first day of work and the georgian birthday

Yesterday was pretty eventful and pretty interesting. I started by going to the Center for Infectious Diseases to start my work (still not knowing what exactly that might be). The campus is pretty interesting- it is very large and spread out over several small buildings. They were all built in the 30s and are pretty much crumbling, but they really have state-of-the art equipment inside. One woman I am working with, Keti, told me that because the land is in a very expensive part of the city, the government is selling off most of the center, only leaving the AIDS center.

Coincidentally and very conveniently, I started on a day that 2 AIDS experts from the UK were beginning a 4-day WHO workshop on the current guidelines for treating HIV/AIDS, so I'll be attending that all week. It is really great to get an overview of the issue in Georgia and the worldwide standards for treatment, so I'm very glad that it worked out this way. In addition, I tagged along with the WHO people as they were given a tour of the AIDS center and were presented some interesting patients- a great introduction and a long day.

Now, as you may or may not know, this also coincided with the anniversary of my birth and as promised, I talked it up a lot so that we could have some fun. Among the celebraters were my classmates Rob, Julian, and Gabe, and new Georgian friends Salome, Arena, and two Giorgis. We went out to eat and had some more kinkali and some kebabi- a mixture of beef and pork wrapped in sort of a tortilla called lavashi with some tomato sauce to pour on it. After dinner we went to a Irish bar- anywhere in the world you go, you can probably find an Irish bar. They had a live band covering English songs that was pretty nice. And we had some drinks. A lot of drinks, in fact. So the Georgian birthday was more than I even hoped for, with a big crowd and a lot of fun.

I know that this isn't very well-written, but I blame it on the beer from last night. Hope everyone is well, and feel free to comment or send me emails!