November 30th, 2009

Priyanka and I both woke up with a pretty good case of the Monday’s this morning. After our awesome weekend neither of us were particularly excited to head back to work, even though we were to start our own treatments today.

We were hoping to go to the canteen this morning for breakfast to get some boiling water and hot milk to make oatmeal with, but I guess the message didn’t really go through, and the ladies arrived with our breakfast just as we were preparing to go to the canteen. In any case, it was one of my favourite Indian breakfasts – vermicelli noodles with lentils and coconut chutney. Pretty tasty stuff!

We had a pretty quiet morning – it was raining, and when it rains a lot of kids don’t come to school (don’t’ ask me why), so we only had one more student to do the tardieu scale on. This brings our grand total up to 15 kids. Initially, Ramkumar had wanted us to use the scale on 30 kids, but they are having a hard time finding kids for us to do it on, so we may scale down to 20.

When we headed out of the PT department at 11:30 am to observe in the hand function unit, I was sad to discover that someone had swiped my umbrella from where it had been drying on the shoe rack. I guess I should have known better than to leave it lying on the shoe rack, but all the same, it kind of irritated me. Who steals an umbrella? It was a pretty nice (albeit cheap) one too! Oh well…hopefully whoever took it really was in need of one.

After lunch we quickly planned out what we wanted to do in each of our treatment sessions before the kids arrived. Priyanka’s kid arrived first. Pediatric physiotherapy is a lot harder than it looks. The PTs here at SPASTN make it look really easy, but given that we don’t have a lot of hands on experience with pediatrics ourselves, we had a heck of a time positioning the kids the way we wanted to. Priyanka wasn’t given very much feedback during her treatment session, so we felt a little bit like the blind leading the blind. My treatment session didn’t go much better, although I did receive more feedback from Ramkumar than Priyanka did. Although the treatment sessions made the afternoon fly by, they were frustrating at the same time since both of us felt generally incompetent and lacking in guidance.

After work we walked to Ascendas to look for laundry detergent (which we didn’t find) and to drown our sorrows (well…that may be a little dramatic. Really the day wasn’t that bad) in an iced coffee from the Café Coffee Day that is there (my new favourite place). The funniest thing that happened today was on the walk to Ascendas when I got cat called by an entire bus load (and I literally mean an entire bus load) full of school kids. It was pretty hilarious. I’m guessing its because I’m a bit of a novelty to a lot of the kids with my pale skin and blue eyes J

When we got home we put in a phone call to our clinical education coordinator at U of T, just to clarify what the expectations surrounding caseload on international placements is. She was a little bit surprised that we’re not getting much hands on experience, but she did put some of our fears to rest when she told us that she would use this as our selective internship (you don’t even need to do a clinical placement for your selective internship – it can be administrative) and that we would be given neuro internships for our “selective” internships to ensure that we had enough neuro experience. That was kind of a relief, because we were a little bit nervous that this could potentially cause us to fall behind our class in terms of clinical working hours.

The rest of the evening has been pretty relaxing. I spent a good long time catching up on my blog, and then we had a nice chat with Priya (the PT), with whom we’re going out tomorrow night to check out a festival that is going on in Tamil Nadu.

Right now I’m just going to do another quick email check and then probably curl up for the evening!

Goodnight!

Weekend In Bangalore

FRIDAY

Friday was a fun but hectic start to what turned out to be a really fantastic weekend. Work was pretty uneventful. We each did another assessment, and in general I felt much better about how that assessment went as compared to the one I did on Thursday. That is kind of a theme for me though –I always feel crappy about the first assessment I do at a new placement, and it always gets better after that. In any case, I think by the end of the day we were both really glad that it was Friday. It was kind of a long and not super exciting week. We are both getting a little bit bored of all of the observation and missing having our own caseload.

We had quite a few things to do on Friday evening to get ready for our trip to Bangalore, as well as going to a baby shower with Vijay and his family. Our first stop was to the Airtel office in Ascendas IT park to sort out our phone since it still wasn’t re-activated (that is whole different story – when we called customer service on our lunch break they were really rude and actually had the audacity to hang up on us). In any case, we discovered that the proof of address that we had submitted STILL wasn’t enough and that now we needed somebody from SPASTN with a Chennai address to fill out a form for us stating that we are who we say we are and we do indeed live at SPASTN. Bureaucracy at its finest. Obviously we didn’t get very far with that, since we needed to find somebody willing to fill out the form for us, but they did agree to temporarily reactivate our phone because we were going out of town for the weekend.

Vijay and his family were supposed to pick us up at 6:30, so by the time we got back to SPASTN we had just enough time to start packing for Bangalore and then get dressed for the evening. The baby shower was going to be held in a really fancy hotel, so we wanted to look our best. 7pm rolled around, and still no Vijay. Priyanka called him, and he assured us that he would be there by 7:20 or so. We had a lot of ironing to do from Wednesday’s laundry, but we didn’t want to start it because we didn’t think we’d have time to finish it before Vijay came. When Vijay and his family finally arrived to pick us up at 8:35, we were slightly irritated, not only because we would have had time to do our ironing after all, but it seemed like it was going to be a late night, and we had a 6am train to catch to Bangalore the next morning.

The hotel that the baby shower in was really new and fancy. I felt like I was in a hotel in down town Toronto! Unfortunately we had missed the ceremony of the baby shower, but we did meet the Mom-to be, and a lot of the other guests. The Mom-to be was wearing a huge amount of bangles on both of her wrists, and when we asked about it, we were told that it is a tradition for a first time Mother to be given bangles at the baby shower that she will wear until she delivers. The bangles jingle together, and the sound is supposed to be pleasant for the baby. I thought that was a really neat tradition!

One of the more awkward moments of the night came when I was introduced to friends of the aunt of the expectant mother. We had just met the aunt, when these two women in matching pink saris with large silver crosses around their necks walked up. The aunt grabbed my hand and said “I want to introduce you to the sisters” (It turns out they were nuns or something similar). One of them said something to me that I didn’t understand at all “Blraughahlg” and I leaned closer and said “I’m sorry?”. She repeats herself, but I still didn’t catch it so I said again “sorry, I didn’t understand”. She looks at me deadpan and says” that is my name”. Talk about awkward. I’m just glad that I didn’t say “I’m sorry I don’t speak Tamil”. Priyanka said afterwards that she had the hardest time not bursting into laughter because I had the funniest expression on my face. We also both thought it was curious (and kind of hilarious) that the aunt only introduced ME to the sisters and not Priyanka, but we’re pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I’m white, so she assumed that only I would be interested in meeting them. Anyways, like I said, it was really awkward at the time, but now all one of us has to say is “that is my name” and we start to laugh hysterically.

After the baby shower we headed back to our place, finished up our ironing and packing and headed to bed around midnight. We both knew it was going to be a short night but we were really excited for our trip!

SATURDAY

When our alarm went off at 3:30 am on Saturday morning we were not very impressed, needless to say, but we hopped out of bed anyways, to be ready in time for our call taxi to arrive at 4:30 am. Our train was leaving at 6am and we wanted to leave enough time to navigate the train station etc (and allow for any construction or traffic on the way to the station). Pleasantly, the taxi actually arrived on time, and it wasn’t long before we were on our way.

