Reporting form the shores of the Black Sea

Two posts in three weeks... I call that progress. Right now I'm in Romania at a conference for BIPAI, reviewing what's been going on in the network, learning what plans are for the future, and sharing what we're learning in this new experiment we've all undertaken to revolutionize the scope and quality of pediatric HIV/AIDS care in Africa. It's inspiring, and the knowledge-sharing has been very helpful. We haven't seen much of Romania since this is more about business than travel, but what I have seen of the countryside through airplane and bus windows seems like mostly pretty agricultural land. The organization and scale of agriculture stands in dramatic contrast with the mostly subsistence agriculture and free-range livestock grazing in Lesotho. The cities are less appealing, and kind of remind me of China (the less nice residential parts of Chinese cities)--lots of big cement apartment blocks with shops on the first floor and balconies hung with clothing and surrounded by permanently cloudy windows. I'm also trying to get used to traffic on the right side of the road again. I guess Korea will get me used to that before going back to the States. I'm also enjoying seeing all the Pediatric AIDS Corps docs from other countries, eating a veritable cornucopia of sliced meats with various permutations of stuffing, breading, stews, and gravy, indulging in too many desserts piled with mounds of sweet whipped cream, and getting kind of bittersweet about the end of my work with BIPAI. I'll miss the chance to be doing this work and having this kind of impact, but I'm in desperate need of a rest, and need to take some needed time to focus on family, especially with the new baby coming. As I said, there are more pictures (<--Click on the bold words... I need to get in to edit the template so the link will be underlined instead of just bold...)--a couple new albums and some new photos in the old albums along with labels and captions for a lot of the photos that I previously uploaded. So, please browse and enjoy.