December 4th, 2009

Its Friday! I can’t believe 3 weeks of placement are done already! Judging from past experience the next two weeks are going to fly by (especially since we’re actually handling kids now!)

We actually had a pretty busy day at work today. In the morning we did a few more Tardieu assessments (I think we’re up to 18 or 19 now), and then at 12:30 we (finally!) gave our presentation on the Tardieu Scale to all of the other students (and all of the PTs) that are at SPASTN right now. The students have all already graduated from a physio program and are now at SPASTN doing a specialization in pediatric NDT. Our presentation was pretty awesome if I do say so myself! I was really proud of myself because I actually wasn’t nervous for a change! The students were pretty timid about answering our questions (we were trying to make the presentation pretty interactive to show them a new model of teaching), but in the end everyone asked quite a few questions, and I think even the PT’s learned a few things from us! In the afternoon I had a treatment session with one of my kids. It didn’t go quite as well as I’d planned, which was a bit frustrating, but I’m over it now. I’m hoping that by the end of the placement I’ll feel a little bit more confident in my abilities, because right now I’m still feeling pretty incompetent.

After work we treated ourselves to coffee from Café Coffee Day (mostly because I was in a grumpy mood from that botched treatment session), and then headed into Thiravanmiyur (I think I spell that differently every time I type it) on the quest for the perfect custard apple (plus some water and a sharp knife). We managed to get a hold of a few custard apples at a fruit stand (which had all kinds of interesting fruit! We’ll be back there for sure!) and paid only 15 INR (just over 25 cents) for 2 of them. We also found a place that would let us order 5 L jugs of water instead of the 1 L environmental travesties that we have been buying! So as of Monday we should have some big jugs that will hopefully last us a while.

The custard apples were a lovely after dinner treat! Surprisingly they come apart kind of like an orange, in little sections. The inside of the fruit is cream coloured, and each section has its own black seed. It was pretty tasty but definitely a lot of work to eat since you have to spit out each seed! We’re going to bring one on the bus to Pondicherry tomorrow since you don’t actually need a knife to eat them.

The rest of the evening was filled with preparations for our trip to Pondicherry. We had to rewash some of our laundry since it smelled kind of funky, and get packed up/answer emails etc. Honestly, I don’t know how people in this country do their own laundry and go to school/have jobs at the same time. Priyanka and I are so inefficient at it! This morning it took two of us and hour to wash two towels, and tonight it took us half an hour to wash a handful of items of clothing! Blargh! It was a pretty funny site though, seeing two of us bent over our bucket together and agitating our clothing. One thing is for sure…we are definitely much closer friends now than we were at the beginning of this trip!

Well, I think I’m going to shut down for the evening. As I mentioned we’re heading to Pondicherry for the weekend, so it will be another early morning! Expect a blog update on Sunday or Monday!

Have a great weekend everyone!

P.S Pictures on my last few blogs will follow soon!

December 3rd, 2009

Today was a pretty awesome day! It seems that our evaluations lit a bit of a fire under the proverbial butt of the PT department at SPASTN, because Ramkumar spent almost the entire morning with us, teaching! It was really great! He helped me a lot with my treatment session (which actually went pretty well!) and gave me some good constructive feedback. He then spent quite some time with Priyanka and I showing us NDT facilitation techniques, and having us practice them on each other. It was probably the best learning day we’ve had so far! If only every day had been like this!

We ate lunch with Anna and Natalie today, which was really nice. Natalie seems like a really cool person, and we’re hoping that she’ll come along on some of our Chennai adventures! Today was Anna’s last day, and we’re definitely going to miss us. She gave us each a pretty metal bangle as a keepsake, which was really sweet of her. She’s thinking of doing some further education in the US in the future, so we’re really hoping that she comes to visit us.

Today was World Disability Day, so there were no classes or therapy session in the afternoon. Instead the whole school congregated in the vocational training center for a big assembly (it was supposed to be outside, but its started raining at the last minute). The assembly was a really awesome experience. SPASTN as a school has so much spirit – the teachers were giving out awards for sporting events and everyone was cheering so hard for their peers. I actually got a little bit teary eyed! Some of the students did some dance numbers and sang songs, and a few of the staff performed as well. Talk about a fun afternoon! When things were starting to wind down, they unveiled the giant cake to celebrate SPASTN’s 28^th anniversary. I don’t think that it was actually 28 feet long, as it was supposed to be, but it was a pretty big cake. It was decorated really nicely – in the middle was SPASTN’s logo, on one side it was decorated to look like a beach, and on the other with crocodiles etc. It tasted really good too! Kind of like pina colada in cake form.

After work we headed back to Ascendas once again, to fight with Airtel, once again. We discovered this morning that we’re now neither able to make outgoing calls nor receive incoming calls. We didn’t get very far with them – they promised we’d have our phone activated by tomorrow morning, but I’m in suspense as to whether that will actually happen or not. Once we were done at Airtel we caught an auto rickshaw to Besant Nagar for a bit of a pick me up. We wanted to hit up the grocery store and buy some interesting fruit!

