Today was a pretty quiet, but nice day. We started our morning a little bit earlier than usual, since SPASTN was having a walkathon at the Marina Beach with their students to celebrate their 28 year anniversary. We arrived at the school at 8:45 am to meet with Priya. Of course there was a lot of last minute chaos happening – people were running around trying to organize wheelchairs and rides, and it was generally crazy. The van we were supposed to be riding in was there, along with the keys, but somewhere along the way they had lost the driver. Priya ended up racing downtown with her two-wheeler (motor bike – they call them all two-wheelers here) with a kid and a bunch of picket-style signs, because somebody had forgotten to pack them in a van, and they needed them for the press photos. We were left with another intern, still waiting for the driver of the van to show up. We finally got on our way at about 9:45am (perfectly on time in Indian Stretchable Time). We 9 people into this tiny van, and headed downtown. It was kind of a scary journey – traffic was a disaster and it was blisteringly hot. Somewhere along the way our driver splashed some bikers and they pulled up beside us and started yelling at the driver. It was just starting to get heated when the light turned green and we sped off.
Unfortunately by the time we reached the beach the walkathon was already over. We got there just in time to meet up with Anna, and get some snacks and juice. After that Anna, Priyanka and I all took the train back to Thiravanmyuir station and then walked back to SPASTN. It was almost noon by the time we got back, which was actually kind of nice. Wednesday is new assessment day, so there isn’t usually much for us to do.
We ate lunch with Anna, as we usually do. Anna’s last day is Thursday, and I think we’re both really going to miss her! She has had a lot of similar struggles to us during her internship at SPASTN (she is a masters of psychology student, and there isn’t even a psychologist working here), and its been great having her to talk to. In the afternoon Anna introduced us to Natalie, which is a girl from Philadelphia that has been volunteer-teaching at SPASTN for the past two-months. She seems really nice, and we’re hoping to get to know her a little bit better in the rest of our time here!
In the afternoon we did some observation, and helped out with one treatment session, before heading up to the sensory integration unit to start going through our midterm evaluation with Karthik. It was kind of funny – we got there to do our evaluations (which we’d given him a week’s notice for, as well as a warning that they are lengthy) and he actually hadn’t even read the instructions on how to fill it out. It ended up being fine though – he just filled it out as we went. He wasn’t able to fill out all of the sections because he doesn’t directly supervise our work in the PT department (Ramkumar is hopefully going to finish the eval with us on Friday) but most of the sections that he did fill out went well.
During the evaluation time Karthik also mentioned that the last three days that we’re at SPASTN there may be a sensory integration workshop going on – we were really excited/interested in this until he mentioned a tuition fee. We found out a few days ago that we are probably paying a “foreigners premium” for our accommodations and tuition here at SPASTN, which we both found slightly irritating. Of course we do understand that we are in a better financial position than most people here in India, but its still not really fair for us to pay a foreigner’s price. I don’t mind when it comes to our accommodations and tuition for our internship, but I definitely don’t want to pay a premium for a workshop that won’t even be recognized in Canada, as interesting as it would be.
After work we went to Thiravanmyuir again to buy our very own kettle. We brought a bunch of instant soups (and instant oatmeal) with us, and although going to the canteen in the morning to get boiling water for the instant oatmeal hasn’t been a problem, we were told that we wouldn’t be able to get water at any other time for our soups etc. We held out on it for a while, but this week we broke down and shelled out the $1000 INR ($25 CAD! Can you believe it! My kettle in Canada cost less than that!). We also restocked on laundry soap, and I got a new umbrella to replace the one that “walked away”.
Once we were done we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at Ascendas, so we hopped in an auto rickshaw. Once we got there, I decided on Pizza Hut (their veggie delight tastes just like at home!) and Priyanka got KFC. Next week we’re planning on going back to try out the McDonalds (which has veggie burgers here!).
The rest of our evening was pretty laid back. I did some blogging, worked on fleshing out our presentation a little bit (which has been moved to Friday), and then curled up with my book around 10pm!
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