Sayonara!

I have been nothing but excited for my best friend Nadia to get to spend the next 3-5 years living on a tropical island (on contract with the NHSC), but yesterday when it actually came down to her leaving the US, I was such a BOOB!. She was texting me from the airport, where they were going to fly from Albuquerque, NM to SLC, UT to Tokyo, Japan, to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands.

Waaaaaaaay over there.

We haven't even lived in the same city for 2 1/2 years, but now that she's 6,500 miles away instead of 650, it's not like I can take a road trip or meet her in Vegas to go see her any time I want. 

*Side note: I just looked it up, and Mark was also 6,500 miles away from me while on his mission to southern Brazil. Geez. No wonder letters took 2 weeks to get there.

 Our kids will probably be burly teenagers the next time they see each other. Haha. Not really.

But back to being excited: Look at these pictures of the house they'll be living in (which I stole off her blog)

 

 

 

That would be the Phillipine Sea right out their window. The white line is a coral reef. They're going to have a hard life!!

 

They've had such a looooonnng journey with undergrad, medical school and residency and this is what they've been working towards for the whole 11 years they've been married. Jeremy will have a real salary (finally) and Beckham and Ravi are going to have the BEST time being kids there. I think they're going to be learning Mandarin Chinese in school, if I remember right. (People do speak English there--it is a Commonwealth of the US.)

Anyway, I'm going to miss them! Thank goodness for the internet!

Whoa, there Pancho

Mark and Jake Malie at work...

I was searching through Picasa for some old Easter pictures when I found this. What was I supposed to do, not post it?? Are you kidding???! I don't even know when it was taken. They used to have a vending machine with stick-on mustaches at the clinic. Then they got boring and started handing out rubber ducks.

Anyway, something freaking awesome happened yesterday. Remember how we were awarded the NHSC contract three months ago? Well, the money finally arrived!!!

 

I hopped online to do some banking and it had been deposited. $$$! It's going on 11 months since we first applied, so it was kind of surreal to see it there. We are SO excited and grateful--I can't even tell you. The lump sum will be divided into 24 months worth of student loan payments. High fives for government programs that (eventually) work in your favor!! :D

A gap of sorts

11/3/10

I took the kids to the dentist this week. Monday, Madelyn went in for a cleaning and came out looking like a BIG KID! Her top tooth was extremely loose, but knowing her, she'd let it hang there for another month before it'd finally fall out on its own. But the dentist said that her permanent tooth was already exposed, and as long as the baby tooth was still there, it was risking getting decayed because we couldn't brush it.

Anyhoo, he numbed up her gums, all casual like, and I gave him the go-ahead to pull it out. She didn't even realize what was going on until the last few seconds (it did hurt a little). But I'm so glad it's out! Now hopefully she'll forgive me sometime within the next six months before her next visit. Haha. She's so cute and lispy now.

...............................

AND...

I don't know if I've mentioned before, but we're trying to get Mark into the National Health Service Corps. It's a federal govt. program that helps primary health care providers (including dentists, psychologists, nurses, PAs, etc. or students in school to become such) repay their student loans. The stipulation is that you have to be working in a rural or medically under-served area. You work for a qualified clinic for two years--the NHSC pays $50,000 towards your student loans. Then you can keep working for up to six years or more and get $145,000 or your total student loan debt paid off.

Well, we owe right around $150,000 in student loans--about $140,000 of it was just for PA school (more than we bought our house for). OUCH. And Mark's salary is only half of what you probably think it is. We've had the loans in forbearance/deferment up until now, but we're soon going to have a monthly payments totaling $1,075. For the next 25 years. Unless we can qualify for a lower repayment plan and/or the NHSC, or defer for another year and rack up another $5,000 in interest.

My sentiments exactly.

Mark's clinic is already an approved site, so we submitted an application for the NHSC back in June, and have been waiting to hear news. We were supposed to have found out by Oct. 15th, but that came and went long ago. Mark finally called them yesterday and they were like, "Oh! Well......the funds for the 2010 cycle have been exhausted, so we're saving your application for the 2011 cycle, and we'll send you a notification by the end of the calendar year." (Don't you think that should have warranted a letter of it's own? Apparently they thought not. &^%*#$!)

Soooooo......we haven't been denied, exactly, but it's still going to be a long time before we find out if we got approved. I HATE waiting. Ugh.

I would like to be able to continue to afford food, clothing and housing for the family, so let's all pray that something works out soon! I'll keep you posted...