Beth's new doggie

Hey ya'll. My vet school friend Beth and her girlfriend Emily just rescued a new doggie! They aren't positive they are gonna keep her, so if you're in the market for a black female dachshund-terrier mix let me know and she can be all yours.
You can also send suggestions for names...she's still sans nom/sin nombre/without a name. That was fun!
OK, back to studying Immunology:(
-Shirin

The Compact has been broken

So, for those you that remember what The Compact was, it has been broken in the Modaresi-Beal family. For those that don't remember, it was an agreement that started in San Fransisco not to buy any items new...just used or second-hand. The people in CA committed to a year of this lifestyle, but Gabriel and I just decided to make a bet to see who could last the longest without buying any products brand new (see post from January 10, 2007 for more info).
Now, who, you might ask, was the one to break it...well, that's debatable. It was kind of both of us. But, I would argue that Gabriel's was worse, since he bought all his non-essential, new paintball gear from the evil empire (Wal-mart), while I bought a few gifts and souvenirs from the great country of Mexico. You can decide. Maybe this accusation will actually make my dear hubby finally contribute to our blog again.
However, despite our failure to maintain a perfect record, I don't think it's our plan to just jump right back into big big spending and shopping. We decided that there were some items we missed during those 3 months, but overall we were happy to buy our clothes from thrift stores and our gadgets from Ebay. We kind of already lived like that anyway.
The primary "objects" that I missed buying were photographs. Now I can finally get my Vietnam photos printed.
-Shirin

Daily life continues...

Hi everyone. I'm in my last two weeks of regular classes (before electives start), which means: FINALS FINALS FINALS. Three this week and four more next week. EEK!
However, once I get through it all, my last month will be fun and educational and very low stress. I'm taking classes such as Aquatic Mammal and Wildlife, International Vet Medicine, Public Health, Communications, Emergency and Critical Care, and Large Animal Infectious Diseases. While I'll still have lots of classes (and of course I'm taking extras because I never let myself relax), the studying and exam schedule will be a lot lighter and I can't wait.
Consequently, I've also been really busy with extra curricular activies and making up some of the days I missed before Spring Break.
So, as always, I have catalogued my week of activities with pictures.
-Shirin
PS Gabriel is going to his family's Ides of March get-together this weekend (I'm too busy to go :( ), so I'm sending the camera down with him to get some good footage for next week...stay tuned!

A group of docs and students working on an emergency case down in the ICU (I was working my 4 hour shift for Small Animal Treatment Crew this Tuesday). The puppy was really sick and after taking it to exploratory surgery, they found a foreign object that he had had stuck in his gut. I hope he's better!

One of my jobs in the ICU was to sit with a cat receiving a blood transfusion for about 1.5 hours to make sure he wasn't reacting badly to it. This was my view (the blood is in the syringe in the cage getting pumped in slowly).

More ICU views.
Yesterday, I had to drive out to a farm to look at cows (something I missed the week before my Spring Break). It was a beautiful day and it was great to have to go to "class" in a field full of cows and horses).


The barn close to my "classroom."

When I arrived, this is what my teachers were doing...gelding a stallion. I got a close-up look at how it happens (quite different from dog neutering for sure).

The horse getting his feet trimmed while asleep.

The doc waiting for the horse to recover from anesthesia. He also had his wolf teeth pulled and now he's going on sale!

Life wouldn't be complete without seeing my sweet nephew, Cha Cha. I got to hang out with him and his mommy (Anahita) last weekend for Naw Ruz (Persian New Year) at my parent's house. It was a lot of fun.


Beth at school playing with someone's rescue dog. It seems like every vet student has some foster dog or cat they are trying to find a home for. Gabriel and I are gonna have some bunnies to foster soon ourselves!

Here he is, folks. His name is Banjo and he needs a home. Let me know if you're interested.

Gabriel and my life wouldn't be complete without a stop now and then by our favorite Thai restaurant. Here's my soup from the other day. (Maybe I'm crazy, but I love taking pictures of my food).

