RUSSIA

Guess where I am going?

It's the home town of Andrei Kirilenko


It's where the AK-47 was developed and produced by Kalishnekov. The K in AK stands for Kalishnekov, not Kirilenko.

It's official, I finally got my visa today, so I'm going to Russia. Stef and I thought this blog would be a good way for us to communicate and send pictures, so she's teaching me how. Pretty soon I'll be chatting with all you blog-moms.

Carson, checking out my passport. I asked him to guess where I'm going.

Here he is showing me my VISA to Russia (since he can't talk yet). Then he started crying. I thought it was cause he's sad that I'm leaving, but he seemed to be okay after nursing and a nap.

How did this happen? When I first started medical school, I went to a meeting for the international department. I asked one of the docs if he knew anyone that was working in Russia, that's how I met up with Dr. Magill, the department head for family medicine. I did a summer research project with him, trying to get to Russia, ended up studying teenage pregancy in Midvale, go figure. Last fall, he invited me to a meeting to meet with some representatives from Izhevsk, Russia, as it is Toole and West Jordan's sister city. I guess they have a nuclear destruction program too. I met a few people from the medical school and they invited me to come over on a unilateral exchange program. They say it's been around for 18 years and they've had people from all over Europe and South America, but never from America. I've kind of been working on going there since, but having Carson around has made it that much more difficult. A couple of weeks ago, I told Stef I finally decided I should go, and after getting slapped a few times, I'm packing my bags. I'll be gone from July 1 to July 31, now you understand why she slapped me.

To see more about the fascinating city Izhevsk, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izhevsk.