T-minus 0!

Today is launch day.

It has been 4 years since the last new country I've visited.  Too long.  Embarrassing, really, compared to my travel agent father, who has been to every continent and required multiple passport page extensions just to fit in all his visas.  I've been lucky and grateful to have squeezed in a decent dose of domestic adventures in the meantime, but it's never quite the same.  My origins are overseas.  Reminds me of Socrates' quote about being a "citizen of the world."  Thank you for that, Mom and Dad.

But, since 4+ years ago, I have been learning about another world entirely: medicine.  Now, near the end of my training, it's time to turn from focusing on the inner workings of the human body and complement that with looking back out at the world.  Time to celebrate and feed the other part of my soul- still a part that loves learning and learns by doing rather than reading or studying, but more importantly, the part that will always harbor insatiable wanderlust for all the nooks & crannies of our magnificent, giant playground of a planet.

Why Nepal?  A number of reasons:  As a Pacific Northwester, I grew up in and around mountains, and I always find joy, comfort and my true self in these places.  My uncle Chris, a Seven Summits mountaineer, helped instill this love in me.  In college, a year-long course on Tibet and its subsequent invasion by the Chinese, resulting in exile of Tibetan refugees to countries including Nepal, had me mesmerized with the region for years, which an Outward Bound meditation & backpacking course later re-ignited.  While I don't feel safe traveling to Tibet on my own, Nepal is a worthy substitute.  Finally, when looking at residency programs, I sought out the few that offered both funded international medicine opportunities and enough time senior year to actually get there.  I was fortunate enough to match at Stanford, where Paul Auerbach of wilderness medicine fame put me in touch with some travel clinic colleagues in Kathmandu.

So, it begins.  I know better than to have expectations of the idyllic Nepal of my college daydreaming days, but I look forward to this next adventure for whatever it may teach me.

But really, let's be honest: I was born in the wrong decade and just need to get the Natcho Hippie Era out of my system.  [Enter Bob Seger, singing, "I'm goin' to Katmandu," followed by Three Dog Night, singing, "Shambhala"... Dang it.  Maybe one month isn't going to be long enough.]

Catch ya on the flip side.