The train station was bustling despite the early hour (5:05 when we arrived), but surprisingly well organized, and it didn’t take us long to figure out where we were going. We hopped onto our train and settled in to our comfortable window and aisle seats. We had packed lots of food for the trip, because we weren’t expecting any kind of service on the train (based on our experience with VIA rail at home), but it wasn’t long before they came through the car with a big bottle of water for each person, a newspaper, and a snack. What awesome service! Not only that, but about an hour later they came through with a free, hot breakfast as well! We found out afterwards that we had taken a more luxurious train (hence the awesome service) but still, we were really impressed. All in all the train ride was a lot of fun – it was really neat to watch the Indian countryside roll by outside the window! We both slept for a little while on the train, and were feeling pretty chipper when we arrived in Bangalore at around 11am.

When we detrained, we were greeted by a cool, brisk (almost chilly!) breeze. Bangalore is at a higher altitude than Chennai, and thus has a much more pleasant climate. We set about trying to find an auto rickshaw to take us to our hotel. Immediately we were swarmed by auto drivers trying to entice us to go with them. It was pretty overwhelming. The first guy we asked wanted to charge us 140 INR, and although we weren’t totally sure how much it was supposed to cost us to get to our hotel, our scam-sensors were buzzing. Luckily, a good Samaritan eventually walked by and directed us in the direction of the prepaid autos. At prepaid auto stands you negotiate a fixed rate at a booth before you leave, and then you’re given a receipt that tells you exactly how much to pay the driver. We ended up paying 56 INR to get to our hotel – a much better deal than 140, that’s for sure!

We checked into our hotel around 11:30, and were shown to our large, air conditioned room. It was a nice change from our place in Chennai. The beds were springy and comfortable, and the pillows soft. The bathroom had a working shower head (although no tub) and they even included toilet paper!

We freshened up quickly and then set out to explore the city. Our first stop was the India Tourism office across the road where we picked up a city map (and also one for Chennai itself) and got some advice on what to visit. We decided to start with Cubbon park, and then go to look at the Vidhana Soudha (government building) and the Bangalore High Court.

Cubbon park is a beautiful (and very peaceful!) leafy green space, in the middle of the city. All of the trees inside are labeled with their genus and species in case you fancy learning about them. In the middle of the park is a big rock where there were a bunch of teenagers hanging out. There are also huge shoots of bamboo almost everywhere you look. I’ve never seen wild bamboo anywhere, let alone that tall.

When we finished walking through the park we were getting hungry, so we stopped into a nearby the Best Western Hotel to find out if they had a restaurant. We had a choice between a buffet lunch or the rooftop patio. We decided to take a look at the rooftop patio to see how pricy it was. When we got up there it was so gorgeous that we decided to treat ourselves (it actually didn’t turn out to be that expensive anyways – we ended up paying less than $10 CAD each). We were the only ones up there, so we got to pick the table with the best view of the city. Each table was shaded by its own ornately decorated gazebo. The servers were incredibly attentive, and did things like pull our chairs out for us, and place our serviettes on our laps. We felt incredibly special and spoiled. It was almost like being in the movies! The food was really good (although very spicy), and we spent a long time up there, just relaxing and enjoying ourselves. It was really great to unwind after our long week at work. We headed off to the Vidhana Soudha around 3pm, very full, but very happy.

You can’t actually go inside either the Vidhana Soudha or the High Court, but they are both very beautiful buildings, so we spent a bit of time taking pictures of the outside. When we finished it was only 4pm, so we caught an auto and headed out to the bull temple. Although not as ornate as the Kapalishvara temple in Mylapore, it was neat in its own right, because it has a giant iron (?) statue of a bull in it. On our way out we stopped at a little stand to browse, and Priyanka bought a few hand carved wooden stamps. The man that owned the shop even decorated our hands with henna (using his stamps) free of charge.

On our way to the Bull Temple we had seen the Lallbagh botanical gardens, so we decided to stop there before heading back to our hotel. The botanical gardens were also really nice. There weren’t many flowers blooming, but the collection of bonsai trees sculpted into interesting shapes was pretty neat. We also found the biggest tree that I’ve ever seen – its roots were enormous and totally dwarfed the people that were lounging at its base. We thought we’d found a really big tree in Cubbon Park, but this was the grandfather of all trees.

We had one strange thing happen to us in the botanical gardens. We were approached by an Indian family, one carrying a really large camera. They asked us to take a photo – at first we thought they wanted us to take a photo of them, but they shook their heads. Then we thought that they wanted a photo of us (we thought it might be because I’m white – I’d been getting a lot of stares that day), but that didn’t seem to be it either. Eventually we figured out they wanted US to take a photo of THEM with OUR cameras. We were thoroughly confused, but thought that they might be trying to sell us a photo of them. In any case, we walked away.

Although Bangalore is a much more Westernized, touristy city than Chennai, we found that in general, people were trying to take advantage of us being foreigners more so than in Chennai. Pretty much every auto rickshaw driver tried to rip us off, everyone was trying to sell us stuff or take us to a shop, and people were constantly staring at me. Even as we were going into the botanical gardens, Priyanka caught some guys staring at me, who then turned to their girlfriends, said something and laughed. It doesn’t bother me really, I could care less what they think. I am finding it interesting, and curious, being the minority for a change though!

Anyways, after the botanical gardens we headed back to the hotel to meet up with some more friends of Priyanka’s family, Bipin and his wife, Jayshree. Bipin and Jayshree are extremetly nice. They both lived in Toronto for a long time, and have since moved back to India. But because of their time in Canada they are very Westernized and understand the differences between Indian and Canadian life. They took us to a western style tex-mex type place for dinner. It was pretty yummy J I had a veggie cutlet type thing with pasta, mushrooms and veggies. I also tried sweet lime soda for the first time. Its basically lime juice and soda water, and you get like a sugar syrup on the side so you can decide how sweet to make it. It was really refreshing!

We had actually been planning on sampling some of the nightlife after dinner, but we were both really wiped out, so we just headed back to our hotel and crashed by about 11pm. What an awesome and busy day!

SUNDAY

Sunday morning we got up fairly early, because we wanted to go visit the ISKCON temple (about 10 km away from the city center) before doing some shopping and then catching our train at 4:20 pm. Let me just mention how much I enjoyed my hot, bucket-free shower!

We decided to forgo the breakfast that was included (because we didn’t know how long it would take to show up) and headed out to a nearby “Café Coffee Day”. We both had a mocha muffin and a solar eclipse coffee (basically a cappuccino with some chocolate streaks and a bit of spice) for breakfast. Having a real coffee really made my day! (When did I become such a coffee addict anyways?). Anyways, the coffee and muffin was a really nice change from our usual breakfast J

We arrived at the ISKCON (international society for Krishna Consciousness) temple around 10am. Although it was still pretty early, there were crowds of people coming in to see the famous temple. We dropped off our shoes and headed through security. Priyanka went through security first, and when she opened up her bag for them to check it, we were informed that we wouldn’t be allowed to bring our cameras inside and that we would have to check them. Neither of us were comfortable with the idea of leaving our cameras behind (even with a security guard you never know) so we pushed our way back through the one way traffic of people heading into the temple and headed out. We did end up finding a beautiful temple a little bit further down the road, topped with a large gold dome, where we were allowed to bring our cameras inside, so the trip out to ISKON was not entirely failed.

