Semester ONE is DONE!

I realize it has been over a month since my last update! I am so sorry--but man, time flies when you're living in the library. And I thought I holed myself up in the library a lot as an overachieving undergrad?!! Oh no, grad school is ten times worst, and it's not just to be an overachiever but just to stay afloat! I am relieved to say that I have one last final assignment to submit and then FREEDOM!!! For 6 whole weeks. It really is crazy, though, how time flies! 


There were a few (very few...) moments I emerged from the depths of the library and my Pubmed database researching--and all of those were related to Rotary! I presented to the Rotary Club of Brisbane Planetarium and the Rotary Club of Brisbane High Rise. The Planetarium club meets at the botanical gardens below Mt. Coot-tha and it was a cheerful, fun morning! The High Rise club was also great and their venue is just amazing, as they meet downtown in the old Polo Club building.

The Planetarium Club proxy-President and I exchanged Rotary banners, and they also thanked me for my presentation with a bottle of Australian wine! Nice! However, I ended up having to go straight to uni from the meeting and ended up carrying the wine bottle around with me alllll day--into lecture, into the bathroom, into the library with it propped up on my desk. I got a lot of funny looks, and unfortunately since I was in study mode, I couldn't "lighten the load" of the bottle haha.

Here is a picture (from my handy dandy mobile) of the historical Polo Club in the heart of downtown on my walk to the presentation.

In May, I also attended the Rotary Peace Fellows Seminars. At the end of the 1.5 year Peace Fellowship, the fellows all give a 30 minute presentation on their AFEs (applied fieldwork experience), which is usually the same topic they write their dissertations on. (AFEs are about 2-3 months where the peace fellows go abroad and work within a community for their master's program and the Peace Fellowship funds it and requires it.) It was a really great day--there was a short documentary video on child labor in Vietnam, as well as a powerpoint on community development in Sierra Leone, among a whole entire day of others. Each presentation was so diverse and engaging. 

However, the best part of the day for me was actually not written into the day's agenda. During an intermission, the new incoming Peace Fellows introduced one another. Ertla (from Iceland) introduced Abdi, and explained a bit about his life (I feel since it was announced in the seminar that it is ok to share these details with others, I hope this is alright). Abdi was born in Somalia and was forced to live in Somali refugee camps in Kenya for 9 years until his family could be resettled in Canada when he was a teenager. Life was a bit tough in these refugee camps, to say the least--he never owned a pair of shoes until he was 15, as well as never once did he celebrate his birthday. The day of the Peace Fellows seminar happened to be his birthday and because he was so used to not celebrating it, he didn't even realize it when he woke up. Ertla asked us all to sing the traditional "Happy Birthday" song to Abdi, as it would be the first time anyone had ever sung that in honor of him. The whole audience of a few hundred people sang, and I'm not sure there was a dry eye in the room as in return Abdi had the hugest smile on his face, and humbly put his hands over his heart and just kept nodding in gratitude. It was a really poignant moment--a good life lesson that will help me remember to cherish the little, simple things in life. Like even an off-pitched "Happy Birthday" song!

I want to extend a special thank you to Suzanne Quintner, from the Planetarium club, who kindly gave me a ride to the Peace Fellows event. It saved me nearly an hour in time that would have been spent on 3 different buses to get to St. Lucia at that early of an hour on a Saturday!

Another thank you goes to the same Suzanne, as she arranged for my visit to the Royal Children's Hospital school. The Royal Brisbane Hospitals make up the biggest hospital in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Royal Children's Hospital (which is where my UQ library is and right next to where my UQ classes are at the UQ Medical School) has an amazing school system for children who have to spend prolonged periods in the hospital, and/or the siblings and children of patients in the hospital. I was able to have morning tea with one of the teachers, Jan McKay, who also is a Rotarian from the Windsor club. Programs like these sadly get overlooked in a lot of public health courses, but I learned a lot from just my quick visit! What a great program for allowing children who are battling an illness or enduring other hardships to maintain a bit of normalcy in their lives and still be able to go to school, and to learn, explore, and play.

With my RCH school tourguide, Rotarian Jan McKay

The only other thing I can really tell you about May unless you want to learn about biostatistics, epidemiology or Chagas disease in Latin America, is that Rotary really makes it such a small world out there! My Rotary hosts, Brian and Cheryl, went on a trip around the world in May. Not only were they able to get a personalized tour from my boyfriend, Doug, during their short time in Washington, D.C., but they also met up with so many random people from my childhood and life in Visalia while they were at the International Rotary Conference in New Orleans. I have never laughed so hard as when I received a text message from Brian Springer, my BRISBANE Rotary host counselor, that said "Hi from Dr. Schneider"...my VISALIA dentist I've known since I was a toddler! They also had dinner and drinks on Bourbon St. with my 8th grade drama teacher, my preschool teacher, as well as many other family friends. Apparently Brian and Cheryl have come back to Oz bearing several interesting Kelli stories... yikes! Too funny!

For any Australia Rotarians reading this, you will recognize my host, Brian, second from the left in the back. For any Visalia Rotarians reading this, you will recognize my preschool teacher, past District Governor, and one of the Ambassadorial Scholarship interviewers, Nina Clancy, right in front of Brian. Now that's what makes Rotary so cool! That... and the fact that because of PolioPlus, there are only 4 remaining polio-endemic countries! (But hey, that's just coming from a dorky public health grad student...)