Home!

43 hours of straight travel. Back home in the land of enchantment. 

Layovers

This is how you spend time on a layover...

Passion Fruit Popsicles

Might be our new favorite treat!!!

Beach and Views

Yep, I can get used to this. Might 'miss our flight' back to the states. 

Lanterns

Anyone who has watched Tangled has most likely dreamed of seeing beautiful floating lanterns in the sky.

Well, tonight we went to The River Market, had delicious food, and set off some lanterns. 

The restaurant sign

When it's ready to go, it flies out of your hands!

Waiting for the hot air to build up 

Floating high up in the sky!

It wasn't quite as many as in Tangled, but it was still pretty cool.

We leave tomorrow morning for the beach!!!

Thailand!

We've been too busy having fun to remember to post updates!

We met Sierra in the Bangkok airport and arrived in Chiang Mai on Saturday. We've tried lots of delish street food, shopped the markets, gone to a Wat (temple) and the Queen's gardens.

Only one downpour so far-the weather seems to be cooperating even though it's monsoon season. :)

Bangkok airport!

Food on our 1hr flight to Chiang Mai

The steps up to the Wat

The Queen's gardens (note the pic of a pic of a pic of a pic) :)

Moo ka ta (kinda like Mongolian BBQ)

More fun awaits!

Sign certs

Last day at the hospital! Andrea and Johanna signing the certifications for the clinicians. 

Motor bike

Well, please allow me (Dan) to describe my experience riding on the back of a motor bike at night in India:

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

Yes, I had the pleasure to get a private ride home tonight. Quite a smooth ride upon reflection, but white knuckled on that ever so small metal bar behind the back seat at the time. However, stopping off for an ice cream halfway home sure made the rest of the ride better. 

As previously posted, the vehicle horns were in full effect. Still not sure if they were saying hi, get out of my way, what are you doing later, watch out, or whatever, but I'm pretty sure I can do without a horn for the foreseeable future. And when we say the roads are just madness with cars driving every which way, its like a mad rush on Black Friday morning at Walmart and they only have 1 in stock.

'til next time...

Tourism in India

1) Everyone you talk to says "you must go to the Golden Temple"

2) You try to negotiate a price with an auto rickshaw driver and end up completely confused with the driver insisting that you leave your shoes in his taxi while you go into the temple. 

2a) (During the taxi ride the driver stops the taxi, asks Dan to get out and pick up a rock from the side of the road and put it on his pile of prayerbooks. When Dan gets back into the autorickshaw the driver forgets that he needs to share his seat and Dan has to squat on a metal rail.)

3) You don't leave your shoes in the taxi and go into the temple but are completely unable to figure out what to do or where to go.

4) A random patient from the hospital wearing a shirt that says "let me be ur superhero" spies you and waves.

5) Your helpful Hindi friend finally figures out what to do, you put all your shoes in a bag and leave it at a counter, and you enter single file-women separate from men. Shoeless.

6) At the end of the walkway you're patted down to search for cell phones or cameras.

7) Then you're escorted into a caged room with many seats and told to sit.  There's popcorn and Pepsi available to buy.

8) For no apparent reason you're allowed to stand up and begin filing down another long walkway. Shoeless.

9) We come to a standstill. People stand in the long walkway which is caged with no exit available.  It is very hot and there's no understanding of why we are not moving.

10) After what seems to be seven hours the people in front of us start yelling in an unknown language and we are fearful that a riot is about to erupt. Our Hindi friends tells us this is the traditional way to ask what's going on-we wonder why this is not started happening sooner.  The line starts moving.

11) We finally enter what we what appears to be the temple and again are searched for cameras or cell phones then we begin the 3 km walk in a very circuitous pattern to the Golden Temple. Much like Joe Jackson, still shoeless.

12) For views of the temple, click here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Temple,_Sripuram

13) More than three hours later we exit the Golden temple--still shoeless.

14) When we finally reach home we are confused why all of our friends told us we must have this experience. Yet this is an experience we will never forget. 

In case you were wondering we do have our shoes.

View from the top

Overlooking Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. 

Monkeys

No pics to prove it, but there are monkeys roaming about. Pretty fun to see some unusual wildlife.

Glad to have made it through the first week-looking forward to relaxing, exploring Vellore, attempting to shop and barter some bargains, and perhaps going for a swim (at the surprise swimming pool down the street from where we're staying)

Day 6

Today we figured out how to get hot water in our showers! (Did we mention we actually have showers?!) Honestly, we've come back quite hot and sweaty most days and the cold water hasn't felt too bad. But it's nice to know we have options.

We're also figuring out a little more each day what PT looks like in India and that is helping us fine tune our teaching sessions.

We teach the students each afternoon. They are adorable! (Don't tell them we said that) They look about 12 and are quite shy. There are only 9 of them, which is much easier to facilitate during labs than the ~30 clinicians we teach in the evening.

Off to a warm shower and bed!

jes

Day 1 in the books!

Too tired to type a lot, so here are some pictures.

(Posted on the wall)

(Some hands-on)

(Johanna's rendition of 'I come in peace')

Almost there

A Four hour flight to Chennai and three hour taxi to Vellore will conclude our journey. At least the traveling part. The adventure of experiencing India will have just begun.

Where'd August 15th Go?

Made it to Australia, survived the 15 hour flight relatively well, but managed to skip August 15th in the process. International Date Line: you are weird.

Bon Voyage!

The Nitty Gritty

I'm frantically packing (well, that's a lie, because I'm actually taking the time to write this blog post) and  very excited to actually be leaving on our adventure!

FAQs

Q: When are you leaving?
A: Today (eek!)

Q: What organization are you going with?
A: We are going with HVO, an organization that partners with local hospitals to provide continuing education for their medical professionals.

Q: Where will you be partnering?
A: We are going to CMC, a hospital in Vellore, India.

Well, hope that satisfies some of your curiosity.  We're looking forward to actually getting to India and seeing for ourselves what this incredible country has to offer!

Stay posted.

jes

Boy! Do they compress

Compression socks: check! Bring on the flights! Who let the zebras out?

PowerPoint done!

Finally done with our presentations after 4 months of many long hours!

Packing

How does one pack for a month for two very different locations and for heat and humidity that are unfamiliar? 

Throw everything on the couch, cross your fingers and hope for the best!

Let the packing commence! 

Malaria Monday

Today begins the malaria medication regimen-definitely don't want to get malaria on this trip!

Every Monday we'll take a white pill to protect us from malaria.

Growth

After 5 weeks, what will be longer: the hair or the beard?!

And water we shall drink

Excited to have our water bottles delivered so we can drink water without getting sick! It's the simple things that we too often take for granted. 

Photo Day

We needed pictures for our PowerPoint and decided to hang out at the gym at work for a few hours to get the shots we needed. 

Dan was a fantastic photographer (you can see him in action in the picture below)

Departure: 5 weeks from yesterday

Prepping

Preparing the PowerPoint for India requires many long hours and noses deep in text books, accomplished via sleepovers and power smoothies. Student presentation completed, next up the clinician presentation. It is during this process that the three of us begin to understand the upcoming norm of 'lack of personal space'!