After visiting the temple we caught an auto back to the city center, and arrived just as the shops were opening at about 11:30 am. We visited a few fancy sari shops (Priyanka is looking for her wedding sari!) and looked at a lot of beautiful and elaborately beaded silks. We dined on stuffed parotas and pappadams at a cute, touristy Indian restaurant called Ullas, and then shopped for trinkets at the nearby government run Cauvery Arts and Crafts emporium. At this point it was almost 2pm, so we headed back to our hotel to grab our bags (we had already checked out but we’d stored our backpacks in the hotel as so not to have to carry them around all day) and then caught another auto to commercial street.

Commercial street was supposed to be about 2 km away from our hotel, which is definitely walkable, but we decided on the auto to save time (since we needed to leave for the train station at about 3:15). We knew it should be about 20 INR for the ride. The first auto driver we saw offered us 15 INR. This sounded pretty good to us, so we hopped in. Unfortunately it was too good to be true. He wanted to take us to some other shops where he is obviously on commission and wouldn’t leave us alone, so we made him pull over after about 100m, got out and didn’t pay him a thing. We managed to stop a more honest driver who took us commercial street for 20 INR without any stops.

Commercial street was pure madness. There are people everywhere and more shops than you can shake a stick at. It was fun though, meandering through all of the traditionally Indian stores. I didn’t actually buy anything there, but it was fun.

3:15 rolled around much sooner than we would have liked, and we hopped another rickshaw to the train station. Before we knew it we were on the train back to Chennai. I could swear that as soon as we stepped out of the train station in Chennai all of my mosquito bites started to itch again! Purely psychological I’m sure, but funny all the same. We arrived back to SPASTN at about 10:30 pm, tired but happy. Bangalore is a really lovely city, and it was a really relaxing, fun weekend. All the same, it was kind of comforting to come back to our humble little home here in Chennai, and crawl under our mosquito nets for a solid night’s sleep.

Awesome Weekend in Bengaluru! Update to Follow

Just wanted to let you all know that Priyanka and I are back (safe and sound!) from an awesome weekend in Bengaluru (Bangalore)! What an amazing city! I have SO much to write about, but it is getting pretty late here, so expect a nice long update tomorrow!

Goodnight!

November 26th, 2009

Today was another fairly uneventful day, so it will be another short blog update!

We had a relatively frustrating morning in the PT department, and left for lunch feeling like a nuisance, and generally not very welcome here at SPASTN. I think this mostly stems from a difference in teaching style and internship expectations. In India, the interns do mostly observation and just sit quietly doing what they’re told. In Canada, the five weeks that we spend on each of our internships fully revolve around our presence. Our supervisors always do their very best to make sure we are getting an ideal learning experience, and try to involve us in as much as possible. Questions are welcome, and constructive criticism abounds. Here, questions are often brushed off, and getting feedback is like pulling teeth. Our midterm evaluations next week should be interesting.

In any case, our afternoon was much better. We were able to do two assessments on kids that will eventually become “our” patients, and we did another three tardieu scale assessments for our project. So far we’ve done 9 out of 34 kids. The afternoon flew by because we were pretty busy for a change, and we left feeling much better about ourselves and the situation.

After work we headed back over to Ascendas IT park (where we went for dinner last night) to visit Airtel and hopefully get our phone sorted out. We stressed to the man in the store that it was “an emergency”, so hopefully our phone will be back in working order by morning. The people in the Ascendas Airtel have a lot more experience dealing with foreigners trying to get mobile phones than the sketchy shop we went to, so hopefully this time things work out for good. After our trip to Airtel we wandered around the shops that are in Ascendas for a while, and Priyanka even found soymilk to put on her oatmeal! Now we know where to go if we run out of dried fruit, nuts etc. They even sell all kinds of yummy looking cereals and OREO COOKIES!!! (I didn’t buy any though). We bought some yummy, cold (bottled) mango juice on our way out for 25 INR each (like 60 cents!) and headed back to SPASTN at about 6pm.

Today at lunch, we were talking with Anna (the M.Sc Psychology intern) and learned something interesting. Most women’s hostels here in India have a really strict curfew! For instance the once she lives in right now requires her to be in by 6:30 pm! Even crazier, if she wants to miss school for some reason, she has to get a note from her parents saying that its okay! Which blows my mind, given that she must be about 25 also. What a stark contrast to Canada where women are allowed to be so independent! I don’t think I would do well with such strict rules, but then again, if you are brought up with those kinds of rules I guess you wouldn’t know any differently.

Its been a pretty relaxing evening so far. I talked to both of my parents on Skype (Skype is such an amazing thing – my Dad even showed me my dog and my rats on web cam!) and responded to a few emails from friends. Once I finish up writing this I’m going to crawl under my mosquito net, because I’m currently being eaten alive.

I can’t believe that we’ve been here for almost two weeks (and our internship is almost half over!)…where has the time gone?

Anyways, wishing everyone out there all the best

November 25th, 2009

Although I am thoroughly enjoying being immersed in the Indian culture and trying new things, sometimes its nice to have a taste of home. And today, that taste came in the form of Baskin Robbins ice cream J

Our work day itself was not very interesting. We were able to assess 3 more kids in the morning for our tardieu scale project, but all in all the PT department was really quiet because it was new assessment day (the new assessments don’t’ take place in the PT department). We spent much of the afternoon observing both group and individual therapy sessions, and by four pm we were definitely ready to be finished work and to go back to our room.

After our half-hearted attempts at doing our own laundry by hand last week, Priya the PT found a woman (one of the kitchen employees at the compound I think) that is willing to do our laundry for us for a total of 400 INR (about $ 10 CAD) for the next four weeks. At first I wasn’t too sure how I felt about this. I feel like of weird paying somebody else to do my laundry by hand…to do my “dirty work” for lack of a better word. Its hard to explain, but it almost feels like I’m taking advantage of this woman by paying her what is seemingly so little, for such hard work. It makes me a bit uncomfortable. But we decided to go for it, since we are obviously not adept at doing it ourselves. Today was the first time that she came to do our laundry (she will come once a week). She did an awesome job, and we both have plenty of fresh smelling, clean laundry hanging up to dry now. I still feel kind of bad about it, but we’re going to give her a really fat tip at the end of the four weeks.

Anyways, so after our laundry was all done, we got set to go out for dinner with a friend of Priyanka’s family, Vijay. Vijay is the one that tried to arrange alternate accommodations for us on our second day here, when we were a little bit overwhelmed by our room. Vijay and his family picked us up at SPASTN and took us to the Ascendas (a big IT company right next door) food court for dinner. The food court at Ascendas is amazing, and even bigger than the one at Tidal Park (not to mention easier to get into!). It has all kinds of western delights (like McDonalds, KFC, and Pizza Hut) interspersed with Indian restaurants. Vijay and his family treated us to all kind of interesting Indian foods for dinner, and then we finished off the night with a cup each of Baskin Robbins ice cream. I had Lychee ribbon ice cream, and I have to say it was a little piece of heaven. I also tried Priyanka’s mango crème ice cream, which was equally as delicious.

