school

Some of you may actually be interested in what Rhett is doing while we are here in Peru! Some background . . . he is attended the Gorgas Course in Tropical Medicine. It is an annual course put on by UAB (where he is doing his Infectious Disease Fellowship). It is really neat because unlike a lot of tropical medicine courses this one is actually taught in the tropics. At the conclusion of the course he will be able to sit for an exam and become "certified" in tropical medicine - woo hoo! This is such a fantastic opportunity for him to really spend time focusing on the diseases that he will be spending a lot of time caring for the next two years in Kenya and really for the rest of his life/career. We are really thankful for this opportunity. It has been no small feat to pull this off. The financial commitment alone is probably enough to prevent a lot of people from doing something like this. But God has provided for us and we see this as an investment in the future of our family, Rhett's career and most importantly to the lives of the people we will reach because of this training. So - absolutely worth it.

The course itself is very international as far as participants. Everyone is from all over the world which is really fun and interesting. There is a contingent from the UK, Australia, Canada and more far off places like Afghanistan. There are lots of different life experiences represented. It is really encouraging to see so many people who are commited to making difference in the lives of people who are by and large forgotten or ignored (those in developing countries). I'm realizing that I should have probably glanced at Rhett's course syllabus before I did this post to give more details about what he is actually studying for those interested so I'm kind winging it here! His days are full of lectures (about 4 1/2 hours) combined with another couple hours of rounds and lab (as in identifying things with a microscope kind of a lab). He puts in another couple hours of studying at night so his days are pretty full. He has weekly quizzes (ha!) that help keep them on track for the certification exam at the end. I asked him if his teacher was going to ask him to take out his paper and number from 1-10 for his quiz (at least I thought it was funny).

Claire thinks it is pretty neat that Daddy is going to school. This morning she said "Daddy goes to school in Peru and I go to school in Birmingham!" and yesterday she asked me if Daddy had a bed at school so he could take a nap. When he got home she asked "Daddy did you take a nap today at school?" and when he told her no she looked very concerned, tilted her little head and said "Well, then what did you do during naptime?"