Mis fotos de Mexico

Here are some of my photos of Mexico. You can view the whole album on Snapfish by clicking on the link and signing in. You have to sign up for a username and password if you don't have one, but it's free and has no strings attached.
I also have a little video on YouTube that I took in Merida, Yucatan, the city we stayed in the first night in Mexico.
Enjoy the photos. My camera battery ran out after only a few days, so I'll get more from some of my classmates shortly and post them too.
-Shirin
PS It's good to be home.

Plaza in Merida where our hotel was located.

Yes, folks, fast food is everywhere!




Translation: " Bush, the assassin of the towns of the world, will be in the Yucatan. What do you think he will do?" etc... (His visit caused a huge ruckus and created total chaos for hundreds of people for his two days in Merida).





I took this picture for my Uncle Masud...Don't know what it means as far as this store goes.




We took a bus ride to our village, Tunkas, to set up camp.


Our house where we lived for a week in Tunkas.

Learning how to hang up our hammocks.

Yay, our beds!

Our back porch.

Our back yard.

Our bathroom.

Dr Hernandez demonstrating muzzling and vaccinating procedures.

Waiting to do our epidemiological survey.

Some ladies we surveyed about chickens, turkeys, etc...

Helping out in surgery one day...dog about to be knocked out (already drugged).


Make-shift surgery suite.


Cute little girls waiting for their dog to be spayed.

Going house to house to vaccinate.

Rodrigo held while I poked.

Our "cafeteria" for the week.

My typical breakfast (mango on the left).

Flowering bananas...who knew?

Winding down...

Well, I´m at my least favorite part of the trip...the end. I just took a bus this afternoon to spend the night in Cancun and get up tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 5 AM to start my day by taking an airplane to Mexico City, where I will sit for 5 hours, and then taking another plane back to Charlotte, finally arriving at 6:30 PM.
I spent today touring the ruins of Chichen Itza, one of the 7 wonders of the world. Who knew? Not me, certainly. It was really cool to walk around those huge rock structures/pyramids and realize they were built 100s of years ago and that people had lived there and been sacrificed there, etc. The fact that I´d been hanging out with real live Mayas all week also enhanced my experience. Today was the first time I experienced severe heat here...nearing the heat of SE Asia, which is quite a feat. Luckily, it rained on us after a while and really cooled things down. One of the funnest or maybe funniest parts of going to tourist traps like this are all the hawkers, selling their wares. I´m a grade A bargainer at this point (quality time in Mexico, Panama, Cambodia, & Vietnam will do that to you) and enjoy haggling over prices and walking away so that they´ll call me back over to renegotiate. Deep down, I feel guilty for talking them down from $120 pesos to $70 pesos, since it´s only a difference of $5 US dollars, but I always feel like it´s the fact that I don´t want to get cheated because I´m a stupid foreigner. Also, when we walk by, they say things like ¨ït´s better than Walmart¨and ¨do you speak Spanish? OK, then you get a discount¨and ¨bring something back for you boyfriend.¨ These phrases that they ALL seem to say really make me laugh. I got some nice things for my family and myself, which will hopefully fit into my life once I get back home (I sometimes buy the craziest stuff to bring back).
Overall, my experience on this International Vet Med trip was great. I got to speak a lot of Spanish, hang out in a tiny village that doesn´t even have a hotel (therefore, no toursists), vaccinate a lot of dogs, and learn about Mayan culture and history. My only compaints were that we had way more downtime than necessary and were fed almost no authentic Mexican food b/c of fears we´d get sick (man, that really kills me!) As always, my ability to navigate Mexico´s bus system and travel around easily confirms my notion that somehow everything works out, no matter how confusing. (Their buses are actually super nice, but buying the ticket and finding the bus is another story).
I´m glad I came and now I´m glad I´m going home to my family and husband.
Pictures are on their way!
-Shirin

