After a 48 hour journey from Boston to Chennai, India (via Dallas/logical and Dubai) I arrived in the airport to find my baggage late and destroyed and spent enough time searching for it and trying to fix it that I feared my cab driver would leave without me. Luckily, by the time I staggered out of the airport, still half asleep, there was only one cab driver left waiting (others said it was a mob scene with tons of cabbies with placards shouting at you) and since my classmate Rob was joining us as well I felt safe enough that I left my pepper spray unopened.
The 3-hour ride to Vellore started off interestingly with our little taxi weaving in and out of the many headlights that were followed by buses and rickshaws and mopeds and bikes and pedestrians and sleeping cows and rabid dogs blocking both our side of the road and the right side of the road that we kept swerving into to pass the same. Holding your breath works best in situations where the only thing between your headlights and the oncoming ones is a loud honk on the horn. Despite the constant threat of death and incessant loud horn, Rob and I were so exhausted from the travel and jet lag that we passed out for most of the trip.
We got to the Christian Medical College campus around 11pm (10.5 hour time difference from Boston). We lucked out last minute with on campus housing which is pretty pimped out with an A/C unit, western style toilet, and ethernet cord, so I can't complain.
The next morning we met the rest of the Tufts students (there's 9 of us) and students from U Illinois and other countries and schools for orientation after a breakfast of idli = puff bread dipped in spiced sauces with chai tea (you'll note that I can't remember 95% of Indian names and words I learn because reasons but I looked that one up on wikipedia). See, I'm in Vellore, a small city in Tamil Nadu, to do a 1 month rotation at a renowned teaching hospital in India. The orientation ended up taking 2.5 hours, with only 2.5 minutes of instruction (none of which we could understand anyway through the mumbled English thick with Tamil accent). I guess I'll have to adjust to India time.
We had the option of going straight to the hospital or resting for the day, so we rested (#4thyearmedstudents), which involved exploring the medical campus which is filled with dirt roads and aggressive monkeys and well-dressed students in matching saris. We went to the college store to get water, soap, and toilet paper--the essentials. This is when I first noticed that lines don't exist in India, which took awhile for me to catch onto until I realized I wasn't getting any closer to paying.
Then a bunch of us took a public bus (still going into oncoming traffic blasting the horn, but this time the other vehicles had to budge) downtown with the door wide open, which was really just non-existent.
The woman of southern India were decked out in intricate, boldly colorful saris and tons of gold jewelry -- necklaces, rings, toe rings, earrings, and nose rings -- and with colorful and curiously varying bindis. The men mostly wear cotton collared shirts, with short cut hair and unfortunately mustaches are pretty popular.
The most curious thing is the head wobble, I totally thought it was an offensive thing in movies just to mock Indians, but it's REAL. After my neuro rotation, I thought it looked like a tic. It doesn't really make any sense... doesn't quite mean yes or no but it can mean a little of both or neither. Huh. But regardless, my head doesn't know how to move like that.
We checked out the fort which hosts 3 different denominational temples, and happens to be the only attraction in Velloretown. We had to take off our shoes to enter the Hindu temple, which was gross, but worth it. There were statues of Hindu gods with burning incense, a clarinetist with a drummer, dancers, and plenty of barefoot, colorfully dressed worshippers.
We then ventured through the bustling, dirty market. The spices were neon though and there were tons of flower parts. There were cattle, people, goods, raw meats, trash, silks, fruits. It makes it a terrifying adventure to even cross the street. After bargaining for some fresh hot paratha, in the wrong direction-- for some reason this guy thought it worked to start low and work his way up, we hopped again on another public bus.. this time literally because it hardly stops moving, and I was sardined in between a tons of wonderfully smelling individuals.
Came back after registering with the police to the employees cleaning the hostel. You know how certain smells are inextricably connected to past experiences? Well, this one reminded me of anatomy lab. Can't understand why they use formaldehyde as a cleaning solution here, unlike our dear bleach, this one is already a proven carcinogen, but I digress.
We had a meet and great that night with some of the other international students and got to see traditional Tamil dance (apparently in Indian dance all of the hand movements are symbolic and tell a story, but one that I will never understand, I don't know why I didn't already know that) and learned the history of CMC. It was founded by an American girl in 1900 after she was unable to help 3 pregnant woman who died in childbirth when a female doctor wasn't available to treat them (male doctors could not see naked females), and so she went home to train as one of the first female MDs at Cornell and returned to Vellore to start this school that is now one of the country's best.
