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.