Final weeks at AUC

It has been a busy end of semester as classes come to a close and exams are run. We had no holiday for Thanksgiving but, instead, the University sponsored a traditional turkey dinner feeding over 600 people including students and employees. As faculty we all took turns serving and the different classes came for dinner at intervals throughout the day. It was very traditional and actually very good! No oysters though so Carol's Mother would have been disappointed no doubt, but there were some pies and non-traditional ginger coconut sweets. It came at a good time since it was well before the time students worried about exams and the final semester students were doing a full week of review (Kaplan Live) where many of the main themes and facts they have been faced with during medical school are summarized again during 35 hours of continual overview. The instructor, who comes from the USA for one week, was just a mass of energy and I sat in a few times and found it quite useful in seeing how my own areas of teaching linked to other areas in ways that I hadn't connected.

The following Saturday was a busy one indeed. In the morning, five of us from the University joined about 30 others in racing 12-metre yachts as I talked about in the last posting. That was a lot of fun though we certainly were kept busy. A picture of the group in our yacht is shown before the hard work started. I in sunglasses, just behind and partially obscured by the man in the blue T shirt (Dewey Hertz of the Pathology Department). After the wine tasting and punch reception be retraced our steps to go to another party given at Sue Atchley's house. She lives near the University and has created a wonderful home with a Japanese flavor, out of a space that was largely a dump for car wrecks etc. And what a party that was! A local restaurant made the pumpkin pie and for once it was really fabulous. More of a mousse than the typical stodgy, if still tasty, pie.

This past weekend, we had another sailing trip as a faculty end of term party. Luckily a beautiful day and we went snorkeling for a while - I finally have a really wide fitting pair of flippers. The best fishes were however all around the boat and not much was visible close to the shore. My car decided to die on our return: a problem with its alarm that was mended by a local mechanic by deactivating it. The Subaru has been a great car but I always hated that alarm system since it would go berserk whenever I used a key to open the door rather than the radio transmitter. In addition, it annoyed me by giving a short blast on the horn every time I entered or exited the car. It is so annoying to have all these extras built into cars.

Yesterday, the Diabetes Foundation did blood testing at a festival run by the Ujima Foundation that works with youth development. There were many school groups doing dancing and singing and it seemed to be a very Caribbean affair.

I now have a week when I will be scanning a number of papers and consolidating my documents so I don't need to carry much home in January since I need to be out of the office by the end of the year. It will be fun having the family come down at last.