Vijay and his family are extremely extremely nice and helpful. They are going to help us sort out the situation with our phone, and Vijay even whipped out his mobile at dinner to phone his travel agent to secure our train tickets to Banglore for the weekend. He is having his secretary deliver them to us tomorrow, and then help us out with the rest of our errands.

After dinner we went to the retail section of Ascendas. I can’t believe we didn’t know about this before! We found a Café Coffe Days (which is kind of like the Indian version of a Starbucks), and a 24 hour convenience type store. There is also a pharmacy, a grocery store, a gym, a bank and of all things, AN AIRTEL STORE! Which means we don’t have to go back to the sketchy place in Thiravanmyuir to fix our phone!

I am enjoying doing things the “Indian way” (ie shopping in the little out of the way places, haggling for good prices etc), so I don’t want to look for too many Westernized place, but Ascendas is a great place to go for a taste of home.

All in all we had a really great day, despite a slow start. Tomorrow we’re hoping to get the phone sorted out and run a few other errands, and then I guess on Friday we’ll have to get ready for our big trip to Bangalore!

November 24th, 2009

Today was another pretty laid back, but good day. We got some good news today – we’re finally going to be starting our hands on experience! Ramkumar (the manager of the PT department) gave us a copy of the assessment form that they use for initial assessments and asked us to assess two children each (not new patients, just existing ones) that we will then be treating and following for the rest of our time here. Its not quite the caseload that we would have in Canada, but its definitely a start and an improvement! I’m pretty happy with how this is turning out.

For our second last classroom observation we were in the open basic education classroom. It was really neat –we happened to be there during their English lesson, which was fun. The kids are all so fascinated by us – when we were leaving, and the teacher told them to wave goodbye they all called out “bye aunties!” It was adorable! I seem to have gained many honourary nieces and nephews!

In the afternoon we were back in the PT department doing more Tardieu testing for their database. That went smoothly also. We are starting to get into a routine, and getting faster at doing the assessment. We managed to get 3 kids done - in total we’ve done 4 out of the 34 eligible kids. We’ve started rewarding the kids that we’re testing with stickers (or pens/pencils if they’re older) and that seems to be a big hit J

After work we headed back into Thiravanmyuir (again!) to pick up Priyanka’s tailoring, and to buy a bucket to do our dishes in (we bought some plastic bowls, spoons and cups to eat with). We caught an auto rickshaw back just before dark for a bargain of 20 INR (50 cents Canadian!)

Another update in the saga that is our mobile telephone. This evening, while trying to make an outgoing call, we got a message saying that our documentation was not valid, and that our phone service was being terminated. Man were we ever mad…it seems that the place we’d gotten the SIM card from (same sketchy place that ripped us off for minutes) had sold us the phone without caring if we had the proper documentation, just so that they could take our money for the card and the minutes. Right now we are still able to receive calls (for some unknown reason), we just can’t make any calls. Thank goodness for Skype and the internet.

Tonight has been a pretty relaxing night. I caught up on some emails, talked to my Mom and Opa on Skype, and finished my book (Julie and Julia – highly recommend!). Now Priyanka and I are curling up to watch another episode of ER on my computer, and then we’ll probably head to bed shortly thereafter. Last night was a really hot night, so neither of us slept super well, so it will be nice to have an early night.

Hope you’re all doing well!

November 23rd, 2009

Nothing too exciting going on today, so it will be a short update. It was hard going back to placement after our wonderful weekend! As usual, we started our day by observing in the PT department. We have two more days of classroom observation before our “posting” in the sensory integration room will start – today we were in the able art section of SPASTN for our observation. In able art, students learn skills such as cooking, print making, tailoring and computers, which they can later use to earn money in the real world. SPASTN even goes as far as to help them find jobs when they are ready! To help bring revenue into the school, they sell some of the products that the kids make, such as greeting cards, and cell phone pockets! I will definitely be bringing some of these things home!

In the afternoon we got started collecting data for our project. It turns out that they just want us to help add to an existing database of patient information, including GMFM scores. Adding information on the Tardieu scale will just give them another outcome measure that they can reassess down the road to see if the kids are improving. We still haven’t had any real hands on experience aside from our project, but Karthik is hopefull that we can start handling our own patients by the middle of the week. I certainly hope so! If we were on placement in Canada we would have our own caseloads by now! I have to keep reminding myself that we are gaining a lot of soft skills by being here, even if the PT related skills may be lacking a little bit. We have had to do a lot of communication regarding our learning needs and expectations, which has been good experience, although difficult at times. All in all, I know this is a once in a life time, very worth while experiences, so I’m trying not to worry too much about the clinical experience.

After work we made a quick stop in Thiruvanmuyr to visit the tailor, and then headed back home for a yummy dinner of egg curry and potatoes. We’re now just finishing up a little bit of work we have to do for tomorrow, and then we’ll probably wind down, watch some ER and turn in for a good night’s sleep.

Until Tomorrow my friends!

November 22nd, 2009

Today was a pretty relaxing day. We had a really restful night (no power outages!) and got up around 7:30 as usual. We took our time getting ready and had our breakfast around 9:15 – breakfast was luchi (kind of like a deep fried pita – probably like eating 3 donuts, but very tasty!) and a spicy dipping sauce, and the ever present Coffee. Coffee is an interesting phenomenon here in India. Its mostly hot milk, mixed with some instant coffee and TONNES of sugar. I have a sinking feeling that when I get back to Canada I’m going to be craving triple triples from Tim Hortons.

We got on the train at around 10am, and headed back to Egmore station (same station as yesterday), where we planned to catch an auto rickshaw to Spencer Plaza. We were pleasantly surprised when the first auto driver we approached did not try to rip us off! We think that our confidence in approaching drivers, combined with dressing in more “traditional” clothing inspires them to offer us more fair prices. In any case, we arrived at Spencer Plaza about 10 minutes later.

Spencer Plaza is an enormous mall. It is slightly reminiscent of Canadian malls (complete with air conditioning!) but really confusing. It consists of two main shopping stories (and some business stories) and three “Atriums”. Surrounding each Atrium are the larger (fancier) fixed price stores , and then radiating out from each Atrium are spidery corridors filled with smaller stall like shops, where you can bargain for things like clothing, leather products and shawls. Going into the hallways was exciting but kind of stressful at the same time. The vendors stand outside of their stores and try to entice you inside promising “good price” on their items. Eventually we figured out how to ignore their calls and only go into the stalls where they weren’t as pushy. We both ended up with some really nice things!

While in Spencer Plaza we also found a real Airtel store to top up our phone with. We had run out of local minutes a lot quicker than anticipated, and we wanted to find a real Airtel representative to answer our questions (previously we had been topping up in this sketchy cell phone store in Thiravanmyuir). In talking to the guy in the store, we discovered that we got majorly ripped off in Thiravanmyuir. We’re pretty sure the international mintues we bought were credited to our phone, but the local minutes that we paid for were not. So we got cheated out of about 155 INR. Not that much money in the grand scheme of things, but enough to make us irritated. The guy in the Airtel store was really helpful though, and we loaded up our phone properly (he even showed us how to check our balance).

