December 19th, 2009

No, don’t worry, I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet! I am safe and sound – the last few days of this week were just crazy busy with preparations for the end of our internship, and trying to get in all of the last minute stuff we wanted to do in Chennai before heading North.

Right now I am in North India, in a car, heading towards Agra! Priyanka and I arrived in Delhi early this morning to meet up with our tour guide for the “touristy” portion of our trip to India – a four day tour of India’s Golden Triangle (Delhi, Agra and Jaipur). But more on that later. First I will update you all on our last few days in Chennai.

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday was the first day of our three day NDT and Sensory Integration workshop at SPASTN. When we arrived in the morning Karthik and Ramkumar were running around like crazy people trying to finish off last minute preparations for the workshop. I was expecting it to be a pretty big thing, since Karthik mentioned that he was expecting a lot more people for Journal club this week since Journal club had been written into the workshop itinerary. It turned out not to be quite as big as I was expecting – only a few new faces, plus pretty much everyone from the PT department participated. In that way, it was more like an in-servive than a workshop per say. I think Priyanka and I were both really glad at that point that we had decided to participate in the workshop, because otherwise we probably would have been bored out of our minds in the PT department, since most of the sessions were cancelled for those three days.

The lectures presented in the workshop were a pretty different style than Priyanka and I are used to from school – the power point slides were not available ahead of time, and I had a dickens of a time trying to decipher the lecturers’ accents, take in what they were saying AND take notes at the same time. The topics interesting though, and I did learn a few things. This workshop probably would have been super useful at the beginning of the internship rather than at the end!

At the lunch break, Priyanka and I noticed that everyone was paying Karthik money, which we later discovered was for printing the power point slides. Nobody approached us for money, which struck us as kind of odd. While we were eating lunch, it dawned on us that we were probably the only ones that were actually required to pay the 1000 INR course fee, which then covered our printing costs. We were also the only ones that received a notebook and pen at the beginning of the course. When we’d asked Karthik about the fee on Tuesday he said it was to “cover course costs” – I have a hard time imagining that a few printed notes, a notebook and a pen were worth 1000 INR ($25 CAD). What bothers me is not that we have to pay, but this perception that because we are foreigners we are swimming in money and that 1000 INR is nothing to us. It wouldn’t bother me to pay for the course if EVERYONE was paying a 1000 INR fee, even if that was more than the cost of the workshop and was used as a revenue generating opportunity for SPASTN. It bothers me that WE are being used as the revenue generating opportunity for SPASTN – especially since we already paid 6000 INR to even conduct our internship at SPASTN. We later confirmed with Priya that everyone else was indeed paying less for the workshop – only around 350 INR. But anyways, just a little aside.

Wednesday evening we went back to Mylapore one last time. We got pretty lucky with the weather. Although it had been raining all day, it cleared up just in time for us to leave, and ended up being a beautiful night! In Mylapore we went to visit San Thome’s cathedral (or basilica technically I guess)– one of only three cathedrals in the world built over the grave of an apostle. (San Thome’s is built over St. Thomas’s grave). San Thome’s is a really beautiful structure. By the time we got there it was dark, but it was beautifully illuminated by floodlights that made its white washed walls glow in the dark. It is huge, and has gorgeous stained glass windows everywhere. We went inside to look, but there was a mass going on (in Tamil) so we didn’t stay for very long. We wandered around the grounds a little bit and found a museum and the entrance to St. Thomas’s tomb chapel at the back of the building. The museum wasn’t anything too special, just a lot of old church artifacts that weren’t very well explained. The grave chapel was really neat, although slightly creepy. It seems to be in the basement of the basilica, and is a quiet, simple chapel where you can literally pray in front of the tomb/casket (I don’t know if its real) of St. Thomas.

