If I ever get out of here, I'm goin' to Kathmandu . . .

"Hey Bonnie, wanna go to Kathmandu for five months?"

My wife never passes up an opportunity for adventure and said "Sure, let's leave now!" without asking for any silly details. (Not one for advanced planning, she once suggested that we climb Mt. Everest wearing shorts and carrying nothing but a loaf of Wonder Bread.)

That's how it all began on March 1st, 2007 just minutes after I found the announcement on the Fulbright website that Kathmandu University needed a visiting instructor/researcher in their new Biotechnology Department. I'd always wanted to apply for a Fulbright fellowship but never had the time until I retired from teaching at San Jose State University in 2006 and eased into semi-retirement as an adjunct professor in the Natural Sciences Department at the University of Maine at Farmington.

To make a long story short, I sent in an application with a research and teaching proposal by the August 1st deadline, was notified in late October that I'd made the U.S. peer review cut, and then waited another five months before the joint US/Nepal Fulbright Committee made the final decision at the end of March 2008.

For the last four months we've been arranging for bills and taxes to be paid, mail to be picked up, the house to be looked after, had physical exams and vaccinations, read countless pages of what to bring, how to act, what hand not to eat with, and how to count to 10 in Nepali. We've taught our relatives how to use Skype in order to keep in touch and made a zig-zagged, 3-week, 5200-mile roadtrip from Maine to California to say goodbye to brothers, sisters, moms, dads, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles scattered all over the country and our younger son in San Jose (Rueben). Our older son (Eric) flies a medical evacuation plane in western Alaska -- too far to drive but he's always in our thoughts.

Last week we drove to Washington D.C. for a pre-departure orientation sponsored by the State Department which funds the Fulbright Program. This week and next we're feverishly trying to get last minute stuff together for the 36 hour trip (24 hours in the air) from Boston to Kathmandu via Minneapolis, Tokyo and Bangkok.

We will no doubt arrive at the Kathmandu airport on July 28th in a zombie-like state after which we'll be driven to the Fulbright office to pick up a handful of rupees before being deposited in our apartment. I'll probably sleep for two days and immediately struggle with intestinal culture shock, but Bonnie will save the day as usual and get us all organized. With any luck we'll be plugged into the internet within a few days. I hope to restart my blogging by the end of the first week of August, so check back then.