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?
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