After we finished up at the church we hopped in an auto and headed back towards the local train station, where the famous temple that we visited earlier on in our journey, and all of the stalls selling bangles are located. By chance, we were dropped off in front of a silk store, and Priyanka managed to find another sari for another family member. We spent quite a bit of time picking out some more bangles (I got some nice purple ones to match my sari), and then we were both starving, so we hit up the local Saravan Bhavan for dinner. Saravan Bhavan is a chain of vegetarian Indian restaurants that I think serve mostly south Indian food – pretty tasty stuff. We got a masala doas, a mixed vegetable parotha dish (which was amazing – it was sliced parothas stir fried with veggies!) and something called a 7-taste Uttapam (which was basically mini Uttapams with different toppings. My personal favourite was the one smeared with the Indian magical ingredient – Ketchup). It was a really tasty and satisfying meal, and a bargain at less than 200 INR ($5 CAD) for both of us together, including drinks!

By the time we finished eating it was pretty late, so we got an auto back to SPASTN. We managed to haggle one down to 110 INR, which seemed like an okay deal to us given the distance. And we managed to get him to take us all the way to our door, thereby avoiding the snake walk once again!

THURSDAY

Thursday was an early morning, because we were expecting the woman who does our laundry between 7 and 7:30am. Normally she comes on Wednesday or Thursday evenings, but because she was busy on Wednesday and we wanted to make sure that our clothing was dry by Friday when we had to pack, we asked her to come in the morning instead.

The workshop was really good on Thursday morning. We had some of the lecture slides in advance, which made listening and learning much easier for me. We also had a really great lab session led by Ramkumar and Priya on facilitation, which was not only fun, but a great learning experience.

We ended up missing most of the afternoon sessions to finish up our final evaluations (which went really well!), and then meet with SPASTN’s director (who was acting as our CCCE) to go over and sign the evals. Meeting with the director was an interesting experience. We’d really only met her once at the beginning of the internship, and she was pretty non-involved throughout our time at SPASTN. We mentioned some of the difficulties we’d had in terms of miscommunication of the requirements of our internship, and I think she really took it as us blaming SPASTN for the miscommunication (which was not at all what we had meant – obviously there was miscommunication on everyone’s part). I think it might be a culture thing – I think in India “negative” (albeit constructive) feedback is seen as a failure of sorts. It was also interesting to watch Karthik and Ramkumar’s interaction with the director. It was almost like they were scared of her – you could definitely see the hierarchy.

We got back to the workshop just in time for a lecture on Sensory Integration theory by Karthik (which was great because he is a phenomenal teacher) and then a practical session in the sensory integration room. In Canada and the US I think that SI is more of an occupational therapy thing, which is really too bad, because its incredibly interesting. Definitely something I’d like to learn more about.

I feel like this week has been a bit of a breaking ground in terms of us being accepted by the rest of the PT department. I think they’ve finally gotten used to us being around, and used to the fact that we are different than other interns they’ve had. They have been talking to us a lot more, and generally have just been a lot friendlier. In particular Prem, who I always thought was kind of an odd duck, started to get way more friendly and talkative after we visited Karthik’s private clinic, where Prem also works. Turns out he’s a really nice guy. Anyways, its too bad that this didn’t happen earlier, because it feels really nice to be accepted! Better late than never I guess!

Thursday evening I had a lot of preparation to do for Friday’s journal club, and we also had to go pick up my blouse piece from the tailor. My blouse piece wasn’t going to be ready for pickup until 7:30pm, so to facilitate us getting out of there before dark (and having to do the snake walk out alone) we left around 5:45, and went to read the journal article at Ascendas with a coffee from French Loaf (Café Coffee Days was closed, but it turns out that French Loaf has great coffee too – I had a hazelnut latte).

We headed out to Thiravanmiyur around 8pm (via auto) to pick up my blouse. I’m really glad that Priyanka convinced me to try it on at the tailor’s because she made it SUPER tight, even though I’d asked for it to be fitted loosely. I made her take out some stitches, and it fits much better now. Priyanka says its just the style in Tamil Nadu to wear your blouse piece skin tight, but it was kind of demoralizing all the same.

After picking up my blouse we headed back to the compound (managed to secure an auto for only 20 INR! Best deal we’ve gotten yet!) and had a late dinner at our building. It ended up being a bit of a late night for me, because I still had a lot of journal club preparations to do, but a wonderful day all the same.