Hanging out with the Mayans

So, I went to an even more rural village today on the outskirts of Tunkas to continue my vaccination efforts and was surpised by the fact that I couldn´t understand much of what the people in the neighborhoods were saying to each other. Finally, my much more knowledgable professor told me that they were speaking their native tongue: Mayan. It made perfect sense once I opened my eyes to who these people were, on the whole, shorter and darker and more ¨Indian¨ looking than the average Mexican, and realized that these were the direct descendants of the Mayan indians and that the language is being kept alive in little towns like this. After that, I just worked in silence when I could, listening to them talk to one another, joking about screeching dogs getting their vaccines, and thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of having travelled backwards in time for a little while. It got even more interesting as more and more children joined our vaccine party and accompanied us through the narrrow streets, helping us by carrying muzzles while simultaneously balancing big green grapefruits on their heads. We also found the people of the smaller village to be more receptive and helpful in our efforts to vaccinate their dogs, especially since most of the people bringing out their pets and restraining them were between the ages of 3 and 10 (I´m totally serious). We ended up having to leave simply because we ran out of our vaccines...there were still dogs waiting.
Tomorrow, we are going back to the village for a few hours to do some massive vaccinating before going to another village for a cultural experience (Mayan light show) and some ¨real¨ Yucatecan food. I´m very limited in my choices, since it consists mostly of chicken or fish, but at another Yucatecan restaurant, I got a really cool dish that consisted of corn tortillas filled with shredded hard boiled eggs covered in tomato sauce and some sort of creamy seed sauce. I know it doesn´t make much sense, but that was the description on the menu. It was good but I was full way before I was finished. Unfortunately, I´ve had to force-feed myself a lot here to not offend my chefs (yet another reason I´d just rather cook for myself). Right now I´m sitting in the internet cafe with a plastic cup full of half my dinner of a corn mash loaf covered in tomato sauce between my legs. It was good but way too filling so I´m going to give it to a street dog that needs it much more than I do.
After we were done in the little village, we sat with the plethora of little kids we´d accumulated throughout the morning and our professors bought us all Cokes and chili chips covered in more chiles. I love spicy stuff, so I ate a bunch and then picked a sour orange off of the ground that had just fallen from a tree and ate some of that too. I think I could do a trip like this every year and never get tired of it.
I would, however, like a cleaner bathroom with a hot shower. I´ve only showered once since I got to Tunkas on Sunday (yes, it´s Wednesday), but it´s not because I don´t like showers or like to stink. It´s just that our shower is so cold and our bathroom is so dirty that I can´t bring myself to spend more time in there than I have to every day...once to brush my teeth every night and a few times to use the toilet. I love my sleeping arrangement (hammock) and the fact that we have a house with electricity so I can read my book, but the bathroom makes Gabriel´s old one look like a palace. (Don´t get any ideas, Bubby).
Well, I´d better go. Love to you all.
-Shirin