After we finished in Spencer Plaza we had intended to go across the street to the India Tourism office to get some maps and ideas of things to do in Chennai. Unfortunately it was closed on account of it being Sunday, so we’ll have to save it for later this week. We had spent a little more time in Spencer Plaza than anticipated (so many stores!) and didn’t really have any other plans for the day (since we couldn’t go to the tourism office for ideas) so we decided hop back on the train and make a stop off at the beach on the way home.

The beach in Chennai is one of the longest in the world! Its really an amazing sight. It is incredibly wide (I’ve never seen such a wide beach before) and something that you can’t really capture in a photograph. Closer to the road there are carnival like games, and once you get nearer to the water there are vendors selling cotton candy and balloons. It was busy, but not chokingly so, and it was fun to watch all of the people playing in massive waves. We sat there and admired the surf for a while, and then decided to head home before it got dark.

To get back to the train station we had to walk through a sort of alleyway where there were a lot of visibly poor (for lack of a better word) people begging and trying to sell second hand shoes etc. It was really sad, and a little bit scary. Unfortunately that is the reality of this country – there are a lot of people who are wealthy, relatively speaking, and able to send their kids to top notch schools etc. And then a lot of people who are so poor that they sleep on the street, and who will never be able to send their kids to school. Its very sad.

As an aside, in that alleyway, we also saw a free roaming monkey (don’t worry Mom, I didn’t touch it). I don’t know if it was somebody’s pet, or if it was something wild. It was neat though! I love monkeys!

We managed to make it back to our place before dark again tonight, and now we are just relaxing for the evening, and preparing ourselves for the week ahead. All in all its been a very nice and relaxing weekend!

Also, just a shout out to my Dad, who I know reads this every day - Happy Birthday Dad! Love you and Miss you!

November 21st, 2009

It’s the weekend! We’ve officially survived our first week of placement here in India, and we’ve also been here for over a week now! Now that we’ve settled in a little bit more I’m really enjoying my experiences here, despite the initial “whiny” tone of my blogs J

Last night we woke up at about 4am to sweltering heat. It turns out that our electricity had gone out (it must have been raining – our electricity goes out every time it rains), and thus our ceiling fan had stopped working. I heard Priyanka moving around in bed, so I called out softly to see if she was awake (which she was). We both extracted ourselves from our mosquito nets and ventured into the hallway with my flashlight. Thankfully it was just a matter of resetting the breaker to turn the electricity back on, and we were able to go back to sleep.

Our alarm went off at 7:30 am (a much more reasonable time than 4am!) and we got ready for our day of exploration. Our breakfast even arrived before we left! We hopped on the train at about 10:30am and headed for Chennai’s Egmore station. Our first stop of the day was the government museum. It took us quite a while to figure out how to get to the museum once we got to Egmore station. We started off walking, but soon there was a heavy shower (or heavy pouring as it is called here) that even our brand new, Indian umbrellas couldn’t protect us from. At this point we stopped and auto rickshaw and had him take us the rest of the way.

The museum was kind of like the Indian version of the ROM. It basically had something for everyone! We started off in the “archeology” section where we saw many stone carvings of deities from various time points. Then we moved on to the natural history exhibits, including sea mammals, frogs, snakes, land mammals, and fish. It was pretty cool! They even had the skeleton of a 60 foot blue whale suspended from the ceiling. I have to admit the snake exhibit was a little freaky – it will definitely be on my mind the next time we have to do the “snake walk” after dark. After the natural history museum we took a quick tour of the stamp collection before heading to the Bronze Gallery. The Bronze Gallery was a welcome change because it was air-conditioned. We spent quite some time looking at the their beautiful collections of bronze figures (mostly Hindu gods). We really wanted to go to the anthropology section of the museum as well, but unfortunately it was closed for renovations. The last thing we visited in the government museum was the children’s museum. The children’s museum was kind of depressing. On the one hand, it was nice, because the city is obviously trying to provide a place for children to learn with the few resources that are available, but on the other hand, it was sad, because it was very empty, and the things that were there were really outdated.

After we finished at the museum, we tackled our next big adventure: lunch in a restaurant. We had gotten a recommendation of a restaurant from Priya, so we decided to go there. It was a cheap, vegetarian “fast food” type place. We each ate an Onion Uttapam, served on a banana leaf! It was really yummy, and the price was even more satisfying than the food, at only 32 INR (less than $1 CAD) per person.

After lunch, we ventured back through Egmore train station to find St. Andrew’s Kirk – a large, circular domed church. It was a very beautiful church! Walking down the palm-lined driveway, you almost wouldn’t think you were in India anymore. It almost seemed Caribbean in nature. Judging by the fancy cars out front, we were pretty sure that it serviced a relatively wealthy congregation. We did go inside, but weren’t able to look around much because there was some kind of music rehearsal going on. It was cool though – all of the pews are arranged in a semi-circle, and the ceiling was domed and painted with blue paint and gold stars.

Because our visit to the church was so quick, it was still pretty early in the afternoon when we finished. We didn’t know what else there was in the area, so we got back on the train towards home. We arrived at Thiravanmyuir station (our home station) around 5pm, so we decided to explore the IT complex Tidel Park before heading back to SPASTN. Priyanka’s dad had suggested that we might find some western options in the food court there if we got tired of eating assorted curries every day.

Getting into Tidel park was an adventure in and of itself. We had to go get visitor’s passes, but we weren’t actually visiting a company, so we wrote “Food Court” in the “Visiting?” section of the application, and “Visit” in the “Purpose?” section. Apparently that was good enough for security though, and they let us in and showed us to the food court. Tidel park is a huge and modern place – lots of modern buildings very similar to what you would find in Canada. The food court was also modern, and very clean. There were indeed several “Western” type options, including a burger joint (where you can get a veggie burger combo for 95 INR!) and a Domino’s Pizza! We were able to get a quick look around some of the other parts of the building (even though technically we were only supposed to go to the food court) and found several banks, and optician, a book store, a medical clinic and a “mini-mart” – pretty cool!

At this point is was around 6pm, so we decided to call it an evening and head home. We were both pretty tired from walking around in the heat all day, and looking forward to some relaxing.

We ate a leisurely dinner, and then I decided to do some laundry before the under garment situation got too dire. Scrubbing out all of your clothing by hand is a lot of work! But I was successful, and in about an hour I managed to wash, what I would normally consider a small load, of laundry. Lets hope it dries out.

Tomorrow we’re heading back into central Chennai to explore one of their big shopping centers, and then get some information at the India Tourism office. After that we’ll play it by ear for the rest of the day!

So Long for Now! Until I write again!

November 20th, 2009

Wow, November 20^th! I can’t believe its November 20^th already! I can hardly believe that we’ve been here a whole week. Only four more weeks of placement!