I'll write about the medical side of things soon! The hospital is another world.
The 3-hour ride to Vellore started off interestingly with our little taxi weaving in and out of the many headlights that were followed by buses and rickshaws and mopeds and bikes and pedestrians and sleeping cows and rabid dogs blocking both our side of the road and the right side of the road that we kept swerving into to pass the same. Holding your breath works best in situations where the only thing between your headlights and the oncoming ones is a loud honk on the horn. Despite the constant threat of death and incessant loud horn, Rob and I were so exhausted from the travel and jet lag that we passed out for most of the trip.
We got to the Christian Medical College campus around 11pm (10.5 hour time difference from Boston). We lucked out last minute with on campus housing which is pretty pimped out with an A/C unit, western style toilet, and ethernet cord, so I can't complain.
The next morning we met the rest of the Tufts students (there's 9 of us) and students from U Illinois and other countries and schools for orientation after a breakfast of idli = puff bread dipped in spiced sauces with chai tea (you'll note that I can't remember 95% of Indian names and words I learn because reasons but I looked that one up on wikipedia). See, I'm in Vellore, a small city in Tamil Nadu, to do a 1 month rotation at a renowned teaching hospital in India. The orientation ended up taking 2.5 hours, with only 2.5 minutes of instruction (none of which we could understand anyway through the mumbled English thick with Tamil accent). I guess I'll have to adjust to India time.
We had the option of going straight to the hospital or resting for the day, so we rested (#4thyearmedstudents), which involved exploring the medical campus which is filled with dirt roads and aggressive monkeys and well-dressed students in matching saris. We went to the college store to get water, soap, and toilet paper--the essentials. This is when I first noticed that lines don't exist in India, which took awhile for me to catch onto until I realized I wasn't getting any closer to paying.
Then a bunch of us took a public bus (still going into oncoming traffic blasting the horn, but this time the other vehicles had to budge) downtown with the door wide open, which was really just non-existent.
The woman of southern India were decked out in intricate, boldly colorful saris and tons of gold jewelry -- necklaces, rings, toe rings, earrings, and nose rings -- and with colorful and curiously varying bindis. The men mostly wear cotton collared shirts, with short cut hair and unfortunately mustaches are pretty popular.
The most curious thing is the head wobble, I totally thought it was an offensive thing in movies just to mock Indians, but it's REAL. After my neuro rotation, I thought it looked like a tic. It doesn't really make any sense... doesn't quite mean yes or no but it can mean a little of both or neither. Huh. But regardless, my head doesn't know how to move like that.
We checked out the fort which hosts 3 different denominational temples, and happens to be the only attraction in Velloretown. We had to take off our shoes to enter the Hindu temple, which was gross, but worth it. There were statues of Hindu gods with burning incense, a clarinetist with a drummer, dancers, and plenty of barefoot, colorfully dressed worshippers.
We then ventured through the bustling, dirty market. The spices were neon though and there were tons of flower parts. There were cattle, people, goods, raw meats, trash, silks, fruits. It makes it a terrifying adventure to even cross the street. After bargaining for some fresh hot paratha, in the wrong direction-- for some reason this guy thought it worked to start low and work his way up, we hopped again on another public bus.. this time literally because it hardly stops moving, and I was sardined in between a tons of wonderfully smelling individuals.
Came back after registering with the police to the employees cleaning the hostel. You know how certain smells are inextricably connected to past experiences? Well, this one reminded me of anatomy lab. Can't understand why they use formaldehyde as a cleaning solution here, unlike our dear bleach, this one is already a proven carcinogen, but I digress.
We had a meet and great that night with some of the other international students and got to see traditional Tamil dance (apparently in Indian dance all of the hand movements are symbolic and tell a story, but one that I will never understand, I don't know why I didn't already know that) and learned the history of CMC. It was founded by an American girl in 1900 after she was unable to help 3 pregnant woman who died in childbirth when a female doctor wasn't available to treat them (male doctors could not see naked females), and so she went home to train as one of the first female MDs at Cornell and returned to Vellore to start this school that is now one of the country's best.
I'll write about the medical side of things soon! The hospital is another world.
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