My goings-on in Tunkas, Mexico

Hello everyone back home! I just found out that there´s an internet cafe here in my little town of Tunkas. It happens to be right across from the restaurant where we always eat, but I had no idea.
Our little town is not as downtrodden as I expected...but somehow, something I forgot to expect was how much it bothers me to see starving, mangey, fighting street dogs everywhere in Mexico. It seems like this town of 3500 has more dogs than people sometimes. Many are limping, most are too skinny. Every now and then you see a street dog that looks like he´s doing pretty well for himself, but you have to imagine he´s beating up plenty of others to get that much food. We aren´t doing anything with these dogs, vaccinating or sterilizing. I´m not sure why...maybe because they are a bit ferocious and scared...maybe because we are already lucky if people let us do their pet dogs.
Our schedule consists of the following: in the morning, we form teams of American vet students, Mexican vet students, and Tunkan high school students. We walk around assigned blocks and conduct an epidemiological study to see how many people raise chickens, geese, pigs, donkeys, bees, turkeys, etc... many do and we want to know if there are predator animals eating them and if they raise them for food or for selling. The UF Mexican-American professor that runs this program is an epidemiologist, so I assume we´re doing it for his research. The most fun part of it is to wander around rural neighborhoods, talking to the people about their lives and their animals. I´m consistently amazed at their willingness to come out of their houses to talk to us and tell us things as personal as their ages (some are in their 70s and 80s) and why they don´t want to raise certain animals (money, lack of space, etc). We agreed that Americans would be slamming their doors in our faces if we went house to house to ask them about their families ages and if a fox had ever eaten their pet chickens. Our high school students have been surprisingly helpful and, while at first I resented their presence b/c I wanted to be the questioner, I am glad they are helping us...there are still customs I am totally unaware of. Example...when approaching someone´s house here, I would´ve knocked on the door like any old gringo would: WRONG! How rude! You should stand out in the street at yell, ¨BUENAS!¨ until they come outside to talk to you...I never learned that in Guanajuato when I lived there. Maybe becuase it was less rural there.
In the afternoons, we walk around with different groups of the same configurations giving rabies vaccines to cats and dogs that belong to people. Some are glad to see us, others not so much. It´s probably a growing acceptance since our group comes every year; however, many are still not sure if they trust us. They say, ¨Well, as long as he won´t die from the vaccine¨ or ¨No, I can´t hold him still.¨ It´s also been nearly impossible to convince them to bring their animals to the town hall where the professors and older students are doing spays and neuters all day long. There are pets that are brought every day to be fixed, but their owners are very much in the minority. Also, I was told that it was only after the police chief brought in his two male dogs a few years ago to be neutered that others would finally bring in male dogs...before it was only females. It´s a macho issue to be sure.
Otherwise, we have a lot of downtime. I take a nap in my hammock every afternoon b/c we get 3 hours for lunch and I just can´t eat for that long. I read my current novel, ¨Middlesex¨and swing in the breeze of our open door. We hang out with the Mexican vet students at night and I´ve gotten a few to dance with me from time to time, when there is salsa music on at the restaurant. Everything I love about Mexico is still here: cute kids, beautiful flowers everywhere, friendly people that want to talk to you about yourself (after an initial icy period of assessment). Also, my Spanish has been incredibly more valuable that I anticipated. There are a lot of unilingual people on both sides, and those few of us that speak both are always strategically placed in groups to be the sole communicator with all involved. It´s also enhanced the experience of doing the surveys b/c I can get the jokes people make when they say that they do have two donkeys and then point at their sisters. Ha ha ha. It makes me laugh again right now.
Food has been only OK. We have a whole restaurant doing nothing but making our meals all day long, but the professor told them to give us very little variety so as to guard against sickness. However, this meant that the first two days I only ate fruit and bread for every meal. Finally, we started secretly asking for other things and now they have just sort of overridden the professor and given us stuff like eggs and tortillas with good salsa (we had to ask for spicy stuff too). So far, we´re all in good health and the food keeps getting better, although they did serve me vegetables in chicken broth today. I told them ¨sorry¨and gave it to someone else expecting to just go hungry for lunch; however, they promptly brought me some black beans a second later that really hit the spot. I have no idea where they came from...they must´ve been hiding them in back for just such an occasion. I do feel bad for being difficult, but I´d rather go hungry or eat chips for lunch than slurp down chicken broth...guess I don´t have to tell ya´ll that.
OK, I´d better get back to the restaurant. We´re having dinner soon and the ladies there are gonna teach me some traditional Mexican dances...they´ve figured out I like to dance after I forced one of their 10 years old sons to dance Cumbia with me. He didn´t really know how to dance much, but oh well...he´s a cutie.
Tomorrow and Thursday, we´re going to a satellite village to do more vaccines and then Friday we´re leaving town to visit the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, before returning to Cancun to catch my early flight back home Sat. Then, it´s ¨Happy Nawruz¨! (Persian New Year)
I´ll have to send out photos when I get back...I have no way to upload them and my camera battery is almost dead now too.
Much love,
Shirin
PS Gabriel, please write your wife...she likes to hear from you every now and then! I´ll check again soon.

Hola de Mexico!

