Last night I went out with Ира and Adam, a guy who's staying with her through hospitalityclub. Adam's halfway through studying to be a pediatric cardio-thoracic surgeon in Warsaw. He's taking the summer (and next semester, if things go well) to travel around Russia and Asia, scrubbing into surgeries as a Second Assistant along the way (he gave me the website where he arranged all this, and I tried to remember it for you, James, but failed...tell me if you want me to dig deeper).

He emails the doctors a few weeks ahead of time, and they're invariably welcoming. While he's a little shocked at the lack of regulation, it gives him a great opportunity. He's collecting experience and references like crazy, and the doctors have been wonderful to him. They gamely answer all of his questions in English, although they're from a generation for whom that's more of a struggle. (Adam's English is impeccable, I could use my real vocabulary and say exactly what I meant and he was right there with me.) He just spent two weeks in St. Petersburg, and left Moscow today for Novosibirsk. After a week there, he'll continue to Mongolia, Beijing, India, Nepal, and Africa, if he decides to take a whole semester.

When we were trying to find a place to eat last night, Ира and her flatmate Аркади walking ahead, Adam and I behind, he came out with the fact that he had just seen a really difficult, unpromising surgery on a newborn. He's worried about being able to cope with that part of the job. I asked if he had talked to older surgeons, and he said not really, it's something that's not spoken of much. (I'm curious James, what kind of psychological support is there for surgeons in the states?)

When he spoke he just talked, he wasn't trying to perform or be adored. The teacher's room of the language school is so full of people who define their worth through their ability to entertain, I catch myself starting to think that's the norm.

Ира and Аркади left, and Adam and I hung around a while longer. He walked me home, past the neon signs and filthy puddles of Novoslobodskaya (Ира and I live only one stop away on the grey line), and went back to Ира's to sleep for 4 hours before his last day at the Moscow hospital.

I woke up and found this text message: "Hi Rhubarb, this is Adam, hope u r not sleeping yet, it was a great pleasure 2 meet u. I found u very natural_ i like it, wanted 2 tell u that personally but maybe im too shy :-) anyway hope 2 c u sometime in the future, take care_adam"

There's a good chance I'll see him again. He might be in Beijing when I'm there next month, I might see him in Poland if I visit my friend Alicja, and he wants to visit the States sometime. His sister's there now, studying abroad in Baltimore (I can't shake the gut reaction that studying abroad in Baltimore is about like scuba diving in the bathtub).

His 'natural' comment touched me especially--sometimes I worry about leaving class and not being able to shed that mode of relating to people where I have to be happy and interested no matter what, and usage of the present perfect continuous is the most fascinating thing on the face of the Earth. It's a strange balance.