Kirkland sparkling water

Per the Foreign Service Act of 1980, this summer we completed our Home Leave “to ensure that employees who live abroad for an extended period undergo reorientation and re-exposure in the United States on a regular basis.” It took two weeks of DC concrete, two weeks of Colorado mountains, and two weeks of Missouri rivers to make it feel like Uzbekistan was a distant memory- but only just. The fun of home leave didn’t shake the heartache of missing my Tashkent friends and colleagues, but rather amplified it. I feel their pull of stories, laughter, support, and pranks, even as I write this from my new post in Astana. Only now, it’s the angsty pull of not just Tashkent, but the U.S. friends and family I reconnected with too.

In addition to seeing old friends from previous posts and lifetimes, highlights of Washington included our kids independently taking Metro down to the National Mall, visiting museums and monuments, and vibing at the Folk Life Festival while Mark and I went to trainings all week. Mark took a reassuring retirement seminar, while I learned how to get into a helicopter (pro tip: duck low) and drive a getaway car Fast and Furious style. After rekindling my love for music and rocking out with the Fowl Owls (or maybe it was the Foul Owls??) I bought a flute off Facebook and trialed it in a highly trafficked women’s bathroom at Nordstrom in Tyson’s Corner. We ate too much Costco “trash pizza” and drank cases of Kirkland sparkling water.

Colorado time was filled with daily bike rides but this time mostly on gravel. (Mark anticipates all season riding to work in Astana, so he bought a steel cross bike to manage his commute. School is a five minute walk from our house and our growing children (how do they do it so quickly?) so we got them cross bikes for their commute as well.) I only brought my road bike which meant they got 2 weeks of riding Centennial Cone trails, while I’d climb up and down Golden Gate Canyon. Then we’d meet for a family ride leading back to my parent’s house. It was pretty perfect. In between rides, we hiked in my parent’s backyard and schemed on stealing my brother’s poodle named Jed. Colorado evenings entailed Hazel Miller Band, Shawn Eckels Band, and Billy Joel, and SO many home cooked dinners, my favorite way to food and each meal paired nicely with cases of Kirkland sparkling water.

Fishing, hiking, and canoeing ruled our Missouri time. My father-in-law took us to Roaring River State Park, a place he used to bring Mark and Mark's brother Danny for trout fishing. They fished at Taneycomo Lake, a place “guaranteed for catches” and while the act of fishing was a success, they caught nothing. One try left, we canoed and fished the James River, something Mark would have never fathomed doing as a kid. Back then, the river was famous for being disgusting. So much so, Big Smith wrote a song about it called Dirty Old James. However, state conservation efforts improved conditions of the river so well that herons, eagles, and other animals have since returned. When we couldn’t get out of the city, the Springfield Conservation Center assuaged the need for bird watching and tree bathing. Other SPFD field trips included Buc-ee’s, a gas station of 24/7 Texan proportions with a vibe not unlike Black Friday, and the World’s Largest Fork (by mass) weighing 11 tons. Probably the same amount of consumed Kirkland sparkling water on this MO trip.

And poof! After hefting our rental car from Denver to Springfield and back and consumed ample amounts of Chipotle and Kirkland sparkling water in the world’s most monotonous 12-hour drive across Kansas, home leave time was up. In CO, we organized consumables, packed bags, and said a temporary goodbye to our bicycles before catching flights to Astana for the next round of Foreign Service life.

Kids on their own (credit: Margo)

Hiking with Grandpa Tom

Fishing with Grandpa David

On the James River, canoes from Hootentown (credit: Margo)

A big fork. SPFD.

Leaning into beaver culture if only for 20 minutes.

A rock we paid waaaaay too much money to see in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Driving across Kansas with Window Peeper,
 the green monster puppet.

Pretending we are either 8 year girls, or 80 year old women at that Brown Palace for Tea Time.
The Great 2024 Bestie Summit: my college bestie and her North Dakota bestie.

Hiking in mom's backyard. (credit: Mark)

Mark and the kids with Grandma Kaye, Grandpa Tom, their cousins Isaac and Alina,
Uncle Gabe and Aunt Nettie with Jed the dog. (Credit: Mark)

Centennial Cone

More hiking in their wee backyard.

 Hazel Miller Band and so many people wearing
hats at 13,000 feet.