FRIDAY

Friday was the craziest, surreal day ever. After five weeks of placement it was really hard to believe that it was all over – our last day had arrived. In some ways it felt like we’d been in India forever, but it other ways it felt like our time just flew by.

In any case, we got together the gifts we’d brought for the PT department, Ramkumar and Karthik and headed over to the school. We were running a little bit late, and arrived at the PT department at about 9:30 We came into the department expecting to dole out our gifts, but Karthik just looked at us and said the sessions had already started, so we’d better get going. Not exactly the reception we’d been hoping for. But we stored our things in a cupboard in the department and went to where the session was supposed to be held. Far from having started, there were only about three people in the room staring at a blue screen because nobody could figure out how to hook up the projector. We were a little irritated to say the least.

The morning’s sessions went by pretty quickly – it was mostly SI lectures, and a really cool video on SI. At lunchtime we finally got a chance to present our gifts. We gave Ramkumar some maple syrup from St. Agatha, Karthik some toys and books for the new clinic he just started up, and the PT department a bunch of toys to be used in therapy and snacks for the staff to share. I think neither Karthik nor Ramkumar really knew what to say about the gifts, so it was kind of awkward. It kind of bothered me at the time that they didn’t seem more thankful, because we’d spent a lot of time selecting things and hauled them all the way from Canada, but I got over it pretty quickly.

In the afternoon we had a lecture on research methodology. It was interesting to see the differences in research between India and the Western world – we definitely describe things differently in terms of statistics etc. We are definitely more advanced than they are in terms of our knowledge base in research methodology (I think Priyanka and I knew almost as much as the lecturer), but it was a really good lecture all the same.

The journal club was a pretty good follow up to the research methodology lecture. I was really nervous to lead it, and forgot about half of the things that I wanted to say because I got all flustered. I kind of had the feeling that it was a bit of a train wreck, but Priyanka said it went fine. Before we knew it, journal club (and our placement!) were over! We said our goodbyes to Ramkumar and Karthik and the rest of the PT department and headed back to our humble “home” in the compound (although not before snapping some photos of different areas in the school!)

To celebrate being done our internship we decided to have dinner at McDonalds. Now, this doesn’t sound like much of a celebration, but it was kind of exciting for me, because in India McDonald’s has a veggie burger! (In Canada they definitely don’t). The veggie burger and fries were highly tasty and disgustingly satisfying. I washed that all down with a golden alphonso milkshake – all in all a coronary waiting to happen!

We headed back to the compound to work on packing. I had just gotten started rearranging my bags when Priyanka remembered that we’d forgotten to reload our internet stick, which was about to expire the next day. So, after spending half an hour on the phone only to discover than no, you can not reload your stick online as we were initially told, we decided to make a run to Reliance World in Besant Nagar to reload the stick. We managed to negotiate a reasonable deal with an auto driver who was willing to wait while we reloaded the stick. Unfortunately the store had just closed down its cash registers (although their doors were still open), but they gave us our word (and a receipt of payment) that if we gave them the cash, they would reload our stick first thing in the morning. Normally we wouldn’t have trusted them, but we were pretty desperate at that point, so we did it.

We got back to our place shortly before 9pm and began packing in earnest. I couldn’t believe how much stuff I had accrued over the five weeks! My suitcase was definitely overweight, but I didn’t really have any other options but to take it that way, since an overweight baggage charge is much less than an extra baggage charge.

Priya came by at about 10pm to say goodbye to us – it was a really sad moment. As excited as I am to explore other parts of India, and then to go home, Priya has become a good friend, and its sad to leave her behind. Who knows if we’ll ever see her again?

I’ve been touched by so many people throughout the course of this placement – not only Priya, but all of the PT department, the security guards, my patients, friends of Priyanka….too many people to mention. It was such a good experience, and despite the speed bumps in the road, I don’t regret any part of it. I’m so glad that I did this, and so proud of myself too. I definitely learned a lot, and its enriched my life in so many different ways.