The first grocery store we went to didn’t have custard apples (which are these really curious looking spiny green/black things that we are dying to try) but we did pick up two guavas, and we also got a mango yogurt each (which was really yummy – we ate them on the street with our tongues!). We spent some time wandering through the streets of Besant Nagar and came across a little jewelry stand where we each picked up a few little, hand beaded items. Eventually we made it to the second grocery store (which also didn’t have any custard apples) but where we found Parle-G cookies (which are these really yummy buttery digestive-ish cookies) and mango fruit leather. By the time we finished perusing the grocery store it was almost 7:30, so we decided to head back to SPASTN. We managed to the get the auto to drop us off pretty much at our door, which was great. Snake walk aside, lake SPASTN has begun to grow steadily again, and we’re always glad to avoid walking through the water.

We’d told the kitchen staff not to bring us dinner tonight, which gave us a chance to try out our kettle! I made a Campbell’s Thai flavoured noodle soup and Priyanka had Minestrone. Mmm mmm good indeed! A nice change from our usual dinner of chapatti and dahl!

After dinner we googled how to eat a guava, and I hacked them in half with my swiss army knife. Apparently you can eat them like an apple, but we wanted to avoid the peel, so after cutting them in half we scooped out the flesh and seeds with a spoon. They were really tasty!

Our night has really flown by – I can’t believe its almost 11pm! We’re now just finishing up our presentation for tomorrow, and then I guess we’ll be heading to bed. What a great day!

December 2nd, 2009

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!

December 1st, 2009

Wow, where is the time going? I can’t believe its December already! Christmas is coming fast! Again, I have fallen (a little bit) behind in my blogging. Yesterday turned out to be quite a busy day, and by the time we finished everything that we needed to do for the evening we were pretty tired, hence the lack of update.

Placement went well yesterday. It was a very quiet day in the PT department due to the rain (a lot of the kids don’t show up when its raining) so we were only able to do one tardieu scale assessment in the morning. In the afternoon Priyanka and I each had one patient. I’m happy to say that my treatment session went much better than Monday’s – my patient was happy and cooperative, most of my activities went really well and generally I felt pretty confident about the treatment I did. I have to say, doing the treatments has been pretty hard. We’re still not getting much guidance or feedback about our treatment sessions, so although we’re doing our best, we’re never really sure if what we’re doing is right/helpful. Internship expectations are just SO different here when compared to Canada. Reframing this internship in the context of a selective internship does make it less stressful though – I mean, most people won’t have nearly as cool a selective internship as this! And when all is said and done, I am having a fantastic time experiencing India and being exposed to international health. Despite not getting quite the academic experience we were hoping for, I can say for sure that it has been a worthwhile experience so far.

After work I went back to Airtel again, to sort out our phone once and for all. Finally, it seems that we have all of the necessary/required documents in place, and we’re hoping that our phone service won’t get discontinued again!

Yesterday was the start of Karthigai Deevam, a Hindu festival of light, which is similar to Diwali, but only celebrated in South India. For three days, people line the windows and balconies of their houses with candles, and set off firecrackers and fireworks in the street. We were really excited to see the houses all lit up, so Priya offered to take us out with her to the temple that evening, so we could not only see the candles, but the festivities at the temple as well. We got all dressed up (well… I got as dressed up as my meager supply of traditional Indian clothing would allow), complete with Indian costume jewelry (which Priya lent us) and bangles. We even stopped on our way to the temple to buy flowers to hang in our hair. It made me feel really special J

The energy of the night was incredible. There were people everywhere, and you could just feel the excitement in the air. Unfortunately not many of the houses had candles out because it was still raining, but we did see a few candles here and there. The first temple that we went to, which is about 1500 years old, was breathtakingly beautiful. Outside there are these amazing, brightly coloured murals painted on the ceiling depicting all of the Hindu Gods, and the inside was full of ornately carved stone. I took part in a few of the Hindu rituals, and found it to be a really wonderful and spiritual experience.

We made another quick stop at a second temple where we lit incense in an offering to the Gods – I think the premise is that you offer them something fragrant in the hopes of them making your life fragrant. It was pretty neat.

After we finished at the temples, the three of us hopped on an auto rickshaw and headed to Sanjeevanam, one of Priya’s favourite restaurants. The food was amazing! I think it was probably the best food we’ve had since we arrived. The restaurant prides itself on being a “health restaurant” and is based on naturopathic and ayurvedic principals. We weren’t able to get the full ayurvedic meal (which is apparently huge and really tasty, but only available for lunch), but we got some of their takes on traditional South Indian food, including the best Iddly I’ve ever had, Uttapam, a rice dish, and a huge paper dosa. We finished off the meal with a bit of honey as a digestive aid. I can’t wait to go back!

We arrived back at SPASTN at about 9:30, happy and tired after the full evening of activities. It was so nice of Priya to take us out with her – we both really appreciated it. Priya is so nice, and has done so much to make us feel welcome here. I think it took some time for her to get used to us, but I am really enjoying getting to know her.

We spent the rest of the evening working on a presentation on the tardieu scale and finishing our clinical evaluations. By the time we finished up with our work at about midnight, we were both pretty wiped out, and happy to cozy up under our mosquito nets for the night.

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!