Today was another fun day. Placement was pretty much more of the same. We observed in the PT department for most of the morning, followed by observation in the skills training class of the school The skills training class is pretty much what it sounds like – students learn skills like handling money, and more “industrial” type stuff, like assembling nuts and bolts, hole punching and cutting. Before lunch we went to a lecture on principals of hydrotherapy, which was a good review. After lunch we were able to gain a little more handling experience by practicing the tardieu scale on a few more kids, and then helping with one girl’s treatment session. She was pretty much the cutest kid ever. At the beginning of the treatment session she crawled right into my lap and sat there, admiring my hair and comparing it to Priyanka’s. Toddler cuddles always make me happy J

After placement Priyanka and I decided to explore Mylapore, an area in the south of Chennai with a large and beautiful temple, Kapaleeswrar. We thought it would be a good first introduction to the suburban train system running through Chennai, since it was only a few stops from the station closest to us.

The train station near us (about a 10 minute walk) is in what looks like an abandoned building. When you walk in, it’s a big, flat, empty room…nothing like a train station in Canada. It turns out a round trip ticket to Mylepore for one person only costs 10 INR (or about 25 cents) which I thought was a pretty good deal. On the way there we got into the common (male and female) car, which was kind of funny because it was full of men (all of the women were in the ladies car).

It was only a short train ride before we arrived in Mylapore. We asked a friendly lady for directions to the temple which was a quick walk from the station. The temple was beautiful! To go in we had to leave our shoes at a kiosk outside and go in our bare feet which was neat (but a bit dirty). The temple is basically an outdoor structure with many statues of the Hindu deities. The inner temples are only open to Hindus, so I waited outside of those while Priyanka went in. The most amazing part was the large, ornately decorated pyramidal structure rising from the center of the temple.

After we had walked around the whole temple we headed back to the street to look around in the market that we saw on our way from the train station. We found a sweet shop on the street and stopped for a nice cold 7-up. Our first cold beverage since we arrived! Yum! There was also some kind of music performance going on at the one end of the street, but we didn’t stay to listen for very long because it was really loud. On the way back to the train station we stopped at some of the vendors and bought some colourful bangles to bring back home.

On the way home we managed to get into the ladies car, which was interesting and ultimately more relaxing than being with all the men. We arrived back at the gates of the compound at about 7 pm (after dark), and asked the security guard to escort us back to our building. He did, but unfortunately his flashlight was broken, so we had to brave the snake walk with minimal light. Luckily we didn’t see any snakes. Ugh.

Tomorrow we are planning on exploring some more in central Chennai. We’re going to hit up St. Andrew’s Kirk, and the Government Museum. Hopefully everything goes as smoothly as it did today!

November 19th, 2009 - We have internet!!!

WE HAVE INTERNET!!!!! WOOHOO! It is really nice to be connected with the outside world again!

Today was a pretty great day. People at SPASTN are starting to get used to Priyanka and I being around, and are talking to us more! We spent the first part of the day observing in the PT department as usual, and then headed to the speech language pathology department to observe there for an hour. In the SLP area we met several interns who are visiting SPASTN from a different state in India. We got to chat with them a bit and learn a little bit more about SLP and their program. They were really friendly (and feeling equally as lost as us, since they also don’t speak Tamil), and we’re hoping that we might get to spend some more time with them in the future.

We have had a few other people staying at our building for the past two days (a special educator and her husband and brother) and we were able to chat with them for a little while at lunch. Along with them was Anna, a very friendly Psychology masters student who is also interning at SPASTN. Anna speaks English very well and lives in Chennai, so we’re hoping to get to know her a little bit better. She said that she would give us some pointers on where to go, and how to use the sub-urban train system etc. Slowly but surely we are figuring out how to get around in this crazy city!

In the afternoon we had our first hands on experience with the kids! Priya (the PT) arranged for a few kids to come in so that we could practice using the Tardieu scale, before we start our project (although we still don’t really know what the goal of this “project” is). The kids responded well to us, and it was really nice to have some hands on experience. I’ve missed that!

After work we headed out to Besant Nagar to explore a little bit, as well as (finally!) get our internet sorted out. We were supposed to meet Karthik at 5pm, and were a little bit early, so we explored the nearby grocery store. It was pretty cool! It was a pretty small store, but they had a lot of cool stuff, including a variety of westernized products (like Corn flakes and Nutella!), probably because of the area that it is located in. After a quick browse, we headed over to Reliance World to meet Karthik and get our internet going. It was a pretty efficient process, and before we knew it we were surfing the web in the store! We are SO thankful towards Karthik! He met up with us there on his own time, outside of work hours, just so that we could get internet. What an awesome guy!

After getting the internet working we went back to the fancy/expensive clothing store. This time, I had more success. I walked away with an awesome pair of pants (very light and balloon like) and three shirts. I think I’m all set for clothing now! We also stopped in at “Dora’s Bag Mall” across the street which is a HUGE purse store. Priyanka bought a change purse, but aside from that it wasn’t really our thing.

It was pretty dark at this point, so we decided to catch an auto rickshaw home. The first one we stopped wanted 150 INR for what we knew to be a 70 INR trip, so we sent him on his merry way and flagged down another guy who was wiling to take us for 70. We even managed to get him to take us to the door so we could avoid the scary snake walk!

After dinner Priyanka decided to try doing laundry the good old fashioned way – in a bucket with a bar of laundry soap and a brush! I can tell you, I will never complain about the crappy washing machine in my basement again…washing clothes by hand is a lot of work! I have to do a load of laundry tomorrow, and I’m not really excited about it!

Both of us having been up and about on the internet for about the last 2 hours, catching up on emails, posting blogs and chatting with friends. Its been really great! I managed to figure out how to use my computer as a router of sorts so that both of us can be online at once, despite only having one mobile internet key. Its been a long (but fun) day, and I’m pretty sleepy…starting to think about crawling under my mosquito net for a nice long sleep J I’m planning on posting photos to go along with these blogs, but I can’t plug in the internet stick and my camera at the same time (USB ports are too close together), so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Good Night! Hope you all have a great day!

November 18th, 2009

Not much to report today. The weather was gorgeous but very hot. The upside to the hot weather is that lake SPASTN is finally drying out! We can actually get all the way to the school area without having to get our feet wet now.

Placement went pretty well today. We were able to watch the morning yoga sessions that the students at SPASTN do every morning before their classes start, which was really neat. After the yoga sessions we went inside to observe in the PT department, and then observe in the multiple disabilities unit classroom until lunch time. We spoke with Karthik about our project, and mentioned that we were unable to find any of the outcome measures that he was interested in. So he canned that idea and asked us to assess some children using the Tardieu spasticity scale, a much more doable task. We had a fairly lazy afternoon of reading in the library and then some more observation in the PT department.

Once we were done for the day at 4 pm, we headed into Thiravanmuiyr (the place we go almost every day, because it’s the only shopping area we can reach on foot) to get some more clothing and top up our cell phone, as well as use the internet café (because we STILL don’t have our own internet). Shopping in India is hilarious and frustrating at the same time. You can’t just go in and pick out what you like – you have to go up to these counters and ask for help, and then they show you stuff until you find something you like. Strangely, none of the tops that we were trying to buy had attached sleeves. They all came with extra material, and then you have to go to a tailor to get the sleeves sewn on. I found 3 kurta tops that I liked, and Priyanka found 4.

