<p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">About a year ago we met a cousin of mine. He's always been going off on adventures and last summer was no different....the mongol rally loomed in his life and it sounded very exciting.</font></span></font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">Little did I know that this meeting would spark interest in Stephen like nil else. You see mongolia was always on my travel hit list: wide open spaces, few cities, interesting people. So to stephen it was the perfect solution...I could see mongolia and he could spend MONTHS thinking about cars, tinkering with ideas, buying jerry cans and generally being a boy. Eventually I admitted it wasn't a bad idea, one day.</font></span></font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">The next week</font></span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">&nbsp;</font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">the applications opened. We agreed that we'd try to get a place, if we got one we would do everything we could to go (surgeon's schedules being such that getting 5 weeks off was never guaranteed). And so we found ourselves paying the entry fee and wondering what on earth to do next!</font></span></font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">Over the last year Stephen has taken russian courses and collected a rather interesting supply of out of date (but serviceable) medical supplies to donate to a hospital in mongolia. I have failed to get the long term job I was after...but as a result am able to take the whole of august off for the trip. We have accumulated a budget to buy a magic carpet in deepest darkest persia and spent rather a lot of time cleaning/ tidying our beloved (but down at heel) ambulance.</font></span></font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">One of the most exciting developments has been the addition of my baby sister to the team. As a school leaver Catriona has many plans for her summer and we have to fit in round them. So she will join us for as long as she can (she just has to decide if she sleeps in the ambulance or the tent).</font></span></font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">So now with less than six weeks to go there's not much left to do... just the little matter of fundraising</font></span></font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">As a paediatric surgeon (in training) operating on new borns I felt it was important to raise money to help support my patients and their families. Yorkhill Children's foundation does exactly this and they're brilliant at it. We look after newborns from all over scotland and its isle's and this charity makes sure their parents have somewhere nice to stay and support through their transition home, not to mention the equipment to make it possible (our babies often need long term feeding via pumps etc)</font></span></font></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">Our second charity is the Christina Noble Children's Foundation who work with children across mongolia. Their work makes a real difference to the lives of the children of mongolia -just check out their website&nbsp;</font></span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0000FF">www.cncf.org</font></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 15px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300"> </font></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">to see how much they do.</font></span></font></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">&nbsp;</font></span></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">I had better get on, plenty to do today....off to order more maps......now where exactly is beyneu????</font></span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">&nbsp;</font></span></p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">&nbsp;</font></span></p><p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana, geneva"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">K xx</font></span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#003300">&nbsp;</font></span></p>