Golden Mill with musician Shawn Eckels,
cousin/football player/cycling shorts model/actor/producer/Bryan Harris, 
and Pennsylvania stoop legend and dear friend "Tuesday" Jenn Marti.

 Vintage bike dreams do come true at Golden Velo

BILLIE JOEL! (Credit: Amy)

My first time scootering. (credit: Amy)

Kansas Meme-ing.

On being a nurse...

Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of high school students about my career in nursing. For a couple of weeks prior, I scrolled through tens of thousands of photos looking for apt snapshots of time spent in the various hospitals, operating rooms, and clinics throughout my career. The agony of sifting through hours of unlabeled Shutterfly and Google Photo albums inspired me to either reorganize them or hit delete altogether. Luckily, I did neither. Some messes I need to just walk away from, even digital ones. 

While preparing for the presentation, I enjoyed seeing old faces and remembering the kinds of medical care I provided. For example, I had forgotten that sometimes we'd deep freeze skull flaps for patients whose brains weren't quite ready to be re-covered. I'd forgotten how big a rigid cystoscope could be, which is a camera with a metal sheath used to look inside the bladder. All over again, I can smell the Trix cereal sweetness of the 3 liter sorbitol bags used to irrigate during prostate surgery, feel slickness of the floor when the plastic surgeon finished a liposuction case, or hear an organ donor's heart beating to silence. My nursing career started in the O.R. and while I moved onto different specialties, pieces of my heart still remain.

I had the time of my life working in urology too, but the fun was different. My job required lot of time educating, teaching, and finding appropriate resources for my patients, which meant I had to be at the ready, confident, and calm - every single day. Need to learn how to catheterize yourself because your bladder no longer works? What about giving yourself penile injections to treat erectile dysfunction? Maybe there's a cancer treatment to walk through, or you need a refill on your antibiotics because it's your 10th urinary tract infection this year. Urologic disorders are undiscerning to those with money and status, and those without. Because I lived in DC, I saw so many patients literally from all over the world. Some worked in government, others worked in the streets. Some were actual royalty while others were actual royal pains in the ass. I could recognize phone numbers calling in and knew exactly why they were calling. The urology clinic taught me to have massive patience and how to execute a professional poker face that was also empathetic, warm, and reassuring. 

Since we are getting ready to leave Uzbekistan in a few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the events that will stick with me after four years. The spring 2021 covid vaccine rollout was notable feat. I still get goosebumps thinking about the logistical hurdles, blocks, and creative pathways we took to make it a wild success. Two colleagues and I executed an embassy wide earthquake drill that was equal parts stressful, hilarious, meaningful, and laden with lessons learned. Over 400 people were involved in the scenario including 20+ casualties with varying injuries (actors), dozens of panicked citizens (also actors) showing up to the consulate doors with their personalized "help me I'm an American" stories, the assault of hysterical colleagues, securing the premises and damage control, while maintaining the facade of calm, thoughtful responses and decision making. 

I got to visit hospitals and clinics in different regions of the country, creating medical resources for Americans living or touring in Uzbekistan. I worked with the school and other embassies on emergency planning, hosting multi-language trainings on CPR and multi-casualty management. I supported a nod worthy amount of medical evacuations. Because, sometimes lesions need a biopsy, appendixes get infected, kidney stones need removing, and someone with uncontrolled bleeding out needs a higher level of care. My boss and I like to joke that all bleeding eventually stops, but we're also not wrong. Living in a place that is medically austere means we have to be vigilant for our people, because it could be a matter of life or death. And at the same time manage the routine tasks like dispensing blood pressure meds, providing immunizations, drawing labs, performing well checks, or handling diarrhea woes. 

In the end, I don't know how much I inspired the students to go into medicine with my stories, but it was fun teaching them how to inject oranges with needles or pack wounds with gauze. Some were enthusiastic while others were anxious to get the session over with. Regardless how they might have felt, I appreciated the opportunity to think about my history with nursing, my mistakes, and victories. Now, I have so much more to look forward to at our next post in Astana and continuing my work in that health unit.

me and my bestie on UW campus
 with chunky shoes, and early 2000s flipped hairdo. 

skills lab, trying on pneumatic pants 
used for pelvic fractures 4/2023.

