Pages from the Philips

The last of our preparations for our trip to India were finished this week. We finished packing six suitcases that we will be checking and six suitcases/backpacks that we will be carrying on. By the time we’re done we’ll have almost 400 pounds of luggage to take to India. Almost half that weight is items that we’ll be taking to the hospital in terms of medical supplies, food items that were requested and other items that are hard to find easily in the area we’ll be working in.

This week was also busy as Christo finished his last week of classes at Mayo and Melissa, Karuna, and Luke tied up loose ends before we leave for India. Karuna had her final dance lessons this week and so we have some pictures from her last class in the pictures gallery. We were also glad that we got to spend more time with our neighbor Lois who lives down the hall so that the kids could say goodbye to her before our trip. It has been wonderful to have Lois as a neighbor for the last four years because she has functioned in many ways as a surrogate grandparent to Karuna and Luke. Karuna has regular times when she gets to go over to Lois’ condo to watch Sesame Street and Luke loves to play with Lois’ cat Cleo. We wanted to make sure to take some pictures of the kids with Lois and so we have a couple of those pictures in the gallery as well.

This week was also the last time that we’ll get to meet with our Bible study group. Our Bible study group, led by Steve and Ingrid Ansell (one of the hematologists at Mayo along with his wife), has been such a blessing to us. We have enjoyed being able to go through several books with this group, the most recent of which was Philippians. What we appreciated most about this Bible study was their willingness to understand our weird schedule due to Christo’s rotation schedule. The Bible study is composed of several other consultants, fellows, residents, and we’ve been the token medical school students but they have made us feel so welcome in the group and we’ll miss not being able to meet with our group once we move to Dallas for residency.

On Thursday night of this week we got to celebrate the end of the Mayo Admissions Committee season with another dinner at the Foundation House. Christo has served as one of the Mayo Medical School Admissions Committee members this past year and has worked for the last two years on designing and implementing the computer application that helps to rank medical school candidates. He has thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to interview and select some outstanding candidates for next year’s Mayo Medical School class. (It is a perfect fit for his personality!) Each year Mayo Medical school receives about 4000-4500 applications out of which approximately 250 are selected for on-campus interviews to fill a class of 42 students. This year five of the candidates Christo interviewed have been selected to be part of the incoming class. The committee is composed of 21 members with six of them being fourth year medical students. The dinner was a fun time to celebrate the incoming class, recognize contributions of individual committee members, and to enjoy some great food and conversation at the Foundation House.