Ding-Dang

Done!

No, not with Christmas shopping (thanks for reminding me of that... geez!) NO! I am done - D. O. N. E. - with the freaking residency interviews. I had my seventh, and last, interview on Tuesday. I feel like I should maybe interview at more. But then I also feel that seven is a nice, biblical number so I should just leave it at that. So I'm gonna.

Highlights of the whole process:

- Getting nine of my ten interview offers before the dean's letter went out
- Seeing Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on Broadway the night before one interview because they didn't have the obligatory evening before (though I guess not obligatory, since they didn't have it) 'meet and greet' with the residents
- Feeling like an honorary "Man in Black" as I toured many facilities with like-dressed applicants. All with our clicky shoes
- Having a hard time suppressing my laughter every time our footsteps became synchronized during those tours (we'd go Clickety-clicket-click-Click-CLICK-CLICK)
- Finding three "I'd love to go there" programs, three "I think that would be sorta fun" to go there programs and one "I only really need to rank six programs, right?" program.
- Getting up at 4:45 am, driving two hours, dropping off rental car, catching shuttle to airport, waiting at gate, boarding plane, hearing 'this plane is broken,' de-boarding plane, waiting two hours for new plane, boarding new plane, watching two grown men almost come to fisticuffs while stowing luggage ('you think you can take me, fatso!?'), flying, riding train 1 hour home, leaving again sixty-two hours later
- Fresno newspaper headline: "Fresno Cow Count Rising"
- Chatty Sacramento shuttle driver who got lost and found the street with the MOST SPEED-BUMPS EVER CREATED
- And, finally, coming home to a Christmas-filled house, knowing that I have a full three plus weeks to recover.

And, by the by... I have an announcement (no, I'm not pregnant. Or engaged.):
I'm a-goin' to Africa!

Seriously! Real-life Africa - not Animal Kingdom or the zoo
or a really realistic non-fiction/fiction book that takes me there in my imagination. Actual Africa with the actual Lions and Witches and... no, wait. With actual Lions and Tigers and... no, that's not it either. Well, there will be lions anyway. And other animals. Deadly animals. And deadly mosquitoes (for which I've been armed with gajillions of shots and pills).

I'm going with a group called The Center for International Service Learning. I'm so terribly excited! I am going with a classmate - though we won't actually see each other again until we meet up in Amsterdam! We'll be doing some sort of rural triage clinic. What that entails, I'm not quite certain. I leave in three weeks!! Which means that I will be in Africa for New Year's. How awesome is that? For the rest of my life, I will not have to worry about making New Year's a big occasion, because no matter what I end up doing, nothing will beat being in Africa when the year changes.

Unless, maybe some year I'm on the moon...