not at all phobia inducing

greetings from south carolina. my best bell and i have run away for a week to my beach house. it wouldn't be summer without this trip as this is the third year in a row for this mecca of sun, books, margars and relaxation. we've gotten smarter throughout the years and have ruled out mixing anything with blue gatoraid, and not mixing cell phones with water. still, always a highlight of my year. so it's fitting that 12 (twelve!) days before i move to india, i ignore my extensive to-do list and flee south. totally worth it.

fun observation of the day...why is it that the first thing you learn in swim class when you are younger called the 'dead man's float'? if i were a kid with the tiniest bit of hesitation about the water i'm pretty sure that would send me flying in the other direction. the direction that doesn't include water or dead men. seriously, you think someone could have come up with a better name. a name without the word 'dead' in it. we were commenting on this after i took a break from laying on the beach to go float in the ocean. tough life i know. regardless of the demented name of the float, thankfully i was never scared of such a thing. apparently all turners are born with an immense love for the ocean. i realized this as my not yet one year old niece made a direct line for the water and did not want to leave. no fear in that kid. must be a turner.

that's all for now loves. go dead man float your little hearts out. cheers!

much ado about bordeom

for the record, eighteen credits in a semester does things to people. and not cute things. i just survived day two of a week long intensive. eight hours of group work fun. thankfully i am not alone in my misery. jeremy is in the class with me. today, around hour 6 we got a little stircrazy. thankfully sweet sweet photobooth was available to capture the moment and allow it to live forever via blogger. enjoy the disturbing slideshow.

the first picture is the massive smoothies brought to us in the middle of class. not distracting at all. however, i think that the first picture might be the cause of the subsequent pictures. the last picture is backwards, however it is sara and jeremy in malayalam. yeah, that's right, i'm learning malayalam. be impressed.

i love you too, but i'm going to mace you in the face

i watched darjeeling limited yesterday with two of the india kids.  they had never seen it.  i love that movie.  and it's not just because white people love wes anderson more than they love their kids.  it's because of the cinematic allure of the movie.  india itself is an indescribable menagerie of colors, smells, tastes, sights, and sounds.  truly a breathtaking collage of deeply artistic beauty.  and somehow- in someway, darjeeling limited is able to capture and present the smallest taste of it.  and that, is rather fantastic.  

and that is why you shouldn't yell...

so jeremy and i had the worst travel agent in the world. proof of this fact is that we leave for india for less than a month and we were still sans tickets. (a big thank you to dr. varghese for the referral). this was the case despite our best efforts not to be ticketless. despite our stalking and harassing mathew our (not so) fantastic travel agent. no tickets. in fact, no return calls or emails. now, just for the record, i'm a level headed girl- pretty laid back concerning just about everything. it takes a lot for my patience to wear out. even more for me to become angry. but just to let you know, mathew is a lot. and apparently my patience has a 2 month expiration date. something i wasn't aware of. so, i'm sure you see where this is going. i got angry. i yelled (okay, i don't yell, but i talked harshly to), i basically fired mathew, and i maaaay have written a extremely negative online review of their company. intense i know. you totally don't want to cross me.

but here's the rub. here's why i'm not allowed to be a mean person. so i quit mathew and was determined to take the matter into my own hands and find a solution. jeremy and i spent the entire morning searching for tickets. two major problems. one- the tickets were double the cost. more than half of my entire grant funding. expensive. two, and more importantly, in the span of a few hours, all of the tickets had disappeared. vanished. (i still think somehow mathew did this to make me suffer). we tried every option, including trying to make it through mombai and customs in under 3 hours in order to make another flight (which we were called idiotic for attempting this...thanks again dr. vargese).

finally after several hours, jeremy mentioned the inevitable. calling mathew. yes, that's right, calling the man that i had 'fired' and yelled at the day before and begging for forgiveness...and for a flight to india. yeah, that's a bit humbling. and humiliating. and hiiiiilarious. so i sucked it up and wrote an embarrassing apology email- so embarrassing in fact that i refused to let jeremy read it. seriously, the one time that i'm a jerk is the time where it comes back to bite me. moral of the story- sara needs to be nice, always. lesson learned, and j walter weatherman wasn't even required. aaaaand the good news is, i officially have a ticket to india!!! mathew pulled through and i am booked and ready (literally, extremely ready) to go. love it. we leave in exactly 25 days. and i have 25,000,000 things to do before then. awesome.

