandela's autobiography.

The next two weeks will be pretty busy:
Tomorrow--meeting with the Kiwanis Club for my presentation and to get my check, getting my crap ready...ugh...
Wednesday--Jazz club with Aunt Mickey, Uncle John, Mom, and Alicia, continuing to get my crap ready...
Thursday--Meeting for my project, drinks with my intern partner, visiting with Brandon
Friday--driving to PA...AGAIN! to see the new house with Brandon and move my stuff...
Somewhere in here I still have to do my International Health readings and write-ups, but I certainly like all the excitement!

I'm going back to Chicago tomorrow!!! Yay!

Yesterday I organized my summer reading list:
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
HARRY POTTER and the Deathly Hallows!!!!

I'm also trying to read some stuff from Infections and Inequalities--P. Farmer, Dying for Growth--J. Kim and the stuff from the International Health readings list...

Please note that I'll be lucky if I finish one book off my top reading list (except for Harry Potter 7...once I get a hold of that, you won't see or hear from me until it's done...which should only take about 2-3 days, so relax). I know, I have too many books.

Inaugural Post

Uh, just testing...