One Week in India

It has been kind of a whirlwind the last week, and even though it hasn't been too busy here in India, I'm still struggling to get a post about some of the experiences we've had. Today at lunch Shreya and I were talking about how much we haven't posted about our stay in Guatemala. We've planned a few "Throwback" posts to cover some of the things we saw in Gaute. I still have a draft post titled Guat Cars? (What Cars) that I need to organize pictures for. I'll get around to it, soon hopefully.

The week in India so far has been pretty good. The flight and time changes have messed up my sense of days of the week and it is hard to tell if today is Friday or Wednesday. I do know that 9 days have passed since we arrived in Dhenkenal (it is easy when you arrive on the 1st of the month). We flew through Mumbai and I was expecting a lot of hassle with customs and immigration but was met with (almost) no resistance. The customs officer did ask us to open one of our boxes of donated eye glasses, but after review of the appropriate documentation and confirmation with a senior officer, he let us pass. We patched up the box and headed to the domestic terminal. All of our bags made it and were relatively intact when we arrived in Bhubaneswar. The previously mentioned box was hanging on with a couple of holes in it and patched with security and Lufthansa tape. After collecting our bags we found the director for the Kalinga Eye Hospital waiting for us at the exit of the airport. With a hearty greeting and packing of our luggage into the car we headed off to Dhenkenal. The drive was typical India with the usual auto-rickshaws, scooters, honking cars, trucks, and of course cows for the almost 2 hour drive. Once we arrived at the Kalinga Eye Hospital they gave us a nice spacious room and we set up camp:

Home for the month of March

As you can see above we moved two single beds together and hung a mosquito net to cover them both. While we were in the U.S. we saw pictures of the living arrangements and thought about how we'd be able to hang a mosquito net. We found some plastic hooks at Home Depot that have a sticky back to them and brought them with us. We placed the hooks on opposite walls and then hung some paracord between them. The paracord goes through a ring at the top of the mosquito net. So far it has worked pretty nicely and we hope it doesn't fall on top us in the middle of the night.

We were extremely tired but determined to stay up until at least sundown on the first day. We figured this would be the best way to beat the 12.5 hour time difference that our bodies were feeling. We were told to relax and that around 4pm we would have our first chance to watch a cataract lens replacement surgery. We were so excited we decided to take a 20 minute "power nap". Four hours later we heard some knocking on our door and in a sleep induced haze I answered the door and found out one of us needed to stumble head to the Operating Theatre (OT). Luckily, all that was required was observing the surgeries and writing down patient data. After the OT, I headed back to the room and Shreya and I took another "power nap" and were woken up for dinner around 8:30p. Needless to say, we were way more tired then we thought. Despite all of the napping, we slept through out the night.

The next day we sat down with the director and figured out some projects to work on. We're only here for 4 weeks and we have a good sized list to work on. We weren't expecting to do much engineering work here, but after communicating with the director and hospital manager we came up with some fun projects that will allow us to flex some of our engineering skills. Some of the projects are outside of immediate knowledge base and we'll need to contact some experts in the field we know back home (thanks you guys!). It's going to be fun and interesting for sure!

So after 10 days in India, we're still adjusting. The transition has been a big change from where we were. Being out of the U.S. for entirety of this year may finally be catching up to us. We are reminscining more and more about friends, family, and the familiarity of home. The people we've met here so far have been interesting and we've had some issues remembering all of the names. We have picked up two pets though:

FReddy peaking out of the A/C.

His friend hanging around.

We named one Eddie (or as I like to call him FReddy, for Fast Reptilian Eddie or Fat Reptilian Eddie depending on the day) and we're still trying to come up with a name for the second one. Any suggestions are appreciated. They have been scampering through our room and have startled us a couple of times. They seem to be well fed, and as long as they are eating all the bugs from our room we are not complaining. We can tell them apart from the others around the hospital as they are slightly darker in color. The white painted walls make the others an interesting pale color. 

Thums Up!

We have ventured into the village a few times and have comeback with Thums Ups (picture to the left) and wafers (chips). All in all, we're trying to keep ourselves busy and things are going well. Until next time!