As promised, Peter Jolicoeur and Michael Chen checked in from Asia. Michaelheaded there after graduation for a career in sales and trading. “I originally wanted to come out to Hong Kong to see the handover to China and ended up staying here all this time! I’m married and have two kids who, if they are lucky with admission rates these days, may end up at the College on the Hill. We did a tour of the Northeast and Canada last summer and stayed in Hanover for a weekend. It was my first time back since I left the Hanover Plain. It was great to see all the upgrades to the campus! Hard to recognize Baker and the areas behind it, as Kiewit is no longer there and some other buildings have been massively changed! I’ve connected with a few alums through the years, including Keith Li, who is no longer with us; I attended his funeral in Hong Kong.”

Pete has lived in China for more than a dozen years, the past decade in Shanghai. “I initially was sent to Beijing to set up an office and have remained here ever since. My business is aviation development, so there is a great deal of work underway in the region. My busiest projects are in Xi’an and Beijing, China, and Bangalore, India—all airports expecting more than 100,000,000 annual passengers. Certainly China is a country that’s in the news a lot, so it is interesting living here and comparing daily life with what gets reported in the United States. My least favorite conversation by far is the one about what is going on with the current U.S. administration, especially since I have been out of the country for so long that I have the same question! However, for the time being the United States is still seen as the premier destination for advanced education, and several of my clients have children studying there. We receive a flood of applications for Dartmouth, and there is no way we can interview them all. The Dartmouth Club of China is active, with one ’95 living in town, Gen Kanai. And there’s an annual Niseko Green weekend, where alumni from all over Asia gather in northern Japan for a Big Green weekend of skiing.”

To the Caribbean, where Angela (Hall) D’Antonio took part in her third medical mission in January: “I traveled with the nonprofit organization, At Home and Afar to Barahona, Dominican Republic. In five days of clinic we saw about 1,000 patients. We had a team of nurses, nurse practitioners, one pediatrician, an EMT, and seven volunteers who provided activities for children and clinic support. We also worked with an amazing group of Dominican volunteers who provided transportation, coordination of the clinics, and interpreter services. At Home and Afar has funded the building of two wells in the barrios around the city since I was last there. This has had a huge impact on health, with significantly fewer complaints of parasitic intestinal illness. I am hoping to bring my kids, Lila and Charles, with me next year—they will both be teenagers by then! Volunteering supports my professional goal of providing healthcare to underserved populations. Since becoming a nurse practitioner in 2000 I have worked in a clinic at a women’s homeless shelter, spent 11 years in prison healthcare, worked at University of Massachusetts and Beth Israel in liver transplantation and hepatology clinics, and for the past three years have been at Tewksbury State Hospital, where I provide care to patients with acute medical issues directly related to substance use disorder.”

Keep your news coming!

—Kaja (Schuppert) Fickes, 2 Bishops Lane, Hingham, MA 02043; kaja.k.fickes.95@dartmouth.edu