SATURDAY

Our 3:00 am wake up time came much too quickly after our late night of packing on Friday. We rolled out of bed, got dressed and pulled down our mosquito nets. I have to say, I am NOT going to miss sleeping under a mosquito net and waking up to swat rogue mosquitos at 4am! Or getting bitten in inopportune places while using the bathroom. Hate is a strong word. But I hate mosquitos.

Anyways, our call taxi showed up at 4am, as we requested, which was already a good start to the day. Unfortunately they sent us a really small car, and there wasn’t enough room for everything in the trunk. As a result, my giant overweight suitcase was balanced precariously on the roof of this car without any straps, for the ride to the airport. The whole way there, I kept preparing myself to hear a crash and see my suitcase tumbling into the road. Surprisingly the taxi driver drove fairly carefully and my suitcase was still in one piece, and still on the roof when we arrived at the airport.

We checked in at the Jet Lite counter, only to be notified that we had to go have our bags security scanned before we could check them. Thankfully this didn’t’ take too long. I didn’t even end up getting charged for my overweight baggage! Our theory is that because Priyanka’s bag was less than the maximum weight they just averaged our two bags together, which was nice of them.

Security took a while to get through, but was no big deal. Priyanka even managed to smuggle an entire Klean Kanteen full of water through the checkpoint. We arrived at our gate, and didn’t even have a long wait before boarding was announced. Priyanka made a quick coffee stop for the two of us while I waited in line. Just as we were about to board the plan the security guard informed me that I was missing a security tag on my backpack and that I needed to get it rechecked. Ugh! What a pain! It didn’t take as long as it sounded like it was going to though, and soon we were boarding the plane!

The flight was about 2.5 hours, and went by pretty quickly. We were both tired from the early wakeup, so we dozed a bit. Flying into Delhi was pretty cool – the city looks so different from Chennai, even from the air! We deplaned onto the tarmack and then took a bus into the terminal. The airport seems to be pretty new and modern, probably because Delhi is a pretty big tourist destination. Our bags took quite some time to come out, but we were out of the airport by about 10am.

After we got our luggage, we set about meeting Gautam, our tour organizer outside. He and our driver were waiting for us with a P. Banerjee sign and big smiles. Gautam and Lal (the driver) were both very nice, and helped us with our big pile of bags. I was really excited for the tour – it was going to be a private tour of the highlights of the Golden Triangle, including the Taj Mahal! A private tour sounded a bit sketchy to me at first, but Priyanka’s parents went with the same tour company a few years ago and had a really good experience. And the price was definitely right at 228 USD each for three nights hotel accommodations, our private driver and car, and tour guides in the three cities that we are visiting. Gautam was just meeting us to say hello and collect the balance of our payment, and then he left us in the capable hands of Lal, to drive to Agra.

The drive to Agra was fairly long – about four and a half hours (plus an hour lunch break), although it is only about 250 km from Delhi (unless I’m mistaken). I think it takes that long to get places in India because the road quality in some areas is poor (although we did drive on some highways that were comparable to Canada) and there is a lot of traffic.

Our first stop in Agra was Sikandra, the mausoleum of the Mughal emperor Akbarer the Great. Here we met up with our tour guide for Agra, Amit. Amit is a quirky, yet polite and well-spoken guy – a fantastic tour guide for us. We didn’t spend very long at the Sikandra, because we wanted to visit Agra’s famous fort before sunset (all of the monuments in Agra close at sunset), so we just snapped a few photos of the ornate gateway, and then hopped back into the car to head to the Agra Fort.

The Agra Fort is a huge red sandstone structure built by Akbar and his descendants. These days a portion of it (like the “palace” areas and the courtyards are a tourist attraction and the rest of it is occupied by the Indian Army. When we walked up to the entrance of the fort, there were monkeys climbing all over it! It was awesome! Priyanka and I joke that all of her photos of India are going to be of flowers (she loves flowers) whereas all of my photos of India are going to be animals (mostly cows and goats, but now some monkeys as well!). We also got our first glmpse of the Taj Mahal from the fort entrance, just a speck on the horizon.

