Friday afternoon we were scheduled to go to Parasitology for one hour and then to a lecture. The head of the Parasitology Dept. was very eager to have us and very excited to show us things (similar to the head of the Pathology Dept.). There were cases and cases of glass jars holding different specimens; some of which we got to take out and examine in petri dishes. We were also shown some parasites under the microscope. It was the same story as happened in pathology the other day where we had to leave after an hour, but he was really sad to see us go and had brought out many more things to show us. One hour is just not enough when you are working on India time.
The lecture in the afternoon was supposed to go from 3-4, so of course it started around 3:20. We were confused why we were instructed to be there until we found out that the speaker was a classmate of some very high up people at the school (again, politics). A combination of Friday afternoon and a lecture on genetics literally put some of us to sleep. I managed to keep my eyes open, but I couldn’t tell you a summary of that lecture if my life depended on it. It didn’t end until about 4:30 and then we were all served chai afterwards. Chai is served all the time here for guests and get-togethers even when it is 100 degrees. We were also served some little puffed pastries filled with peppercorns and onions, then fried, and served with a spicy sauce made from coconut. We saw the pathologist’s cat again, who was very uninterested in us until she saw the pastries and then yowled at most of the staff. They seemed used to it and ignored her, apparently she gets fed some other time. The cats name is Pepsi (there used to be another cat named Coke) and they joke that she is a virgin cat since they haven’t spayed her, but she has never had kittens.
In the evening I went to go check out the gym, which Ram (our housekeeper) showed me to. It was a pretty run down building with some sort of court on the bottom floor (it was like a small tennis court), some ping pong tables upstairs, and a few weight machines that look like they haven’t been touched in 20 years. So instead of using the gym I figured out skype that night.
Saturday morning we were a bit bummed to be back in the clinics. We were supposed to be going to a Stud Farm for horses, but somehow scheduling got messed up and the farm didn’t know we were coming, so we couldn’t go. Since it was an extra day in the clinic we could just go to any department we wanted, so Amber and I went to small animal medicine again. But Dr. Theliogar wasn’t there and the doctors that were there were not very interested in explaining things to us. We wandered around different departments seeing if there were any interesting cases of any of the “good” doctors (the ones that don’t mind repeating everything to us in English), but we were out of luck. Most of us had a mini-mutiny and at about 10am got back on the van and came home. Valerie and Wallace were in Dermatology with Dr. Nagarajan so they stayed in the hospital.
When we came back to our hostel the internet still wasn’t working, so a few of us went to restart the wireless (which is located at the entrance to the guest house where Dr. Subbiah is staying). Dr. Subbiah and Ruby were sitting in the entrance room, and we had a brief moment where we thought we’d be in trouble…but it was all fine. And it turned out the internet wasn’t working because the power was out. Note about India: electricity is never reliable. It goes out ALL the time. And while most places have generators for the essentials; things like air conditioning and internet do not count as essentials. The Subbiahs invited us to go to a store they had seen a sign for: Cotton Expo. According to the sign it had huge discounts on everything. The store was just down the street from our hostel so we walked, and survived crossing the street. You have to take your shoes off before entering the main part of the store (there are a lot of people here that just don’t have shoes and many places where shoes are not allowed). The store reminded me of a mix between an antique shop and a goodwill store at home. Lots of small rooms connected to one another, bins of clothing, kind of dusty. We ended up in the fabric room where there were shelves to the ceiling of fabric packages (they package together enough fabric to make a salwar – long tunic top, baggy pants, and a scarf) and mattresses on the floor. They must have pulled down at least 50 packages for different people to look at. Ruby bought 3 salwars, Jennifer got 2, Erin got a top made, and Carrie got a skirt made. We were probably there for about 2 hours and we were brought chai at some point (again, everyone serves chai for everything). When we were getting ready to leave it was pouring and we initially called our driver to come pick us up, but then the shop owner offered to drive us home. He was very nice and was a fashion designer who turned down some opportunities to go study in the USA and France to stay here with his family.
In the afternoon we were scheduled to go to a necropsy of a cow with suspected Johne’s Disease (it had come up positive in a herd check). Of course it didn’t start for almost an hour after it was supposed to, but luckily it didn’t take very long (maybe 45 minutes). We got to see the classic thickening and folding of the intestinal wall and managed to keep our shoes relatively blood free.
2 students had either volunteered or been forced to take us out that evening and after a quick change (needed post-necropsy) we all got on the bus and took a long drive through the city. They took us to a very old Hindu temple devoted to the 8 incarnations of Lakshmi. We left our shoes on the van and walked through the temple. It was all made of stone with many narrow, windy passageways that randomly had cut-outs in the wall with statues of Lakshmi. At each of these cut-outs was a holy man who would bless you if you wanted. We were all blessed for education with brainpower and willpower. Hopefully that will come in handy next year. After the temple we went to a beach (not the same one as before, but it looked very similar) and hung out near the shore for a while. It’s amazing how much sand there is at the beach, and because there is so much shore there are so many activities set up right on the beach (carnival games, food stands, vendors, etc.). The students were willing to take us out to the mall after the beach, but we were not really in the mood to shop (except Ana) and came back to the hostel. Our dinner that evening was very exciting for me as we had several bags of different types of fruit. We ate oranges, bananas, cantaloupe, mango, plums, dates, and then tried to figure out how to eat a guava. Sometimes the food here is so different that we have to go through some trouble trying to figure out how to eat it.
On Sunday we got to sleep in! We planned to leave for Dakshina Chitra at 9:30 and I was able to sleep in until 7:40am (every other day I get up at 6am). Dakshina Chitra is an outdoor cultural exhibit showing how different parts of India live. They have several houses built to display the diverse cultures in India with informative exhibits inside and the grounds have local artisans, etc. Several people got their palms read and their fortunes told by a parrot (the parrot picks a card, and then his owner reads your fortune out of a book). We met a glass artisan who made several glass figurines right in front of us; he could make lots of types of animals and took most of our requests. We started to see the puppet show (shadow puppets), but then the power went out and they had to postpone the show.
We had lunch at the little restaurant inside Dakshina Chitra and waited extra time to get a table inside with air conditioning…and then the power went out (seriously, this happens all the time in India). We all got “mini meals” of white rice, vegetables in a spicy sauce, some tumeric potatoes, and then a dessert of sweet lentil/cashew soup (I think it was called Pasai? I need to find a recipe as it was very good). We did some shopping after lunch at the vendors there and each of us is slowly improving at bartering. Ruby and Jennifer are especially good at it. Jennifer actually had a vendor follow us all the way to the exit of Dakshina Chitra to finally accept her offer of 500 rupees for a piece of artwork that was originally 950.
Dakshina Chitra was about an hour or so driving from our hostel and on the way back we stopped twice: once for chai (again, piping hot chai in a piping hot climate) and once for ice cream (a more appropriate snack). For dinner we had a really delicious paneer dish (I think it was a masala); by far the best food I think I’ve had since I’ve been here. They made us naan too, but it doesn’t quite taste like the naan we get at home.
1 week down, 5 to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment