Suruchi Bhatia

Thank you to Susan and Rick and everyone on the reunion committee for all their effort. This is a wonderful website and I have been enjoying catching up with what everyone has been doing. I won't be able to attend the reunion, but would really love to hear about it!

Twenty years went by so fast, due in some part to spending most of it in school or training. I am now a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Oakland. I love my job, but of course, my family is the best and brightest part of my life. I was always like that as a kid too- never went to camp, loved being at home. When I left for Berkeley, I purposely arranged to fly in to Oakland the afternoon before classes started, skipping freshman orientation. I thought I should jump right into school and not give myself time to get nervous or homesick. I met Rob, now my husband, on my first evening at Berkeley in a group of freshman going to a movie the night before classes began. We began dating sophomore year and have been together since, though we spent several years apart while I was in medical school in Texas and he was in graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin. He is now a hardware engineer and introduced me to using Apple computers - we survived the years apart because of email and instant messaging (though that many years ago it was called something else) and of course flew back and forth a lot. I spent a lot of vacation time in Madison, since Houston was too hot most of the year.

Since 1995 we've been back here in the Bay Area. Over the years I've run into some LAHS friends. I enjoyed catching up with Doug Dahlby when I was out in California during medical school doing visiting rotations. I didn't recognize him at first after his major growth spurt! I saw Cindy Brown several times and even remember going out to hit the tennis ball with her a couple times. (Rob and I are now trying to get our kids into tennis and take them out to the courts once in a while.) A few years back I ran into Laura Linford's parents at the airport and it turns out they live in our neighborhood in Oakland. We've had some wonderful visits with Laura and her lovely daughter when they've been in town. On visits back to NM I enjoyed catching up with Stephanie Hue, who was finishing up with medical school the last time we spoke. I hear some other LAHS grads are in the Bay Area, but have not run into them.

Rob and I were married in October 1997 at Bishop's Lodge. I still love coming back to New Mexico in the fall for the changing colors. Recently my parents moved to California so we have not been out to LA for a while. My brother, Karan (Toby) LAHS class of '88 lives in La Jolla; he and his wife just had their first child, Kira. Our girls, Sonali, age 6, and Sandhya, age 3, keep us totally enthralled. We spend all our free time getting to gymnastics, swimming and soccer practice or just going out and doing stuff with them. This spring we went to the Marin Headlands to a lighthouse, Point Bonita, and Sonali got carsick - guess she takes after me. I got used to always sitting in the front seat driving around the mountains in NM and recall barfing on the side of many roads... The Bay Area, though much, much more crowded than NM, is a lot of fun. I do miss the NM green chile and food from Rancho de Chimayo or Rio Grande Cafe in Espanola. We got a shipment of NM green chile last fall from a friend and made some green chile posole and enchiladas for thanksgiving - yummy, but somehow not the same without the sopapillas and honey.

Hope that everyone enjoys the reunion. I've been fondly remembering high school and Los Alamos and all of you. Please do post some pictures after the reunion for those of us who can't make it.