The Fort was very beautiful inside. The palaces areas are all very intricately carved and beautifully laid out. You can just imagine what it looked like in days gone by – fancy silks and chandeliers hanging everywhere. There are a few rooms that used to house swings (one gold and one silver) where the emperor could sit with his wife and enjoy the view of the river. One of the palace areas that was built a little bit later on, is constructed entirely of white marble. The thing that I found fascinating about this part of the fort is that the walls are hollow, and in the summer filled with cold water (to keep the palace cool) and in the winter with hot water (to provide heat). One of my other favourite areas of the fort is a courtyard area, which used to overlook a fish pond. The emperor used to sit there and fish, while watching some of his 500 concubines dance for him. Apparently there was also a market along the side of the fish pond where royal women could come to do their shopping.

After we finished at the fort, we got back into the car to head to the hotel. We were offered the opportunity to go see a show (opera type thing) about Akbar and his wives, but decided that it might be too touristy and tacky. The hotel was amazing – we paid a little bit extra to upgrade this hotel to a 4 star, and it was totally worth it. Our room was really nice, with soft beds (and two pillows each!) and a completely westernized bathroom, including a bathtub!

It was still pretty early and we weren’t ready to have dinner yet, so we decided to have Lal drive us to a nearby mall. I wanted to buy a jacket, since I had neglected to bring any warm clothing for this part of the trip. Foolishly I’d thought, hey its India…its warm everywhere! But in the North it is about 20 degrees during the day and somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees in the evening/night at this time of year, so it was getting chilly. I didn’t actually find a jacket that I liked (nothing in India fits me – it seems to all be cut for very slender women), but I did find a colourful shawl that I liked. I figure I can at least wrap that around my neck, and layer my clothing underneath the one sweater that I did bring along.

On the way back to the hotel we decided to stop in at another handicrafts store that was just beside the hotel (its funny because we weren’t even intending on going shopping in Agra, but since everything closes at sunset we didn’t have much else to do), where we ended up haggling a pretty good deal on some gift items for friends and family. I was pretty proud of my haggling – I got him down a few hundred INR. I wanted to pay 1000 INR for my purchases, but he wouldn’t go that low.I couldn’t let him win by settling for t 1050, so I drove a hard bargain and got my things for 1025 INR.

After shopping we explored a little bit further down the street and ended up at an Indian Chinese restaurant for dinner (the hotel restaurant was really expensive – would have been over 600 INR each for the buffet). Priyanka said that Indian Chinese was really good, and we thought it would be something different and fun! We ended up having a tandoori paneer appetizer (not very Chinese, but very good), chilly paneer and spicy garlic noodles for dinner. It was SO delicious! The chilly paneer was hands down my favourite. The thing that I love about India is that veggie options abound – normally, I find it hard to get veggie options at a Chinese restaurant! The price was pretty solid too – we ended up paying less than 300 INR for both of us together (fresh lime soda included!). I’m not sure if I’ve explained my fascination with fresh lime soda yet – its really tasty stuff. Basically, you get a glass with a little bit of freshly squeezed lime juice in it. To that you add soda water, and then a sugar syrup which you usually get on the side. Mmmm.

After dinner we rolled ourselves back to the hotel (it was so much food!) and began to settle in for the night. Our internet wasn’t working and we’re not sure if its because they didn’t add our money or because of another reason. In any case it was frustrating, and meant that we had to spend a lot more money to talk to our families that night (we still have our phone, but its roaming now).

We were also a little disappointed to find out that there was a party going on at the poolside (which we were directly facing), with really loud music. At about 11:30 we started calling the reception to get them to ask the party to turn the music down. It would work for a few minutes – they would turn it down when the person was there – and then as soon as the reception guy left, they would crank it up again. This went on until shortly after midnight, when I stuffed my earplugs in (thank goodness for earplugs) and went to sleep anyways. I wanted to get a good night’s sleep to be fresh to visit the Taj Mahal in the morning!