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!
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