Technical difficulties, and the 1st NEM Conference

(0945 Sunday April 18, 2010)

Hello followers!

If you haven't logged on in a few days, this may be news to you, but to those of you who have, you may have been wondering what happened to us. The blog was removed for a few days, and was suddenly reinstated this morning. After some investigation, it seems that people use blog sites for phishing scams, and Blogger has a computerized scanning program that goes through all the blogs and flags anything that seems suspicious. Since there are so many blogs, when one gets flagged, it automatically gets removed until the team can review the blog in detail. There is an appeal process that the blog owner can go through to have the blog re-posted, which apparently is 5 steps and a lot of effort, and a 5-7 day wait for results, which I was fully preparing to go through, and then when I checked the blog this morning, it was miraculously back up! The team must have reviewed the blog already and decided it was safe. As if anything we said could have been interpreted as offensive or scammy! I was actually concerned that I might have made a statement about the government or something along those lines, yikes! But no such worries.

So back to business.

Today the Kijacs are leaving to return to the US. We are all sad to see them go, as we are a little family now, and we have had a good time together here. I am hopeful that Amanda and Pete have enjoyed their trip and their experience here in Nepal. They certainly have both made a wonderful impression on all those that they came in contact with. Pete's smiling face and wonderful attitude was so refreshing, and even though he spent a few days feeling awful, he managed to smile through the entire illness. His technical knowledge and adventurous spirit truly contributed to the success of the team. Amanda's lecture on ATLS (advanced trauma life support) was very well-received, and her calm and professional demeanor was impressive. She trained over 100 physicians on ACLS and adult intubation, and never complained. It was wonderful watching her wander through the streets of Thamel, shopping for things, thinking of her family and friends and what gifts they would like. Her openness to the culture and to learning the way of life of Nepalis was contagious. Seeing her and Pete together in this experience was inspiring. I am happy to have gotten to know them both well during this trip, and I look forward to continuing the friendship.

Ellen, Melissa, Jason and I are leaving Kathmandu in a few minutes for a 5-day trip to the rural village of Wana, where we will be conducting a health camp. I must run, and there is no time to upload any photos, I apologize. We have hundreds of photos from the Conference the last 2 days, and I am excited to share them with you. The next post will be in 5 days!

We hope all of you are well.

Sue/Team