in other news, i might have the coolest family in the world. within the span of an hour today, my entire family of 7 (including 2 under the age of 1) committed to, and planned out a 2 week trip to visit me and explore all of india. and i do mean all of it. for christmas. my favorite christmas thus far was the one that my family spent a month in kenya. christmas day on the masa mara. this one is set to rival. christmas at the taj sounds nice. the entire turner clan gets around apparently. and i love that.

my life in pages

recently i was told that i was a bad friend for not being around much lately.

this is simply not true. i have previously addressed my priorities and how i'd much rather spend time with friends- old and new- than sit down and right papers. i have thrown fire free fiestas, crashed boat proms and sat in a hot tub until 5 in the morning...all with assignments due the following day. this exact moment is no exception, as i have a paper due tomorrow. (i have thought about it for at least an hour though, i feel that this counts as 'progress').

however, for those that feel that this is true, i would like to present a justification for my actions. a masters in a year is not easy, don't let anyone tell you it is. we all should be glad that this semester is not like last- there is no biostatistics or intro to epidemiology and i'm not contemplating throwing myself off my parking garage. but still, this semester has had it's fair share. and all in the form of paper writing. observe my class list and total count of pages written since january...

(okay fine, since two weeks ago when i finally started to work on them- my life motto "procrastination is the recognition that true genius is forged in the white hot flame of crisis" and trust me, with all my procrastination, i am at the true genius level. just saying.).

• international health and human rights law- one massive, 75% of final grade seminar paper, a grand total of 34 pages
• program planning and implementation- 20 page program analysis, plus an entire notebook way too full to count
• observational studies in epidemiology- 10+ assignments throughout the semester often due every other class, a total of 27 pages
• critical issues in global health- 2 papers, 18 pages total
• theory and practice of policy analysis- one miserable (not yet started- due tomorrow) analysis plus several smaller assignments- total of 19 pages
• and finally, not to be over looked, my grant proposal- 14 pages, rewritten twice

yes that's right, that's 132 pages. 132 pages of well researched, painstakingly written papers. each letter typed, each word chosen, each sentence composed with my blood, sweet and tears (and true genius of course). to be honest, i thought that number was going to be much more impressive (it feels like i've written double that). but still. 132 ain't too shabby. so there. in addition, i've learned that i'm rather talented with preparing and presenting on the fly. literally, found out i was presenting 15 minutes before class and pulled together a full presentation. i must admit, it doesn't hurt that 80% of the above papers have been about HIV/AIDS in india in some way shape or form. but still. 132 pages. come on.

the end of the semester can't come fast enough. i'm done being a student.

india in a month! cheers loves.

happy may

today is may 1st. the month that normally follows may is june. i am moving in june. that's next month. this was my epiphany on my way to school this morning. followed by a minor panic attack. i have not had time to acknowledge the steadily advancing calendar days due to utter and complete school consumption. thankfully the end of the semester is in sight...and will be over by this time next week. but not really. in efforts to finish my degrees by december, and consequentially be able to stay and work in india longer, i am taking a week long summer intensive. which starts following the end of the semester. which is followed by a trip to south carolina, a trip to vermont (yay to both) and then an immediate departure to india. june 9th to be exact. again, that's next month. and not a single break before then. ahh.

in other news, i would like to thank you all for paying taxes. why? because you are helping fund my india experience. allow me to explain, i applied for a travel grant through my school and NIH with a one in a million chance of getting my proposal approved. my life was consumed with grant writing (my new least favorite activity) for over a month but turns out my misery payed off in the end. i was selected and now am federally funded for my proposal. it's hard to describe the empowerment that this grant provides me. it's one thing to travel with your school and perform field placements, but it's another thing entirely to have federal funding on your side, supporting your proposal and acknowledging the importance of your work. without rewriting my entire propsal i'll just inform you that my study mostly involves primary and secondary HIV/AIDS prevention targeted at women and children. i'll be developing and implementing educational programs along with policy recommendations for the entire state of kerala. this is a immense benefit for my personal career but even more so a major opportunity to make a real and lasting difference in the India HIV/AIDS epidemic. and now i have the funding to do so.

however if i were to be honest i'm slightly tempted to use the money to fly my closest friends to come visit me in india. don't think the NIH would look too fondly on that. but it's all for the kids. and the kids need the rivermont girls in their lives, we all do. makes life just so much better.