Foley'ing 

Teaching airway management,
Career Day 5/2024

vaccine rollout 4/2021

trying out some "panty liners" 4/2023

2006 between surgical cases.

Neurosurgery colleagues 2006

A very bad day 5/2022

T-minus 10 minutes to embassy wide drill 5/2022

Drill prep 10/2023

Traipsing across Scandinavia for the sake of decent snow

At home we have a metal painted sign depicting a person riding a bicycle that says in Bangla: "bones heal, bikes don't." During a ski trip to Sweden, Margo confirmed this declaration but with a ski pole, skiing so hard, it broke. And, on the last day of our trip, while skiing the back bowls she fell and broke her wrist. I point out the location because she had to take two T-bar lifts, a regular lift, and ski 45 minutes back to the front with a broken wrist and she did it like a badass.  

We took her to an urgent care for a 2-minute, $550 visit to confirm what we already knew. Assuring us that it was not bad parenting nor bad medicine, we could save ourselves the extra $1,000 x-ray and casting by getting them done back home in Tashkent. So we got her some Tylenol and flew home with a souvenir wrist brace. 

That was the end of our trip and the beginning was just as eventful when a winter storm hit Oslo so bad, they closed the airport forcing all planes to divert to either Copenhagen or Stockholm. Denmark drew the short straw, receiving plane full of people and no plan with what to do with us. The crew turned off the on-board entertainment and air conditioning, and took away water service. Still on the tarmac three hours later and fully marinated in displeasure, they gave us two choices: fly five hours back to Istanbul for rebooking, or deplane and Turkish Airlines would forfeit any assistance or reimbursement. Flying can be so lame sometimes.

Thank goodness for Google Fi, because by the time we emerged from the hot pot of body odor and angry customers, we had booked a hotel room and new flights. All we needed to do now was to walk through an abandoned terminal not unlike "Nightmare on Elm Street", fake smile at the grumpy, confused customs officials, and wait a couple more hours for airport employees to sort the bags that would need to stay on the plane versus not, and recieve them somewhere at baggage claim without notification of where that would be. 

Determined to make the most of visiting a new country, we did what what Schlinks do: death march walking. We toured Nyhavn, a 17th century waterfront that is as cute as it seems in photos. In the meatpacking district, we sampled beers and ate the best bbq outside of Kansas City, covering about 16km on the day before catching a flight to Trondheim, Norway. Landed, we then rented a car to get us to Are, Sweden, arriving just before midnight. Arrived, we would finally enjoy a few days of skiing with reindeer sightings, cozying up on reindeer fur covered chairs, and eating reindeer pizza.

Copenhagen

Merman espresso

AEDs everywhere.

Windblown warming hut.

Back bowls of Are.

View from our ski-in, ski-out airbnb. 10/10 recommend.

Inside view of our airbnb. 
Saving this photo for my future dream
mud room - complete w/boot warmers
and ALL THE HOOKS.

Are Summit.

Sweating in Siam Reap

You know what they say when building a religious complex, go big or go home. Angkor Wat said hold my beer. Bigger than Detroit, and with over 1,000 temples built from sandstone and laterite rocks from all over the country, hundreds of thousands of slaves and elephants succeeded over a few centuries. First, they hauled stones down rivers and mountains. Then they shaped, stacked, and then carved the blocks, etching nearly every square inch of the walls, halls, and ceilings with Hindu, and later Buddhist entities. Some artists carved 13 foot tall faces, whereas others told stories using tiny, almost filigree type designs with characters dancing or fighting. Gargoyles were placed for  flair on the high walls. So yeah, the 900 year old religious complex is big. It's pretty and impressive. Overwhelmingly so.

All week in Phu Quoc, I suspiciously eyed the weather in Siam Reap realizing we'd be going from hot to hotter. And wetter, if that's even possible. I'm one of those travelers who takes (and uses) 15 pairs underwear on a 7 day trip, but still panics when I get down to half of my clean supply. I coped by doing a last minute load, in mental preparation to see ancient ruins ala Mark style. This portion of our vacation was Mark's dream, which would mean long, hot family death marches in the city and around the temples. He'd probably take 4,000 photos over the course of 4 days (he took 2,000), and I needed to be prepared. And fresh.