It took us a while to find the tailor, but eventually we were successful. Tailoring in India is really cheap – 20 INR per garment to add the sleeves! That comes out to about 50 Canadian cents per piece. He told us it would take half an hour to finish, so we went to top up our minutes and use the internet in the mean time. When we got back to the tailor, he showed Priyanka that one of the shirts that she had purchased was damaged and that he hadn’t put the sleeves on, in case she wanted to return it. We headed back over to Cotton House (where we’d bought the clothing) to return the shirt. Unfortunately Cotton House has a credit only policy, so we had to go back in to try and find a new top for Priyanka. At this point the ladies at the counter were getting irritated with us, and they started throwing every kurta top they had in her size onto the counter in front of her. We eventually found a nice (slightly more expensive) white one, and left to head home.

We couldn’t get the auto rickshaw to take us all the way to our door today (this guy wanted an extra 10 INR), so we had to brave the snake-walk with the security guard, since it was after dark. It wasn’t as bad as last time though, because we were able to walk down the driveway now that the water has cleared out.

The first thing I did when we got back to our place was try on my new clothing. Unfortunately, I was sadly disappointed…2 out of the 3 shirts that they had sold me were too small! (ACK….the power just went out…for real. The whole compound is out.) Anyways, back to my story…so we think what happened is that they were already irritated by us the first time that we were in because we asked to see so many different items and they ended up selling me stuff that wasn’t my size. And in India its not like you can take your time and try everything on…you just kind of have to take what they tell you is your size. Tomorrow we are planning on going back to Basant Nagar, the more westernized area of town, and possibly stop in at the store we were at yesterday. It is much more expensive, but you can browse leisurely on your own, and the stuff there actually fits me!

Well…I sure hope our power comes back on soon. While it is very romantic with the candles we have burning right now, the longer the power is out, the worse the mosquitos will be, and the less we can do. What can I say…its India.

November 17th, 2009 - 9pm

Today was our second day of placement here in SPASTN. They have the day divided up into little segments for us, so it really flew by. We started out observing in the PT department in the morning, then spent some time with Karthik in the sensory integration room. After lunch we had some independent study time to work on our project (more on that later) and then we spent another hour observing in the PT department.

So our project…. We’ve been asked to conduct a project while we’re here at SPASTN surrounding the use of a different outcome measurement (yet to be determined) than the one that is currently used here at SPASTN (which is the GMFM). This week they’ve asked us to collect different outcome measures, so that they can choose one for us to test on a subset of children, and then correlate those scores with the childrens’ current GMFM scores. The funny thing is that they seem to think we have magical access to all of these outcome measures simply by virtue of being Canadian. The problem is that most of them are copy writed and very expensive, so you can’t just find them online or in textbooks. Also, we still don’t have internet access, so we can’t even google the outcome measures to find out if there are any parts of them that we can find online. We tried to do some research in the library at SPASTN this afternoon, but their library is not only small, but very outdated, so it wasn’t exactly fruitful. I guess they are under the impression that we’ve been trained to use a variety of different outcome measures, which unfortunately isn’t the case, especially in a pediatric population.

After finishing up at placement, Priya, one of the PT’s showed us how to get to Basant Nagar, one of the “rich” areas of Chennai, that is frequented by foreigners. We went shopping for some clothing, and I got two nice, cotton (Indian) shirts for everyday wear. It was more expensive than other places we’d seen, but very good quality. We’re planning on going to a cheaper store tomorrow to stock up on more things to wear.

We are getting closer to getting our internet working also. We found a Reliance mobile store in Basant Nagar, and were able to purchase a mobile internet stick. They wouldn’t sell us the minutes for it without a proof of address (and the letter I have from SPASTN saying that we are interning there wasn’t good enough) so we called Karthik, and he agreed to help us with those details tomorrow. So, if all goes well, we will have internet by tomorrow evening. It will be so nice to be connected to the world again!

As we were coming out of the Reliance store, we were approached by a white guy wearing a “Philidelphia” t-shirt. He turned out to be a post-doc who arrived here in Chennai last week, and will be at the university for about a year. We started talking and the poor guy basically poured his heart out to us on the street corner (he was so happy to run into other Westerners). I guess he’s suffering from quite a bit of culture shock, and he’s feeling really isolated and lonely. We felt really badly for him, but at the same time it made Priyanka and I feel kind of good, because we are obviously dealing with the shock of living in India much better than he is. Granted, we know we are only here for 6 weeks, and we have each other, so that makes things much easier.

After chatting with the guy we hopped in an Auto Rickshaw back to the compound. The driver didn’t even try to rip us off! I think dressing in the Indian style really helps us get fair deals, because we don’t stick out as much as Westerners. We managed to get him to drive us all the way up to our door so that we could avoid trekking through the dark, snake-laden grass. All in all it was a very successful shopping adventure!

Tomorrow is new assessment day at SPASTN, so that should be interesting for us to watch. Aside from that, like I said, we are hoping to get our internet up and running, top up our phone minutes, and get a hold of some more clothing to wear to work.

Goodnight!

November 16th, 2009 - First Day of Placement

Today was a long and slightly frustrating day. Priyanka and I are both feeling pretty homesick today, just because we are feeling isolated from the outside world by our lack of internet and being so far removed from everyone else in the compound.

We woke up at 7am today, to get ready for our first day of placement. Last night as we were getting ready for bed our water konked out, so we were in suspense as to whether it would be back today or not. Unfortunately there was not a drop of water to be found in the lines. We had a little bit of water stored in the hot water tank, so we heated that up to wash with. Its amazing what you can make due with if you try – we both washed up with maybe 2 L total of water (and that was including me washing my hair!). You know, its funny…if I were anywhere else, and the power was constantly going out, and the water was going out, I would probably be freaking out or at the very least irritated. But in India its all just par for the course.

We were ready to go by 8am, but we weren’t meeting with our director until 9:30am. Our breakfast also hadn’t arrived yet, so we sat on our bed and read for a while, just trying to pass the time. We went over to the office building and discovered that the director still hadn’t arrived. This worked out okay for us though, because it allowed us to go eat the Iddli and unidentifiable sauce that had finally arrived for breakfast.

When we returned to the office at 10am the director still hadn’t arrived, but we were met by another woman, Raja, who managed to find our clinical supervisor, Karthik for us. Karthik seems intense, but very knowledgeable. We also met an Indian physio student who will be interning here for the next three weeks as well. Karthik gave all three of us a tour of the facilities, and then brought us to (finally) meet with the director. The director welcomed us, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to be overly involved in our time here at SPASTN. Priyanka and I had a few questions, namely about the water situation in our building, and also where to go to buy more Salwars (since we only have three each), and she directed us to other people for help.

