Sixteen of the Fogarty scholars went straight from Bethesda to Seattle to take a course at the University of Washington on the Principles of HIV/STD Research. It seemed that those of us with mentors who are associated with UW got the opportunity to go. I was worried that, as a veterinarian, I was out of place at this course. However, since I was willing to learn, and someone else was willing to send me, I figured why not?! Besides, I’d never been to Seattle before.
The sixteen of us were all on the same flight to Seattle from Bethesda. Unfortunately this flight left at 7am, meaning we left at 4:30 (several of us did not sleep at all that night, after our last night at NIH evening out). Fortunately, we got to Seattle really early; we head straight downtown to have dim sum in Chinatown (with a native Cantonese speaker and two Mandarin speakers – this was not your average dim sum!), toured around Pioneer’s place and Pikes Market, and trekked over to and up the Space Needle.
We were staying in the dorms at UW – although the campus is really beautiful, the dorms at UW are some of the worse in the country. My roommate was a doctor from Uganda named Zaam; we got along really well and spent lots of time laughing about the differences between the States and Uganda (she finds it totally outrageous that we don’t iron our clothes). We managed to be in Seattle during a record breaking heat wave – it was sunny practically every day, and during the second week it was intensely hot every day! There were 140 students in the course, the majority of whom were clinicians from outside of the States (mostly from Africa).
Class was intense but very interesting. These days were shorter than those in Bethesda, giving us plenty of time to get down to the Agua Verde for some fish tacos and margaritas. The most interesting lecture was on social networks and the spread of HIV; the idea is that a culture with a greater acceptance of concurrency in sexual partners leads to a more thorough spread of STDs. Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/user/statnetMovies (and if you want more, you can read the article here: http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/99/6/1023).
The group of us had a great time in Seattle; since we already knew each other from Bethesda, we spent a lot of time together exploring Seattle. It’s amazing how well you can get to know a city in less than two weeks! We got to know downtown and Capitol Hill very well. We went to the aquarium and ate at the Crab Pot, a feast of mussels and crabs spread out on the table in front of is. I got to meet up with an old friend from college, who also now works in the global health field. We took the ferry over to Bainbridge Island, and Bruno and I spent an entire day at the Woodland Park Zoo and didn’t miss and single exhibit. Everyone did a lot of shopping, especially everyone from outside of the States who had lots of presents to bring home. Thinking back on it, I can’t imagine how we managed to do so much. No wonder we were tired when we arrived in Lima. These two weeks were truly phenomenal; I really got to know the Peru crew really well, and made some other fantastic friends.
One of the best things we did was rent a car to drive up to the San Juan Islands. We took a ferry over to Friday Harbor, drove to Lime Kiln Bay, and camped out waiting for orcas. Many hours later, they arrived, and we saw several very close to the shore! We had missed our ferry, and had to go home on the late ferry that stopped at every island, but it was more than worth it! These two weeks were an excellent send off for our trip to Peru!
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