Exiting Siam Reap's new swanky airport, we were somnolent from a long day of delayed flights, saying goodbye to my best friend, and from the moist, heavy heat that hit us like a blanket. We arrived too late in the evening for dinner but the hotel bar was still open, so we dined on g&ts and coconut water instead. One of the best things about Siam Reap, we found, is that plans are easily made and don't require reservations far in advance. That meant we could have at least one slow morning to plan. Mark wanted temples, I wanted to visit a mine and bomb detonation program involving rats, and the kids wanted to go zip-lining. 

Every single Angkor Wat review says one must see the main temple at sunrise, whether by air balloon, or on the ground, so we hired a tuk-tuk driver to pick us up at 4:30am. Still, we were hardly the only ones there as hundreds of people had already claimed their spots, mostly on the pond side to catch Angkor Wat's reflection. It felt crowded at first, but when the complex fully opened, we had several long moments where we were alone. The complex really is huge, extending far beyond the classic photos we see in the travel guides. I worried about breakfast, but shouldn't have. Once we could see beyond cell phone screens and flashlights, restaurant touts were in full force. In fact, every temple stop had rows of restaurants and we ate incredibly well, especially the Cambodian curry dishes. The kids drank as many mango and banana smoothies as they wanted and I developed a pineapple problem.

As promised, we walked and explored the individual sites all day, pretending heat was no big deal. I'm glad we hired a tuk-tuk instead of renting bicycles because we really did need rest in between stops. Some of the ruins were exactly that: ruined with toppled stones and overgrowth. Other sites had undergone reconstruction, some nicer than others depending on who funded the project (some focused on using wood frames to hold the structures together, others were rebuilt using concrete between the rock that oozed out of the cracks). 

The best part of the tour was the sense of freedom and space we felt, even if thousands of people were visiting at the same time. Deets really got into taking long exposure ghost photos and Margo perfected her cartwheel. She and I played around with taking panoramic shots. Mark was off in his happy place. Sometimes we'd find him in the dirt, flat on his back with a fisheye lens, or inspecting a unique shadow with his 200mm. That man routinely carries 40 pounds of camera equipment like it's no big deal. He's a yak (but a sexy one -ed.).

Zip-lining was pretty cool, glad we did it, though I never need to do it again. I equate it to the excitement of parasailing: fun for the first few minutes, but then it's more about the view. Deets was treated to an extra surprise when a school friend joined us, whose family trip happened to cross ours in Siam Reap. The only thing that made this day even more perfect was Mark discovering a South African Shiraz from the Stellenbosch region while the families dined together at restaurant named Somaha. I recommend ordering the steak and ceviche, raid their upstairs wine cellar, and skip the dessert menu.

Siam Reap is one of several countries that uses TNT detecting rats to sniff out buried mines. Specifically, they are African giant pouch rats that are bred and trained at headquarters Tanzania. The company, Apopo, chose this breed because of their intelligence, trainability, and ability to smell TNT buried as deep as 8 feet. The program graduates are then flown to countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Ukraine, and Angola, to a new home where they systematically walk cleared fields on a roped-off grid with their trainers. (Jungles grow crazy fast, so in order to provide farmland to the people, they need to make sure its safe for planting, and most of all for the kids). The rats start work at 4am, and put in about 3 hours of sniffing to avoid the heat of the day. One rat can clear a tennis court sized field in 30 minutes, whereas metal detectors require several days. Even better, these rats do not blow up (I thought they did!) because they are too light to set off a mine. Once a mine is detected, humans secure the space for digging and detonation. 

We took a tour at Apopo to get to know the HeroRats and trainers who live in Siam Reap and were impressed by how well the non profit organization runs. The kids and I held a sleepy rat who wore a teeny red harness and had long twitchy whiskers. He was a chill, clean rat, and very cute. Landmines, RPGs, tripwires, and anti-tank missiles are not. 

Angkor Wat at sunrise

Angor Wat

Extreme overgrowth of strangler fig trees.

two crouching lions

Angkor Wat and very hungry.

Our sweet ride.

Elephant gargoyles, pants, etchings...

credit: margo

Gods on one side.

Demons on the other.

Sleepy Apopo Hero Rat
credit: mark

In order to survive the heat one must have
3 beverages at all times.

Baby Elephant Boutique Hotel