Downtown will be the death of me

It's now my second week of research work at Sick Kids, where I've been completely indulging in the luxuries of downtown hospital life... namely the Tim Horton's, Starbucks and Teriyaki stir-fries that are conveniently housed right in Sick Kids. I also will not forget to mention, of course, the wonderful GELATO stand at Toronto General Hospital where I took the whole Image Guided Therapy crew (the department in Diagnostic Imaging where I work) and they were so pleased, I think they will love me forever. And last but not least, I have all of Baldwin Street for me to lunch at, especially my most favourite Japanese restaurant Fujiyama. I've been really happy since I've started working, I've already had lunch with so many people (my sisters included!) and it's just been a lot of fun.
To be a Sick Kids employee again (I worked there two summers ago), I had to go through the whole rigmarole of getting my doctor to approve my immunization status and get a TB test (thank goodness it came back negative). I found out last Monday that in fact, I actually did not get my full complement of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) when I was 6 years old and this has completely eluded both Queen's medical school admissions AND the numerous public health workers I visited before I left for Africa. In short, I totally should not have been allowed in medical school these past two years and I went to Africa without my full immunizations!! Oh well. I guess it was good to find out now and not later.
I'm liking the world of interventional radiology more and more, especially since I can still work with the pediatric population if I choose to. And besides, who wouldn't want to work within a field where you can have logos like this:

A teddy bear X-ray!?!!? That's just too damn cute. This picture alone has sealed my fate. It also helps that my supervisor is like the nicest doctor I have ever met, ever. Is it possible that a doctor working within the Toronto university health network could be nice? Is it concievable a doctor, period, could be nice to a lowly, unworthy medical student? Is it even possible a former surgeon could be nice to anyone, period? I mean, she thanks *me* for coming in early for meetings, she actually cares if I've actually eaten for the day or not and she was even worried that if my grant money didn't come in early enough she'd be willing to spot me some cash. To top it off, she has an awesome Irish accent and in her medical student days she had also volunteered in Botswana. Finally, I've found somebody I can call a true mentor.

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This past weekend was again a busy one. Mike met up with me in Kingston so I could fully move my stuff that has been stored in somebody else's room for the past few months into my real room. I love my new room and one of my roommates is in love with the Gilmore Girls too! It just gets better and better... but the place in general needs the aid of Molly Maid, pronto. Since we worked so hard on Saturday moving everything (I have sore biceps to prove it!), we decided to hit the Sandbanks beach about an hour west of Kingston on Sunday. It was a lot of fun, especially when I was eating Mike's homemade pasta salad and Kernels popcorn. We got back in time to catch the last 20 minutes of the World Cup Final. In those twenty minutes I learned that Zidane is one whacked out French dude and Materazzi must have said something really bad to have pissed him off so much. Consensus is (the Mike and Betty panel), Materazzi must have made one helluva yo mama joke!

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And here, the promised third installment of my African adventure pictures. The fourth one is going to even more amazing, I promise. This is but only a small taste of the beginning... (and I won't go into detail about how much I miss Africa and how much I just want to go back and how I'm scheming to try and make that possible within the next 5 years).

Photo Gallery 3:
Adventures in Nairobi and Tanzania

Feeding a giraffe at the Langata Giraffe Centre!

I meet my namesake giraffe Betty,
who curiously has the same personality as me

Afterwards Mike and I head for dinner at CARNIVORE, where you can have all-you-can-eat delicacies like ostrich, camel and crocodile. Mike is wearing his stylin' orange Tusker (Kenyan beer) t-shirt.

Julie, Mike and I help out the Carnivore chefs.. Mike looks the best out of all of us in his couture zebra hat.

On the way to the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania

We meet a group of super-cute Tanzanian children on the way to Arusha

Masai in Tanzania (one of my favourite pictures of Mike's)

View of the Ngorongoro Crater from the rim (the picture does not do it justice!)

On our first game drive into the crater, some lazy lions block our way!

A zebra showing off his booty

A female ostrich

A group? herd? flock? family? of wildebeest

A baby cub!

Flamingoes and masai stork

Those ain't rocks, they're hungry, hungry hippos!

Mike spots some camels

Mike and I in the Olduvai (Oldupai) Gorge, the cradle of mankind