Hi everyone. I´m finally here, after about 14 hours of traveling yesterday (par for the course). I had no problems in the airport except that I ended up waiting for my travel buddy for much longer than I expected and was nervous that I had missed her and also that they confiscated my banana (sorry Mommy).
We took a bus to Merida where we spent last night in a fairly nice hotel and got to walk around the downtown, breathing in the smells of restaurant food and listening to the sounds of music on every corner and hawkers promoting their wares. Some of them even have business cards, which is something I don´t remember from four years ago, so maybe business is growing.
Today at noon, all of us vet students take a bus to our final destination, Tunkas. This is the town where we may or may not have consistent plumbing and electricity in our open air houses. I´m prepared for the worst, ie coming home smelling like a skunk, and am only really concerned that I didn¨t bring a warm enough sheet to cover myself in my hammock...I think I´m actually gonna look at one of the business cards I was forced to take last night to find a place to buy a small blanket. Gabriel knows, if it´s cold at night...I´m not gonna sleep at all.
I find Mexico to be much as I left it. Beautiful and dirty, slow paced and fun-loving. I´ve also found that my Spanish is still entirely functional, which was something I suspected would be true but wasn´t entirely confident.
I did have a little trouble understanding the taco stand guy outside of our bus station yesterday, though, where we ate lunch before taking the bus to Merida. Since all the tacos had meat he was trying to suggest another option and I just couldn´t understand what he was saying. Finally, I realized he was offering my a rice and ´nopales´taco. Nopales are a common dish here, made from cactus, that taste kind of like green beans, so I accepted his offer. I covered it in guacamole and voila...awesome lunch for 40 cents. The only problem was that after I scarfed down two cactus tacos, my mouth realized that it was all very spicy and I was left with my face on fire for a little while. Overall, though, I was still just so happy to be standing around a taco stand with a bunch of Mexican guys eating tacos that it was worth it.
Well, I´d better go. The internet is free, but there´s a time limit and I need to take a shower and get ready to leave for Tunkas. I have no idea if I´ll be able to use internet or phones once there, so you guys may not hear from me til Fri. I´ll try my best.
I´ve already taken some pics, but I have no way to upload them, so I´ll just have to do it when I get back.
Much love,
Shirin

My beat-up husband

Who beat him up? And how? Anyone who knows
Gabriel and his wrestling prowess would know it would be exceedingly difficult to manhandle him...so, how did he get so scratched and bruised?
ONLY BY FIGHTING FORREST GRIFFIN AND RORY SINGER...two of the most famous UFC fighters from the reality TV show!!!!!!!!!
That's right, they manhandled my very own husband, right here in Athens! Actually, since some of you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll explain. UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) is a big deal in the mixed martial arts world and two of their fighters are from and train in Athens...at the "Hardcore Gym."
Since Gabriel is big into ju-jitzu, he just joined the gym to get back into shape (and maybe start competing again) and his first day there (today) he got to grapple two of the guys we've watched on national TV fighting in the UFC. Anyway, he has some work to do to get back to his finest form, but he had a good time and isn't as depressed as he looks at all.
I'm excited for him to start training again, but also kind of sad (selfishly) because it means he's going to be gone from 6:30-8:30 every night... basically our only time to relax and be together. I'm hoping we can work something out, like me studying while he's gone or something.
Anyway, thought I'd write about something other than school...right now I have nothing but bad things to say as I have 3 huge exams before Sat. and am really tired...only 5 more days til Mexico. Yay!
-Shirin

Lots of little things...

Well, we've been doing the same old work and class routine since you last heard from me, but a couple of little exciting things have happened since. They are detailed below in pictures, b/c my brain is too tired to compose much narrative. Enjoy...
-Shirin

Gabriel opening a care package from my mom with great anticipation (it was for a Baha'i holiday: Ayyam-i-Há)

GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!!! YAY!

My dear friend Sarah (an old college roommate) came to visit UGA's law school and spent the night with us. She's gotten into several law schools already, but she's waiting for UGA's answer. We walked around campus and it was really beautiful (much more so than around my vet school).

Then, for old time's sake, we spent the day/evening out on the town...doing some shopping, bar hopping, and even tried competing in a local trivia night competition at a restuarant downtown. Even with Gabriel's help, we didn't do too well.

This was the better of the two pictures of us hanging out with Sarah.

Beth resting between classes. I've felt the same way all week. Only a few more weeks til electives...