The facilities at SPASTN are pretty amazing. It is basically a large school with classrooms for children of varying ages and degrees of disability. There is a physical therapy area where kids come at specified times for their therapy, a speech-language therapy area, a toy library, and a music room. One of my favourite rooms in the main facility is the sensory integration room. One half is totally padded, with what looks like a giant jungle gym in the room, including a zip line. The other half has a curtain that you can close to make the room totally dark. You can also turn on fluorescent lighting that lights up all kind of glow in the dark and white objects posted around the room. Apparently using lights like that, or just using a large flashlight makes it easier for low-vision or developmentally delayed children to focus. The other area of the school that is really neat is the vocational training centre. Here, children (I think ages 14 and over) learn to skills like printing, cooking, computers and crafts. They sell the products that the kids make (like printed advertisements, wedding invitations, candles, gift bags and jewellery) in the community. I think I will definitely be bringing home some things – its neat stuff!

Karthik told us that usually interns at SPASTN are here on a purely observational basis, and seemed rather taken aback when we told him that hands on experience is a large part of our internships at home. He took it in stride though, and said that this week he would like us to observe, and then we could possibly start some hands on training next week.

We spent the rest of the morning observing in the sensory integration area and music room. The music room was cool – the music teachers seems very nice, and all the kids really respond to the music. Its kind of the Indian version of Rainbow songs!

In the afternoon we observed in the physio gym for a few hours. It was a little bit frustrating and overwhelming, because the physios never really explained to us what they were doing with the kids. The spoke with them in Tamil, and it was difficult for us to get a sense of what their treatment goals were. We would ask after each patient, but it felt a little bit like we were in the way, and being an annoyance.

Before we left we asked Priya, the physio that we met on the weekend, to take us out to shop for some more salwars. It seemed like she wasn’t very happy with the idea ( I guess she is a busy lady after all) but she agreed to help us out tomorrow, possibly.

We finished around 4:15 and got ready to head into town to try and sort out our internet and top up our phone. Topping up the phone was a piece of cake – we got about 90 more minutes of calling to Canada for 151 INR, which is a little less than $4 CAD. The internet was trickier…we stood in the shop for a good half and hour, and kept getting brushed off by the sales man. Apparently getting an internet dongle is a big deal for foreigners, and he kept trying to tell us we didn’t have the correct documentation, and to come back tomorrow. Eventually we gave up and left, frustrated. We went to a local internet café and checked and sent a few emails, far from the unlimited internet we were hoping to take with us. It would be really nice to have internet in our rooms, just to feel a little more connected to the outside world. It would be so much easier to keep in touch with friends and family that way, not to mention look things up for the project Karthik wants us to do for him.

We took an Auto rickshaw back to the compound (and managed to bargain him down from 60INR to 30!) and the security guard escorted us back to our building (it was dark and we didn’t want to have any run ins with snakes).

We ate dinner, talked to our families, and chatted with each other a little bit about the frustrations of the day. Now we’re just sitting quiety, relaxing for a while before bed. I’ve only been here for a matter of days, and already its been a life changing experience. I don’t want to sound like I am complaining all the time – no sense in going to a new country to complain that things are different from home, but they are SO different from home! Its interesting – things that are so simple for us to do at home (like go to the store and buy something) take so much longer and are so much more complicated here. Little things, like its so much harder to cross the street here, because there aren’t traffic lights everywhere, and the cars don’t really watch for pedestrians. It’s a huge contrast to Canada, and it makes me realize genuinely how fortunate I am to live there. I think the reason why some days have been difficult since coming here, is because we are actually trying to LIVE here for 6 weeks. Its not like we are on vacation and staying in nice hotels, traveling around. We’re actually trying to integrate ourselves with the locals and live like locals. Its definitely harder, but more realistic, and I’m glad to be doing it, because it gives me a more real picture of what life here is like.

November 15th, 2009 - 8:45pm

Today was a very busy but fun day! We were met by a family friend of Priyanka’s, Sanjeet, at 8:15 am. Sanjeet took us to his home on the Air Force compound here in Chennai, where we met his wife and family. His wife made us a delicious brunch of fried pita, eggplant, curry and vermicelli pudding. After brunch we set out with Sanjeet to get oriented to the city and to find some of the things we were still missing for our humble abode.

To get to the shopping area we rode in an auto rickshaw! It was a wild and totally different experience. In fact, it kind of reminded me of an argo ride. We went through puddles, practically through ditches, down narrow streets, all the while trying to avoid other cars, pedestrians and roaming cattle Yes, cattle! We actually saw our first free roaming cattle today, which was neat! I also so some goats and some chickens, as well as the proverbial stray dog.

We eventually arrived in the shopping area and went into a large “department” type store. It was nuts! It was crazy busy, and there were staff everywhere! I guess they are really worried about theft because they have 1-2 staff members stationed in each small section of the store. We managed to get some cleaning fluid, washcloths, toilet paper, plastic dishware and cutlery, as well as umbrellas to protect us from the rain. It was a little bit overwhelming, but excited at the same time. Its amazing how buying a few simple things is such a task here, yet so easy in Canada! After we finished in that store we headed across the street to a shoe store to pick up some water- proof sandals. We currently have “lake” growing in front of our building from all of the rain, and we get wet feet every time we walk through it. Priyanka didn’t bring any sandals, and I only brought my Birkenstocks, so we thought it would be a good idea to get something we wouldn’t be sad if we ruined. We were both successful – I paid 300 INR (about 7.50 CAD) for my grey water proof slip ons, and Priyanka got a pair of flip flops for 235 INR.

We took another auto rickshaw back to Sanjeet’s place, and we relaxed and watched TV with his daughter while he picked up some laundry and dish soap, as well as two cases of bottled water for us at the military supply store. We were then treated to another lovely meal made by his wife – rice, with egg curry, paneer, and Raita. Probably the best Indian food I’ve ever had! It was so funny though, because we are always served so much more than we can actually eat – it was a HUGE mound of rice, and they laughed at us when we said there was no way we could eat so much. I think we both managed to eat half of the portion. The same thing happens here on the compound – we always are served a ton of food, and can never make our way through all of it.

After lunch Sanjeet showed us some photos from his last military station, which was in one of the “highest battle fields in the world” – the region bordering China and Pakistan. It was really interesting – but it looked very cold! He said there were days as cold as -40 degrees C.

Around 4pm we got a car to take us back to SPASTN. The jet lag was getting the best of the both of us, and we both dozed off in the car. We came back to discover we had no power yet again (the breaker is triggered with heavy rain), but we thankfully now know how to flip the breaker back. Hopefully it doesn’t go out at night, because that means the ceiling fan will stop running, which means that it will get really hot, and there will be more mosquitoes than usual.

Priyanka and I were both able to talk to our families on the phone for a while, and then we decided to try and eat some dinner (although we were still stuffed from lunch) so that we could take our malaria medication.

Now, we are sitting on the bed, relaxing…thinking about going to sleep. We are planning on watching one of the episodes of ER that I brought along with me, and then we’ll probably hit the hay. Tomorrow is our first day of placement, and I think we are both a little bit apprehensive. We’re not sure exactly how much they will be expecting us to know or do tomorrow, but hopefully it will be okay!

Hopefully we will be able to get internet at some point tomorrow! I am really looking forward to being a little bit more connected with the world, and able to talk to my friends and family! I miss you all lots – it still hasn’t set in that I’m going to be here for the next 6 weeks…so hopefully I don’t get too homesick when it does J